First off, I'm a great fan of tons of instrumental guitar virtuosos, including Tony McAlpine, Satch, Vai, Shawn Lane, Michael Romeo, Adam Fulara, Rusty Cooley....the list goes on. For that matter, I also consider myself as a guitarist to have pretty good technique and I certainly advocate that technique is important in and of itself.
Having said that, I still voted 'no' because I think that you don't necessarily have to have great technique to be a great guitar player. My example would be SRV. I think SRV was an amazing guitarist and I enjoy his music everybit as much as, say, Steve Vai. SRV had great tone, good clarity, and executed his solos with grace, tastefulness, and he even had some speedy chops here and there (despite all his solos being pentatonic).
Beginner: I think the problematic issue pertaining to your poll is your lack of clarity regarding 'great' guitar player. 'Great' is a very subjective word, and therefore you're going to get very inconsistent results. You need to define 'great' before the question really makes sense.
