Level 110 gear on my level 50 character...

[Duelle]

How did everyone not know this was going to be the way of things when they said ARR would be a vertical gear based game like WoW?

I think the point of the OP is that they're growing in scale too fast. I'm not quite sure whether it's because of XIV's stat weights vs WoW's, but comparing what we see here with what was seen in vanilla WoW:

Tier 1 sets were ilevel 66 (in a game where the level cap was lv60)
Tier 2 sets were ilevel 76
Tier 3 sets were ilevel 92
Non-tier pieces could range from item level 60-63 as far as dungeon drops went.

WoW jumped 32 item levels between the level cap and the top gear in the game at that point in time (even then, not many saw tier 3 gear because the expansion came out afterwards, and the gear from said expansion easily made tier 3 gear obsolete). By comparison FFXIV has jumped 40 item levels between launch and the first content patch. Second content patch is making that a 65 item level jump.

[BlueMage]

I think the point of the OP is that they're growing in scale too fast. I'm not quite sure whether it's because of XIV's stat weights vs WoW's, but comparing what we see here with what was seen in vanilla WoW:

Tier 1 sets were ilevel 66 (in a game where the level cap was lv60)
Tier 2 sets were ilevel 76
Tier 3 sets were ilevel 92
Non-tier pieces could range from item level 60-63 as far as dungeon drops went.

WoW jumped 32 item levels between the level cap and the top gear in the game at that point in time (even then, not many saw tier 3 gear because the expansion came out afterwards, and the gear from said expansion easily made tier 3 gear obsolete). By comparison FFXIV has jumped 40 item levels between launch and the first content patch. Second content patch is making that a 65 item level jump.

So should gear only drop from 40 person raids too? I don't see why people like yourself are getting hysterical over semantics.

[Duelle]

So should gear only drop from 40 person raids too?

No, but progression could have been controlled a little better, IMO.

I don't see why people like yourself are getting hysterical over semantics.

I'm not getting hysterical, just mentioning something for the sake of giving a frame of reference. Something I neglected to mention is that despite the big gaps in item level, the stat gaps aren't very notable. It does give a bad impression when the item level is jumping by what seems to be a large amount (without context the jump from 50 of something to 90 of something is large no matter how you slice it), specially so close to the game's launch.

[BlueMage]

No, but progression could have been controlled a little better, IMO.
I'm not getting hysterical, just mentioning something for the sake of giving a frame of reference. Something I neglected to mention is that despite the big gaps in item level, the stat gaps aren't very notable. It does give a bad impression when the item level is jumping by what seems to be a large amount (without context the jump from 50 of something to 90 of something is large no matter how you slice it), specially so close to the game's launch.

As Craiger said, since iLvs only increase in increments of 5 at the smallest post-cap, if from the start they had just made it say iLv60 => iLv62 instead of iLv60 => iLv70 with all the stats being the same it'd be fine? You're freaking out over semantics. If items didn't have an "item level" label on them and just the stats, you wouldn't notice or care. Are people really so starved for controversy and drama?

[Duelle]

So as Craiger said, if they just did something semantically like change what the iLv is called even though everything is the same its fine?

That's iffy. People would probably still think they're getting nerfed even if they aren't.