No, because the gear you'd be receiving is still the bulk of horizontal character development (and will always be in MMOs). There will be a point where there are too many sidegrades, or minor upgrades, that the content is simply not worth it. It happened with FFXI's COP dynamis, Sea for a lot of people, and some other NMs.

There will eventually have to be straight up gear upgrades and actual new content eventually, or the game will stagnate in a major way.