Gear in groups/levelingFollow

In FFXI even the smallest upgrades in gear I felt would significantly change the amount of damage output and the amount of damage I could take, even though I was picking up only 1 or 2 new pieces of gear. Going to the Valkrum Dunes with a few nice pieces of armor, and some tropic punches on my MNK made me seem like a complete badass at level 11, and I was also putting out a decent amount of damage. We even see in World of Warcraft where if you had Recount you would see that most DPS's would be near each other but they rated your ability to be capable to survive an instances or a raid on a number that is the average of the item level of your gear.

So I wonder which direction is gear going to take?

Should I go to the Market Board, and pick up a few pieces of gear, or maybe craft it, and keep on doing this every couple of levels so that I can compete in Damage output, healing and tanking? Or will I be doing it every level so that decent monsters aren't putting up a fight against me when I am soloing?

Will I be given decent gear per quest like in World of Warcraft, that will make it so that I don't really need to ever buy gear, and I will just need to do a few hard instances to get the gear for heroics, to the raid? <-------- I hope its not this.

Is there a completely new system?

Will I be running BCNM type dungeons and hoping for a sick drop that will just make me that much better than someone else who is at my exact same level, and I am just making baddies cry left and right?

Any insight would be good, just so I have a battle plan when this game launches!

Lower Levels use food and drinks to add extra kick. I had double armor because I bought mine before the quest.
The only way double armor comes in place, is if you can't repair your own armor and will not be near a repair NPC. You can just swap out.