In my humble opinion, the KTM 950's with the old CV carbs were the best "off road" BIG motors and bikes KTM made. I had a 2007 950 SE and once I got those CV carbs set up, that bike was a beast. Simple, no electronics to speak of and fun. You could change out the carbs and make more power but 100hp is more than enough for me off road! The newer bikes are nice and alot of the farkles they come with are sweet, but I find I never use most of them, and that is why I settled on the T7.
Like all bikes, T7's have some niggles but they are mostly maint related, like changing plugs-it's a bitch to get to them and doing a valve check is an all day affair, well for a guy like me anyway. The stock on/off throttle response is crappy, but once I got mine tuned-it is awesome. And of course I had to do the springs for my big ass and added a autoclutch. Now, it is the perfect bike for me-
I looked at KTM's, VSTROM's, and other bikes but simplicity and price kept me coming back to the T7. Plus I had the Desert Sled already, so didn't want another Duc and love my Sled. Honestly, I think I would be faster in the trees on my Ducati Desert Sled than my T7 as the ergo's are more old school dirtbike like and lower CG makes it easier to ride hard. You set a Duc Sled up with a 21/18 set up so you can use/have more options for better tires, that would be sweet. The new Desert X come that way, but they added a larger tank and made it more like most modern big ADV's- ad it is a water cooled motor vice the old school air/oil cooled like my Duc800.
Oh and the "World Raid" version is mostly Graphics and a different seat and some other farkles. T7 will not change much due to the impending Euro 5 crap. Not worth it to Yamaha to develop it too much as it is "Good Enough" now given the state of where ICE is headed. Yamaha's pricing will keep them selling for a while. Like I said, I love KTM's, always have since 1985 when I rode my first one in Oahu.
If you and me and John go on a ride, you can ride mine if you like to check it out-Or if you want to jet up to Annapolis, bring your helmet and you can take the T7 out for a couple of hours and ride the back roads south of Annapolis and get a real feel for it. No worries, just give me a call-
and other irrelevant chit-chat 
It was either this 890R or the tiger 900 rally which was comparable in specs/weights etc plus Ive never owned a triumph yet. So what happens? My bike was in the shop for 7 weeks in the first 3 months of ownership due to you guessed it, the horror stories I was reading on adv rider 
She's running as advertised now and really enjoy her 
