I've been playing MMOs since the release of EverQuest and enjoy gear-based gaming. However, I've noticed that the last 12 games I have played were not even an MMO, and they were still "gear based."
A friend invited me to play Combat Arms a couple of years ago. The first couple of days were brutal and I got destroyed. The next time my friend saw me online he was amazed at how I "suddenly got good at the game." The truth is I didn't get any better at the game, but rather I had finally grinded enough experience to purchase a decent rifle and assault vest.
I began playing Tribes: Ascend in Beta so I never experienced being undergeared. I invited a friend to join me in it the other day and he said it was too hard as a new player. I thought he was being ridiculous, so I tried playing his character and realized that I had absolutely no chance at competing against veteran players with superior weaponry and armor regardless of my "veteran skill level."
I play League of Legends pretty competitively, but recently made a level 1 account to play with real-life friends who are new to the game. I quickly learned that I could no longer perform my primary role of Jungling because I was too low level and didn't have enough runes and masteries to do it.
Of course World of Warcraft is an MMO, but it's Arenas are considered to be some of the highest skill cap PVP in the world. I recently had to start over on a new server, and it took me several months of grinding before I could even begin to compete seriously in Arenas. The irony of this? I played the exact same character to 2K+ experience on my old server, so you would think that my skill set would be enough to allow me to do the same thing with a duplicate character regardless of armor but it's not.
I won't even mention Diablo 3 because it makes my heart hurt what they did to that game.
Anyways, this trend seems to be growing and spreading to RTS (Age of Empires), FPS, and every other type of "competitive" online gaming and I'm starting to wonder if 5 years now if it will be impossible to find a video game that is 100% skill-based. I suppose it's not necessarily a bad thing, and should encourage "less skilled" players to participate (kind of like the handicap in bowling), but at the same time I miss just logging onto a game and being good at it. Not having to spend several months of grinding just to be competitive.