Eh? Epic not really epic? They look purple to me… Oh I see! You meant in the “They’re so common, they’re not epic anymore” category. Ah right… But how and why? Let’s look at that.

Once upon a time instance bosses dropped greens, not blues. Rares were pretty damn rare and epics were unheard of. Someone who had an epic was the centre of attention with everyone inspecting him and patting him on the back and ooing and aahing over how much of an awesome player he must be to have gotten an epic.

What changed? Most would argue it’s that the game has gotten easier and epics are being handed out like candy. But is that what really happened? Or is there more to it?

Drops changed

Sometime during the Burning Crusade, Blizzard changed the quality of items. Greens were now quest rewards. All instances, from Ragefire Chasm up, dropped blues and all raid bosses dropped epics. At this moment the balance of power shifted. Doing instances actually got you some reasonable gear, not ‘of the bear’ or ‘of the whale’ but stuff with stats that were useful to you. Spellpower on pre-raid TBC items was virtually non-existant until this change. Ironweave Battlesuit, a blue cloth set from Blackrock Spire… has stamina, int and more armour than usual. Wow… so useful. Get the 8 set and you get 200 more armour! Fantastic.

Vanilla items sucked. They were poorly itemized for most classes, even rogue epics gave strength as a stat. Blizzard changed all items to be better itemized for the role they were made for. Spellpower and attack power became more common. Strength on rogue gear? Gone. Spirit on hunter gear? History. Better itemized items makes for better geared more powerful players who are better equipped for the raids to come.

Raids changed

If you wanted the good stuff in vanilla, you needed to get together 40 people to raid. Forty! Not 10 or 25, 40! Can you imagine rolling against 20-30 other people for a piece of gear? That’s not epic, that’s just bloody stupid. You kill a boss, he drops a couple of epics, 3 out of 40 people get something. In Burning Crusade, 40 man raids got scrapped. Karazhan was now a 10 man raid, with the higher raids being 25. What did this mean? It meant that 40 people were getting 4 times the epics of before. Assuming 2 epics per boss, that’s 2 epics per 10 man group as opposed to 3 per 40 man. 8 epics per 40 people as opposed to 3.

By reducing the amount of people needed for a raid, Blizzard opened up raiding to smaller guilds and groups. Even a pug could take on at least lower Kara. This was amplified even more in Wrath with all raids having a 10 man version. Opening up raids to everyone made epics more common.

Information changed

Who honestly knew of addons, spell rotations, cookie cutter specs and the like in vanilla? I didn’t. I was Destruction specced till mid-20s when an older, wiser lock sat me down, told me to wise the hell up and spec Affliction.

Today, as a very minimum, you expect a raider to have learnt the tactics for the fight, have specced reasonably close to a cookie cutter spec for their role, use Boss Mods and threat meters and have gear appropriate for the instance. In vanilla? Know nothing, get carried, die to first pull at Molten Core. The information about raids is so easily accessible now it’s a standard. It wasn’t always expected before it became commonplace.

With information being so easy to get, players are better prepared for raids and bosses, they know what to expect and how to handle it. Leading to more bosses getting killed and more epics dropping.

Player perceptions changed

Nobody cares anymore. Nobody cares about your shiny epic, they care about their shiny epic. Screw your gear, what about my gear? The only people who do inspecting these days are new players jaw dropping over your high health and guild recruitment officers checking the armoury of applicants. Not even pug raids use inspections since Gearscore does it for them.

What will a player drool over? The top player’s gear? No. His mount and title.

In early Wrath “Twilight Vanquisher” was a big deal. In Ulduar “Starcaller” or “Herald of the Titans” was a big deal, especially with your Rusted or Iron protodrake. For PvPers it’s “Gladiator” and the Frostwyrm mount. Nobody cares about your gear, but they may just care for your title and mount.

The gear baseline changed

Would you accept someone into your raid who was geared in greens with a couple of blues? You wouldn’t would you? The baseline of gear changed. For even the earliest Wrath raids you get all blues with a few epics as a minimum. This wasn’t possible in vanilla. You couldn’t get epics without serious grinding of battlegrounds or lucky rolls in raids. Today the average gear level required increased whilst difficulty of getting that gear decreased. It balances out, with how much easier the items are to get people’s expectations of what you should have increased.

Conclusion

Do you really want to go back to that system? Really? Everyone in greens, only a lucky few who manage to get 39 others being able to raid? What a total waste of resources, making all those items and raids that virtually noone will be able to see. Making a game so hard to get into that only those with no real life commitments can really succeed at it. Grinding all day and raiding all night for an item with purple text that you might not even win.

If you really want to get some gear that’ll impress people, go down the Lich King in Heroic mode and walk around with one of the weapons he drops. But I doubt many would care even then, the focus has shifted from gear to vanity items. People today are far more impressed with an awesome title and a killer dragon mount than any number of purple items. This is a good thing for the game. Everybody gets their share of epics and fun and sees all the raids, but only those pro players will be riding Invincible with “Kingslayer” in front of their name. You’ll still know who they are, just not by their gear.

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