Alright, now that we have confirmation on the WoW token system, this can go one of either two ways.

The first is that it reflects the older, "Vanilla/TBC" WoW experience, where the content was HARD and the rewards covetous over the span of half a year. It wasn't so linear as to go up the ladder however - sometimes you needed to mix and match for peak performance, ensuring you were always doing the content of the current "tier". There are a lot of sensationalist statements being made concerning the longevity of WoW's tiers of raiding, citing "a couple of weeks" as a legitimate frame of time. Smaller raids typically came out every 4 months, and the bigger ones would come out at 6-8 month intervals.

To put it in perspective, the combined amount of time we have spent doing AV/CC, Mog/Garuda, and everything inbetween (Skirmish, Hamlet Defense, etc) is no different than a single content patch's duration in the old WoW people revere. With legitimate gear progression and a real loot system in place, it balances itself out quite nicely. Also of note is that they're going to have an easy-to-build and persistent raid going on at all times in the Crystal Tower, so they can always pick up slack by adding a few extra floors during the doldrums.

The other way this might go: Utter and complete stagnation of the game like what happened during the more recent WoW expansions.

"Content Finder", "Badge System", all things that were added and effectively destroyed any sense of community. You don't need to go into a raiding linkshell when you could just farm the easier, low-man stuff over time for the same rewards...and don't even need to assemble your own group! If you or someone else acts like a prick during the encounters? WHO CARES?! You'll never see them again thanks to cross-server selection! Oh, and it will be cross-server selection if they want it to function.

Now, why would they do this, you ask? The expansion that created this dynamic netted them a cool 3 mil extra subscribers. With Yoshida and co. having done extensive MMO research, these numbers will not be lost on them. The most we can hope for is that they read a little deeper afterwards, and realized that having such a level of accessibility/anonymity caused the game to implode. WoW lost 3 mil subs in the last 3 years over this system eventually creating a soul-less game that everyone behaves their worst in.

I want to believe, but these guys working on the game are young and naive when it comes to the industry. There are going to be a lot of critical mistakes during these first couple of years as they feel out their new system, and I don't think they'll honestly have the breathing room.