Quote Originally Posted by Hix View Post
Horizontal progression is not progression. It's being stuck in the same place forever. Vertical progression works because that carrot at the end of the stick is so damn tasty. In horizontal progression, the optimal builds become evident real fast. Any carrot that doesn't improve on the optimal build will not be chased. Eventually you will have the fully optimal build and know that barring changes in game balance you will never be able to improve. And then you get bored and quit.
People keep using this argument but then why are the more horizontal (non-pvp based mmos) the longest living mmos out there still.

If people will get bored and quit. Why Did EQ and FFXI have a turn over about 1/10th the size of current mmos? Why dd the same people day and in day out play for 10s of thousands of hours?

Horizontal progression does not mean lack of new content. It just means old content is not thrown away when new stuff is added. And if you have to stop thinking of gear an linear for it work in Horizontal. There is no 1 BIS piece in horizontal. There are many. Each with different effects

I really think the main opponents of horizontal growth are either those who never played a game with it, or played a really bad game with it. I do not understand why someone would want content to be removed if there is still equal amount of new content being added to the game.