Offline Character Progresion

In a past interview Tasos said they had specific plans concerning AFK/Offline skill gains but people still discusses about it like in this Forum thread. There are some interesting bits in that I'd like to comment so here we go. First of all, we need to establish if there's a real need for a system like that. JCatano, among others, say that if the game needs offline skill gain, something is broken and that should be adressed first. Well, having a long term character progression is a good thing but, even with a skill cap, everybody wants to race through that progression to become as good as possible as fast as possible. That's human nature and that develops into AFK macroing or terrible grinding. Maybe instead of offline progresion, we need a XP limit like Final Fantasy. Another option is the "rested experience" system proposed by Fazar; this system works very good for players with less time to play and I think that this could be implemented even if other systems are implemented too.
There is another issue in all this that Lee Lonewolf has addressed: an offline progression system saves subs because people will not unsub if they aren't completely sure about leaving the game. All this people taking breaks would keep paying the sub price to Av so they can keep on improving their toon.
An offline progression system is not the panacea for every wrong in this game but I believe it would help those casual or non-macro player to catch up with everybody else. Of course, this system needs to be very well balanced and coded, else it will create more problems than it solves. As with everything else, we'll see!!