Item progression in EQ wasn't too bad until much later on.
They were able to keep things interesting until they made everything standardized and stale.
The inflation of HP was just a means to introduce challenging content, and encourage players to move on from prior content. Without it, many would not have seen a reason to go from Kunark to Velious, if not for the increase in stat from the loot and the increased difficulty of mobs requiring said loot to be killed.
From Classic-Velious it was all about maxing out your primary Stat and then stacking HP/AC or Mana + Resists. Mid-Late Velious, your typical player is maxing their primary stat unbuffed without a huge amount of effort. Secondary Stats + More HP/AC and Resists become the focus.
Luclin/PoP allow players to max their primary and secondary stats leaving mostly those stats useless to their class unmaxed. Just HP/AC and Mana+Resists are the focus of gear. However at this point they introduce worn affects. Flowing Thought, Vengeance, Regen (beyond just 2 items), and Spell Focus Effects become huge factors in the strength of individual pieces of gear. Getting to 15 FT, 35 Regen, 250 ATK were huge milestones in gearing. Casters getting their primary focus items (mana pres, spell haste, damage/healing, range) locked down were also huge milestones.
Eventually getting FT, Regen, ATK maxed with gear takes minimal effort, even with increases on the caps. Mod2s are introduced and capped at 35 or 100. A new focus on gearing comes in. Tanks need max Shielding/Avoidance/Combat Effects. Casters need max Spell Shielding/DoT Shielding/Avoidance. Getting all of the foci important to a caster still takes a bit of juggling work. Many classes are easier than others (wizards needed about 6 whereas Druids and shamans wanted about 12).
Naturally capping those becomes too easy, so they introduce Heroic Stats and Mod3s. Which is where they are right now. People focus on Heroic DEX/AGI/STA when tanking, casters just max WIS/INT/STA, etc. Also at some point in here the spreadsheet of items gives a flat 50 to all resists and capping resists naturally occurs with no effort. Around this time they also decided to standardize focus slots. Every head piece had a magic damage focus, all gloves have an ice damage focus, all boots have beneficial haste, all legs have detrimental haste, etc. This change made caring about which gear you picked almost irrelevant unless you were extremely dumb. This + the inflation of group loot in SoF are two things that killed the game for me. At that point it basically became just about raiding for me.
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