“In most games, you get the best you can and a year later, all your hard work is invalidated and you have to do it all over again. That’s why it’s called gear treadmill, but in reality you’re not more powerful, your armor is. All you really are is a coatrack for greatness. I don’t know why so many people see this as progression. The numbers get higher but you’re not actually going anywhere.”
– Reddit user nagennif
Emphasis mine. Maybe it’s just me, but I find this turn of phrase tremendously funny.
Why I Game 
This is why I like a level increase for every expansion. Yes, gear is the indicator of your character’s capacity in current content, but in a true level-based progression system a max level character can strip to his boxer shorts and punch his way through a low or mid-level dungeon with his bare hands.
It’s still arguably a nominal “progression” but it feels so much more intrinsic to the character, as though he or she really has grown much more capable and sturdy over the long years of adventure.
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I really preferred UO’s skill-based progression the most; that sense of character-based progression and ways to diversify and choose your path is still the best way to go imho. Overall leveling is too cosmetic still in my book.
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That’s a rather apt way of putting it. There’s nothing wrong with item level-based progression which I think is what the “coatrack” is referring to – it’s a time-honored tradition, after all, even if the coatrack is occasionally traded in for newer models when expansions come ’round. I like having more options nowadays, myself, rather than being periodically obsoleted by new content releases. If the next expansion in GW2 were to introduce GW1’s “vanquishing” modes for core maps along with other things that challenge you without inflating your character level I think that would be swell.
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