Nothing about Massively Multiplayer Online or Role-Playing Game has anything to do with being gear-based. That’s a fallacy driven by 17+ years of this game setting the standard by doing it that way.
Also, anima is a wonderful reward. I’m using it to earn stupid amounts of passive income where I literally don’t have to do anything but log in to collect it.
I want the gear because I still interact with the world in-game while doing dailies, emissaries, and weeklies. Having the gear changes that experience from struggling to kill things, to killing things easily, to melting down entire areas in minutes.
The same question could be asked of end-game content. Raid gear is designed on a bell curve (the same with boss abilities). There’s a point where you stop dealing with mechanics and just start over-powering them because of your gear. A raid environment is the same as a world environment; they’ve just tweaked the mobs to hit harder or have more health.