Elemental Weakness and ResistanceFollow

I really hope it's not just a vertical gear progression. I'm so sick of those games. "Oh sweet, I got this awesome armor set for doing endgame content! ...oh wait, it's now completely useless since they put out the next batch of endgame stuff. Yippee." I like gear that I can wear for a while and just upgrade the gear itself. I think it would be awesome if all the endgame gear would just be upgradeable, and the upgrades would also slightly alter the appearance of the gear (in a way that you could choose). For instance, you complete a questline with a party battle at the end, and it rewards you with a gear upgrade. You can choose one of a handful of "new looks" to add to your gear, or just take the stat boost and keep your gear looking the same. It just seems much more customizable and fun than trashing your old gear every time something new comes out.

I'm hoping that the initial tiering that is evident in the game (Primal->Crystal Tower->Labyrinth of Bahamut) is just the vanilla way to introduce people to raiding. Conceptually there are always 3 tiers of MMO endgame. Small party, entry raiding, veteran raiding. This is even in purely vertical MMOs like Rift, where each new endgame raiding tier just shifts the former ones into one big catching-up-to-content phase or are skipped entirely.

Theoretically they can end vertical progression at Bahamut. They are already planning on creating relic weapon upgrade quests to make them the top weapons of the game come...winter to spring of next year or so as a guess. Like you all, then I hope it is purely horizontal progression for a good few years to forever.

I wouldn't mind if each expansion had horizontal progression, but for the life of the game to have horizontal progression? I feel that would get stale after the first expansion or two, at least for my tastes. I love and adore FFXI and it worked for that game and that audience at that time, but I don't think Yoshi P's goal is to make FFXI-2. I like the idea of any gear you collect during an expansion to provide a form of progression. This to me would keep the gearing game fresh while still allowing your gear to matter for quite a while (FFXI and WoW expansions have each lasted approx 2+ yrs iirc). Skewing too far to one side of the spectrum or the other for this game wouldn't feel right. A good balance of the two would be more in line with what I think SE is trying to accomplish this time around. While I played WoW for quite a while and Rift for a short time, I dont like the straight vertical progression of each major patch essentially invalidating the last. Pure vertical progression makes anyone who isn't on the front end of progression feel like they're almost always playing catch up. Striking a good balance is as tough or as easy as SE is willing to make it. These are my thoughts at least.