I had to make this small-ish rant when I realized once more how backwards the game has become in certain areas and how great some systems were a whole decade ago. If that’s one thing that I’ve despised about the game since Legion that’s been gear and gearing in general. Could be that these issues started in WoD but I didn’t play it so I’ll reference Legion as the starting point.
Going back to the Wrath/Cataclysm and even MoP era, both the gearing process and the gear itself were the best we’ve ever had, and a masterpiece compared to the trash we’ve had for the last 4 years, and nothing has improved on that front in SL. Cataclysm (before LFR) perfected this process which was held together by Justice/Valor points until you hit HC raiding, and there was a clear line of progression after reaching cap.
You started doing normal dungeons, then heroics, constantly making certain progress towards guaranteed upgrades that were either HC dungeon or NM raid quality with JP/VP points respectively, and these items were upgraded each raid tier so that dungeons remained relevant.
There were also 5 dungeons added with major patches that served as catch-up, and raid bosses were also dropping VP so that you were always guaranteed some level of progress in whatever content you chose even with bad luck. Valor was capped to an easily obtainable limit to avoid spamming, and the difference between HC dungeons and the first tier of 10 men NM raiding was 5 ilvls total, unlike the 16 we have now between M0 and NM raiding.
The gear itself was also drastically better. Armor penetration in Wrath was a perfect example of a fun stat, bad with low gear, OP when you can get tons of it. It felt good stacking it once you hit ICC gear and watching your dps skyrocket. Even hit and expertise had value because it also felt good once you started hitting your breakpoints. It was both a dps increase and provided the feeling of being “done” with a stat, something that’s completely absent in modern Wow in general.
Almost all raid quality items had gem sockets and most slots had enchants for them, which kept professions relevant throughout the expansion on top of the crafted gear being slightly below HC dungeon level. The biggest loss from the idiotization of gear was probably Reforging, as it gave people agency along with gems and enchants. You could make a mediocre item into a solid one by changing its secondary stats and adding gems to hit your hit/haste breakpoints or just pump everything into your best stat. Even with an addon to automate the process, it was infinitely better than the Sim-city we have now, as once again, you could DO something about your gear.
They desperately wanted to streamline gearing to a point that you could equip an item the second you got the drop, and now we this entirely RNG gear with random gems, braindead stats like Versatility, and items that might as well be replaced with a + and - for every piece instead of having any stats.
I also feel the game had a much smoother transition between the types of content and difficulty. HC raiding as the higest difficulty was somewhere between the current HC and Mythic difficulty, but the segmentation we have now only serves to divide the player base into tiers which promotes gatekeeping and elitism. A heroic raid back then was a somewhat reachable goal for many people, and it had a 10-men variant for smaller guilds and groups.
Now, extremely high keys and mythic raiding are so insanely out of reach for 99% of the player base due to extreme difficulty and scheduling requirements that the community is far more divided and not incentivized to step out of their comfort zone. You have people who are content with only doing LFR without ever touching normal even though it’s barely any harder, and people who never touch anything below mythic, with an enormous divide between the two.
While now people have more options to play the content at the difficulty they prefer, I don’t see this segmentation as a good thing at all because it keeps the players in these little camps that always sh**t on each other and want drastically different things from the game.
