I just posted this in the Infinity: The Quest for Earth forum's but I feel it's appropriate considering the state of this game.

"Anyway, I wouldn't mind an MMO version of Fallout 3/New Vegas (not in terms of theme or setting), where I could spend hours and hours on end exploring and doing side-quests that had no overall impact on the "story-line" and scaled along with my character. I think too many MMOs are going along the lines of having an over-arching storyline and that's why people get into this feeling of treadmill progression.

Playing Fallout: New Vegas recently, I found all sorts of items and equipment. They were nice and some were better than others. But for the most part they were pretty balanced with respect to each other and had different roles to play at different times. One of my first guns was a 10mm pistol and I was still using it 50 hours into the game at many times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that progression isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as everything is useful for some purposes or another and there's enough reason to explore so you don't feel like you need to get caught up on the treadmill."