Is this the road they will continue to take with items?

[Fendred]

Regardless, it doesn't matter what people think works or doesn't work. What matters is there is a subset of players who want there to be a stable content hierarchy that can be revisited. That cannot be accomplished with such heavy handed vertical progression. The amount of extra work they'd have to go into just to give incentives to players to do all the old stuff would start to become ridiculous after some particular amount of content is reached. So to satisfy these players they'd need to approach the progression differently. The gearing concern is just a symptom of a larger issue.