Quote Originally Posted by Magis View Post
One poster gave EVE as an example, another is FFXI (yah, yah) until Abyssea came out. Gear didn't get thrown out after the next flavour of the month came in. Horizontal progression > Vertical progression. Even AF1 gear was useful for a while... not thrown away right when you hit 50.
A large part of why this worked in XI was the ridiculous "gear swapping" system whereby you could change all your gear mid-combat or even half way through casting a spell. They could create lots of situational gear that excelled for certain types of spell or using certain weapon skills such as equipping gear with dark magic skill for casting Drain or gear loaded with STR for basically every weapon skill.

But I'm hoping that at some point they will make gear a bit more diverse, perhaps weapons with additional effects or armour with properties we've not seen yet.