The problem is that a lot of developers see gratification as linear gear progression and that's not the case most of the time. Some of the most rewarding times when playing games like XI are when you figure out the best combination of gear from all different sources and try damn hard to get them.

Currently in this game you don't have to look around for gear, it's waved under your nose the whole time. There's also no substitutes because there is only one gear set at ilvl70 for example. I guess this will change with time but given that there are only 2 sets of ilvl90 at the moment and being "hard" to get isn't really an issue at all seeing as the only hard part about it is waiting 3 months to be able to get the full set, it's gonna be a very long time before we see anything of any variation.