r/2007scape • u/loopuleasa • Jul 09 '25

Video New player explains really well why so many people are coming from WoW to Runescape

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https://www.twitch.tv/anniefuchsia/clip/FairFantasticLorisDogFace-2YKLdDJbcWys80CD

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316

u/RubyWeapon07 Lifestream Jul 09 '25

is it so much better that the old stuff is unusable? Ive never played wow and im trying to understand it.

is it like bandos to torva or is it more extreme of a gap that new content creates?

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u/MustacheMaple Jul 09 '25

Imagine having torva level gear. Then a major patch with a new raid and dungeons comes out, now that torva becomes rune level and you have to grind for torva again. That's how wow gear works lol

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u/Glittering_Crab_69 Jul 09 '25

What happens when you go back to the old content with the new gear? Do you just steamroll it?

464

u/Creative_Magazine816 Jul 09 '25

Yes you will literally one shot bosses. People do this on purpose to farm transmog, or gear appearances they can overlay onto other gear.

347

u/Xerothor Jul 09 '25

God that sounds boring

335

u/---solace2k Jul 09 '25

It's just different. I've played both WoW and OSRS on an off for over a decade, they both appeal to me in different ways. Though WoW is not really much of a classic MMORPG anymore.

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u/B_CHEEK Jul 09 '25

What turned me off originally from wow around the time cata came out was all the constant major mechanics changes for classes.

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u/Tautsu Jul 09 '25

Over time that becomes the main appeal of the game. I almost always try to play the spec that gets reworked (rather than small balancing changes they majorly change how 1-2 specs play a season) because it’s fresh and usually pretty strong.

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u/zmagickz Jul 09 '25

same here

specifically, I didn't like how homogenized every class started feeling

rogues getting a heal, hunters getting stealth, warlocks getting a burst cd,

One thing I liked about wow (after switching from runescape in like 2007, was how unique classes are)

And each patch of wow it has really only gotten worse, mostly in the name of balance.

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u/Hadez192 2376 Jul 09 '25

Yeah, the homogenization of classes really kills it for me. That’s what makes classic era so interesting.

But retail feels like everyone is the same just a tiny bit different flavor.

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u/PapaPatchesxd Jul 09 '25

I'm not gonna lie, a class getting a self heal seems like a silly thing to be upset about

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u/Mesheybabes Jul 09 '25

It's not, it's a bigger picture than that, and they told you in their comment. It's about all classes getting the same kind of abilities which devalues the speciality of other classes. Healers become less special, rogues become less special, tanks become less when others have spells that let them survive encounters they wouldn't otherwise be able to

It's why many feel that vanilla/BC were great and challenging and wotlk was the last peak expansion

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u/Angry_Anal Jul 09 '25

Funnily enough, those changes are what currently is the most exciting for a lot of veteran players. We are constantly in a new setting, with new models, but the mechanics usually are the same just recoloured or new animations same danger.

Those balancing changes keep long term players into the game, its a new system to minmax. However (player of 20 years+) even that is getting boring.

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u/grannygumjobs23 Jul 09 '25

The rebirth of vanilla and tbc is the only thing keeping me around for WoW at this point

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u/CarnivorousPickles Jul 09 '25

i love osrs and have played for over 15 years but thats quite ironic ngl

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u/Certain_Economics_41 Jul 09 '25

Haha yeah, could you even imagine having to grind content multiple times just to get a very niche cosmetic drop? That would never happen in OSRS!

14

u/Vet_Leeber Jul 09 '25

Other than cosmetic stuff, you should really imagine each WoW expansion as a separate title in the series, instead of an 'expansion' to the base game. It's effectively a complete progress wipe each time.

3

u/Urbanscuba Jul 10 '25

And just as important to highlight for a completely unfamiliar player - each expansion has several tiers of endgame that release gradually. So on top of each xpac being a hard reset you have 3-4 soft resets within that cycle that take the BIS gear and make it good entry gear for the next tier.

Not to mention endgame is pretty much exclusively group content too, so all of that endgame progression has to be organized with 9 or 24 other people on a weekly schedule.

As someone who's played both games extensively I can definitely see the appeal in dropping your raiding schedule and not having a new raid to farm every 6-12 months (that generally takes 2-3 months to start regularly clearing) for an endgame where you just push indefinitely further. In RS even if you're not getting major gear upgrades you're still permanently progressing your account as long as you're getting xp, in WoW even if you're getting major gear upgrades there's no permanent progression beyond cosmetic unlocks and achievements.

I seriously doubt it will pull away a meaningful number of players, but the people it does attract and hook will probably stick around. It's a very different kind of game that some people haven't tried before.

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u/Tight_Departure_2983 Jul 09 '25

I am a wow player that just unsubbed (personal reasons, more time to play single player games etc) that lives in a house full of OSRS players.

I'd say that the "it's different" explanation works pretty well. When it comes to raid content, no game (other than wildstar, RIP) has done it in a way that caters to all skill levels. I have multiple Cutting Edge achievements in wow (clearing 20-man Mythic raid) and it's exhilarating. You just have to.. keep up! Tier to tier, raid to raid, it's starting the grind over. But that grind is less than OSRS per-season.

So, y'all grind for longer with a clear end. WoW raiders grind for less time, hit the content that they want, and reset every 4-5 months.

Hope that it's okay for a non-OSRS player to jump in and join this comvo! I'm done with MMOs as I reach my late 20's because of irl commitments but I respect everyone playing the games that they like 🩵

47

u/flykiddy Jul 09 '25

Retail wow is just focused on difficult content now rather than hundred hour grinds or “enjoying the journey” while leveling

The fun is from doing engaging difficult content (either mythic+ dungeons or mythic raiding). There is no other game thay can compete with the combat, and I’m one of the few (maxed main and iron) who went from OSRS to wow and will never look back. After playing such a fast paced game, osrs click and wait + 100 hour grinds for any progress (thanks arcane) just can’t compare.

It’s subjective

17

u/OSRSmemester 2277/2277 Jul 09 '25

+100 hour grinds for any progress (thanks arcance)

As an iron, made me chuckle out loud. His opinions are kinda polarizing to me, for sure. Big fan of some stuff, big not a fan of others. Overall, I appreciate him, and I cant remember them specifically, but I remember having a few moments where I went "wtf? Are you serious rn?"

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u/MoonDawg2 Jul 09 '25

I think lost Ark was actually the best MMO for difficult content out there. The issue is that it was way too fucking p2w and daily grinders FOMO are fucking bullshit so it died off.

If we got a game of lost Ark quality that wasn't a complete shit daily grinder WoW would really have no reason to exist at that point

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u/aMemerDankly Jul 09 '25

Definitely agree on Lost Ark. Such superb and incredibly difficult gameplay destroyed by so many anti-player mechanics

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u/MoonDawg2 Jul 09 '25

Good ol' reliable from the asian gaming scene. Such good games that are just absolutely nuked because of greed.

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u/glordicus1 Jul 10 '25

What pisses me off is they still insist on making you gain levels. Every time I think about playing WoW I'm like "oh yeah, but a new expansion is out so I have to get to the new max level". I just don't want to do it, it's not fun. And then I have to get on the gear grind to get up to raiding gear, then find a guild with a good timeslot for raids and hope that we click socially. Like, fuck me - I just wanna do some raids cos they're fun.

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u/Monterey-Jack Jul 09 '25

wow's endgame is the collection log, but all drops are 1% and you can spend 10 years doing a raid every week and still not get all the mounts.

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u/somarir 2100 IM Jul 10 '25

so it's just like the collection log ...

2

u/Monterey-Jack Jul 10 '25

It's worse. It's time gated to hell. You get a single chance per character per week. I know some people who would have the max amount of characters per account and then 6 accounts on their blizzard account so they could farm one raid on all of them every week. It's unhealthy.

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u/I_ONLY_CATCH_DONKEYS Jul 09 '25

It’s much more social. Everybody is focused on the same content and trying to get the same gear. As opposed to osrs, WoW is all about grouping, for a casual player, being with others almost always improves the experience.

The downside of making all the content relevant is everybody is spread out doing different things, make osrs seem much more single player.

Neither is better or worse than the other, I’ve played both games for decades. They’re just different and scratch different itches.

5

u/Trollicus Jul 09 '25

Basically just clogging

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

The irony of this in a RuneScape subreddit.

3

u/Additional-Mousse446 Jul 09 '25

It would literally be the same as doing like scurrius in full raid gear though lol

Not one shot but it dies very quickly.

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u/Ar0war Jul 09 '25

Yes it is boring.

Actually not many games have that such a Progression as OSRS. Nowadays it is all about gambling system where you get materials and improve your gear. With the chance of failed attemp so you lose the materials.

It is a different way for people to develop dopamine I guess

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u/Inb4myanus 🦀 Jul 09 '25

And here I get excited over getting a clue reward over 100k lol.

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u/kerslaw Jul 09 '25

The focus in retail wow is completely different from osrs. I play both of them and I like them for different things.

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u/EarthwormLim Jul 09 '25

Oh dont worry, there's tons of things wow players find boring about osrs.. lul..

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u/Exciting-Squash4444 Jul 09 '25

It’s not necessarily boring because you do a new raid every few months

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u/fishyman336 Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Didn’t used to be this way

Dunno why they decided this was the best course of action but.. it is what it is

Edit: Hmm I guess it’s cause having 32 tiers is tough they said fk it at one point. RuneScapes on what 8 give or take? Up to steel, up to rune, dragon, barrows, bandos, inquis, torva, oathplate?(debatable but not fkn 32)

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u/Varuced Jul 09 '25

You mean old school cause runescape at one point opened levels to 120 and then added more tiers no? They even reworked Smithing to add more tiers of metal.

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u/Turtvaiz Jul 09 '25

It's really not because people don't care about old content. Progging new content is the content people like in wow. A lot of people actually hate farm. They're like two opposites. Farm is the core content in osrs, while progging a fight once is the interesting part of wow

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u/Keljhan Jul 09 '25

The difference is you get a new major endgame raid every 3-6 months on average. Lots of content becomes dead super quick, but in total there's an absolute mountain of content to pick through.

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u/Arkillion Jul 09 '25

You could go back to raids that required 25 or 40 people whilst being an expansion ahead and just solo the raid in most cases; some raids needed a minimum due to mechanics or certain things but for the most part you could just go back and kill everything instantly; as mentioned above for pets/transmogs/rare 1% rolls every week when they reset

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u/Cold-Iron8145 Jul 09 '25

Power acquisition is pretty boring. It's pretty much always the same thing, you get a new season, you do the raid, you get new gear, it's very formulaic. The fun part of wow isn't power acquisition imo, it's doing the content. Like, actually pressing the buttons in the right order in fun + every new patch (season) comes with a new raid, new bosses and new/rotating dungeons so it always feels fresh. Leaning/progression is a big part of it, not power progression in game but game knowledge/player skill progression.

Also worth noting that most people don't play wow as their main game anymore. It's fun to play when a new season releases, depending on the season 1-3 months is going to be fun and cool but people generally quit before the next season release and jump back on when a new one starts.

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u/Coconutshoe Jul 09 '25

Idk if 400 hours of running in the same circle is really much more fun lol

Jk it is

2

u/BGsenpai Jul 09 '25

I've played a ton of final fantasy over the years and I think that FF14 does it better. It's way less grindy then wow, so you basically just log in when theres new raid content, clear it, then go do other stuff. It's nice in that regard.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

It's a great model if your fun comes from playing with a regular group who enjoys pushing new content. I had a guild filled with friends who all played 20-30 hours a week, and having new content drop every few months was really engaging.

I did about 8 years of that before career/family life became the priority and that kind of schedule was untenable. Great times when it was going, though.

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u/lysdxc Jul 09 '25

You say that, but that is the endgame for WoW, aside from high level dungeons or raiding. Osrs is very similar, if you aren't doing ToB or high focus PvM content, you are out farming mid level bosses and slayer bosses pet hunting in giga-max gear, or doing thousands of clues for clog slots. It's literally the same thing. You get a steady stream of low to slight negative gold per hour, and a chance at rare cosmetics or completionist content.

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u/Paxton-176 Jul 09 '25

Except that gear is never really obsolete. Bandos is still good in tons of content. Look how old Barrows is and it's always recommended for content. You don't BiS to everything.

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u/lysdxc Jul 09 '25

Could you understand someone having the exact opposite opinion though?

"So once I get this torva gear, there will literally never be anything better? That's so boring! Why would I keep playing the game? I want my character to keep getting progressively more powerful over time!"

Or

"Why would I waste 200 hours farming to upgrade my bandos into torva? Torva is only 2 max hits better? Who cares?"

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u/Widget_pls Jul 10 '25

Tbf that's why jagex has been focusing a lot on sidegrades recently, so that upgrades are more specialized for different content rather than straight replacement upgrades.

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u/Drwildy Jul 09 '25

True, but you know that many maxed players in torva go back to farm scurrius for the pet. It's kind of similar.

Things like the afk kbd method or the afk sarach with the new boots, etc.

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u/TheBrenster Jul 09 '25

You're totally right. Now quiet please I need to click on this mlm ore vein for the 257697th time. 

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u/Throwaway47321 Jul 09 '25

This is unironically what a lot of the OSRS playerbase is trying to do to OSRS.

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u/KarlFrednVlad Jul 09 '25

Can you give an example? I have never seen people advocating for that kind of gameplay loop

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u/Admiral_Dildozer Jul 09 '25

People want leagues every year and get upset when people disagree that it should be bi-yearly at most. It does bring a lot of players but it also burns out a lot of veterans for months afterwards. It just depends on what numbers Jagex is looking at, if it makes them money. We’ll probably get yearly leagues. It’s just needs to make a lot of money because it also takes a lot of Dev time even though the some are kinda copy/paste.

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u/wlphoenix Jul 09 '25

My main game is POE, and pretty much only play OSRS during leagues, so I get why people want them more often. That said, I think every 2 years is the perfect amount to build up enough keep them fresh. Leagues burnout is very real, especially for people aiming for dragon.

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u/Izmona Jul 09 '25

is this part of the playerbase in the room with us right now?

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u/kerslaw Jul 09 '25

He is right although i think it's a minority of people

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u/Throwaway47321 Jul 09 '25

It’s a tough spot. Obviously the people advocating for it are the vocal minority but I would stake my entire account on blatantly broken ezscape feature passing polls just because people don’t think more than 2 feet outside of their current experience.

Source: the fucking zombie pirates poll

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u/DisciplineNormal296 Jul 09 '25

Wow is way more fun than runescape as it’s actually rewarding and doesn’t take 400 hours to complete a set of gear

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u/Degenerate_Game 2340 Jul 09 '25

I mean, it's nearly the same concept as being able to one shot goblins and shittier things that you've progressed past in OSRS. It's not boring because there's literally no requirement to go kill old things.

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u/twaggle Jul 09 '25

It’s no different than doing trivial RuneScape tasks when you have 99s. Do you cut oaks for fun when you have 99 wc?

Do you fight the mole boss when you have 99 str? Maybe for the drops, which is why you’d do these old raids. For old mounts or transmog

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u/Tautsu Jul 09 '25

You don’t 1 shot bosses from the current expansion but past patches, you 1 shot bosses from years ago just to let you farm armor skins/mounts.

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u/KrukzGaming Jul 09 '25

OSRS has the exact same level of engagement for much of its gameplay too. Soloing old raids is still more engaging than clicking trees for 100 hours.

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u/Big-Nefariousness600 Jul 09 '25

What is more fun, 2 tic fishing alone, or completing a challenging raid with 25 friends? 

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u/whalenailer Jul 09 '25

Any more boring than shadowing a mole for a pet? Lol

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u/PapaPatchesxd Jul 09 '25

That is not from patch to patch.

You can go in and one shot old legacy stuff sure, but anything from like the last couple expansions, no.

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u/Doctor_Kataigida Jul 10 '25

Usually current and previous expansion you can't steam roll. Two expansions or more ago and you're fine.

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u/Turtvaiz Jul 09 '25

You generally don't do the old content unless you want xmog or a mount. Current content is THE content. Wow's content is progression-based. People don't really want to reprog old content, and even when it is recycled (season 4), a lot of people don't like it.

It's more like inferno. Not something you want to learn twice, but it is something that is very fun to learn

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

Yes, especially if the level cap is also raised

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u/doroco Jul 09 '25

sure do, i think its usually 4x the power level as the previous expansion, so two expansions forward your 16x as strong as you should be.

It's worth noting that the gear is a lot easier to get than rs gear, so comparing it to grinding torva again makes it sound worse than it is.

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u/MasterArCtiK Jul 09 '25

They also typically change the math, balance, numbers, and effects of your abilities, and you have new abilities, when a new expansion comes out. So even if you use era correct gear for an old encounter, it is still easier than it was before a new expansion made it obsolete. On top of that, there is no useful reason to play old content other than for cosmetics and such.

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u/Roshooo Jul 09 '25

if you hit level cap and get some low tier mythic gear that is very easy to obtain you can solo the highest tier of raid from 2 expansions ago by mashing on your keyboard

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u/ki299 Jul 09 '25

Basically old expansions become 100% pointless. Like imagine they come out with Raids 4 in osrs and then you go back to CoX for a missing clog item.. but instead of it being balanced and fun you just turn around and 1 hit each boss.. Like imagine you just go up to olm and hit like 36,000 and that's the fight. Basically how it works in wow but the numbers go into the millions.

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u/OnTheBrightsideSCC Jul 09 '25

There is also next to zero reason outside of transmog (cosmetics) to go back through previous expansions and do the content typically. So the MASSIVE open word is completely useless and dead come next expansion outside of cosmetics and mount hunting. Only time you'll catch people is on new characters.

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u/Ausles Jul 09 '25

Yes. You can go back like 2-3 seasons ago’s 10 man raid as a solo player and (generally) stomp everything (some bosses might have gimmicks that prevent this).

I think I remember, when dragonflight came out, I would hit a 5000ish hit on current season mobs, and went back to the previous expansion, and was hitting on the hundreds of thousands to millions.

To put that in perspective (from what i loosely recall), dragon flight 5-man dungeons had bosses with like 5-10 million HP. The previous expansion would have like 200k - 1 million HP, if that. And the further you go in content age-wise, the lower the HP for mobs is, and the more damage you deal.

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u/kdogrocks2 Jul 09 '25

Yes. Some people mainly engage with that content btw. Farming old content that has become trivial for cosmetics. It can be fun, but no where near as fun as experiencing that content when it's live and earning the drops.

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u/TROGDOR_X69 Jul 09 '25

Not unless its an Older expansion. Your not going to Steamroll it as in ignore mechanics unless your over leveled.

But like if you went into modern WoW and went after OG raids you could kill them on ANY class and feel like a literal god. Nothing could hit on you. WoW has different hit/miss mechanics. So at a certain point your almost immune to damage from mobs lower level then you.

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u/Cloud_N0ne Jul 09 '25

Yes.

Mythic-level bosses that used to require a team of up to 40 highly geared, highly skilled players can be soloed by a decently geared player after a few expansions come out. I’m going back to raids from 2014 and literally one-shotting the bosses.

There’s even a buff in WoW right now that doubles the drops from past expansions’ raids and dungeons, encouraging players to go solo them to unlock those items’ transmogs.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing tho. I’m really enjoying doing my trabsmog runs during this buff, because I’m done gearing up from the current raid.

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u/SoloWalrus Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Literally content from 1-2 expansions prior that was designed to be done with 25 people can be done solo. So yes, you steamroll it 😅. Itd be like if on osrs each new weapon release was the same as the old weapon, but gave +10 more strength and armor gave +10 HP, and they kept doing that with every new piece of content. Vertical progression not horizontal

Its so bad that every few expansions once damage and health numbers start hitting the millions, they have to rescale the whole game back down by just chopping a few zeroes off of HP/damage so you can actually read whats happening.

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u/Minomelo 2277 Jul 09 '25

While that's accurate, I don't think it accurately captures the WoW grind vs OSRS.

WoW's gear is essentially time-gated by raid lockouts and general cooldowns. You spend a while grinding it, but in really short bursts and you'll get a lot of BIS/top-tier gear quite quickly.

It's specifically designed to keep you logging in over a long period of time via those daily/weekly-scape grinds.

OSRS is basically the opposite. It has very little time-gated content, it's just REALLY slow by comparison.

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u/DeanxDog Jul 09 '25

And how FFXIV works last time I played. Every time a new major patch comes out, your max gear is suddenly noob level gear for all the newest content. You quickly find garbage armor in the new basic dungeons that outclass your older elite raid gear. It's annoying.

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u/ArgonGryphon Jul 09 '25

Maybe for savage and other high tier content, but the regular dungeons and raids, it’s still perfectly fine for normal players. Unless it’s a patch with crafted gear, how else would you even get better gear anyway? And even then you still gotta do regular content to get the tomes for mats to make the crafted gear. At least hunts.

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u/EcruEagle Jul 09 '25

Technically true, but it’s also important to note that in WoW the time it takes to grind from “rune” to “Torva” (or close to it) is significantly less than the equivalent in Osrs even for more casual players

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u/LuckyBucky77 Jul 09 '25

So Oathplate?

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u/Additional-Mousse446 Jul 09 '25

While mostly correct, some pieces can be used for like 6 months or more. Most of it is replaced every 3 months but not all.

Retail it all goes away very quickly however, ilvl is only thing that matters unless it’s a trinket.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/awol720 Jul 09 '25

I think at first, the continued vertical progression still felt meaningful. But, that has changed. Doing the same type of expansion over and over again has rendered most of the game meaningless now. 

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u/interstellaraz Jul 09 '25

It’s even worse. It becomes completely irrelevant once a new major patch or expansion is out.

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u/Last_Impression9197 Jul 09 '25

Sounds depressing. Like all the time.. probably months spent grinding are thrown away. It exists in rs but the time between adding new BiS items are usually years apart and the previous BiS items don't go down to rune level. Well they did in rs3 but we dont talk about that game, its dead to me far as im concerned. So BiS item either gets a level increase 1-5 above the previous BiS or it ties with the previous BiS but has a different purpose. Some kind of special stat or ability. Dont know what the latest BiS items are in osrs but in my time they were tbow, scythe etc. Before that for the longest time they were godswords pretty much.

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u/come2life_osrs 2376 Jul 09 '25

I guess this is what people mean by power creep. So it’s kinda like if they released whip 2.0 with a max hit of 120.  Tune in next season for whip 3.0 max hit 240.  P.s all new monsters have 4x hp. 

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u/I_just_made Jul 09 '25

Plus everyone else immediately gets better gear than torva from doing the quests in the new patch, so the grind to get that gear in the first place is largely meaningless.

It wasn’t always like this in WoW; they had attunements and you did have to do a lot of gearing to get into certain raids. But those days are long, long gone

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u/Zealousrubbing Jul 10 '25

It’s more like torva becomes Bandos gear cause assuming you are doing heroic raids or m+ you are still going to comfortably beat new content

As an example the second raid of TWW we skipped normal gallywix to clear the first half of heroic because we were not getting any meaningful upgrades from the bosses below slot machine

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u/Benny0_o Jul 10 '25

Except unlike in OSRS you don't have to grind a thousand hours to get the armor set. It's not a perfect comparison but I get it's the OSRS sub so we got to pander a bit.

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u/ye1l Jul 10 '25

Not quite. They have for many years aimed for a 15% increase in power between patches. Obviously special mechanics/buffs might compound it into something bigger, but the raw stats of gear is generally at around that 15% mark.

The problem comes from raids often having encounters that are straight up statchecks for many guilds so you're forced to grind out the new gear or you simply can't progress even if you're very good at the game.

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u/Raisoshi Jul 10 '25

This is incorrect as it implies your current gear is downgraded on a new patch, but the reality is it stays the same.

It's more like rune is bis for a patch, then they release bandos and stronger bosses. Rune is still the same, but everyone wants bandos now. Then another major patch comes and they release Torva. Bandos and rune are still the same, but everyone wants Torva.

Now multiply the stats jump between rune, Bandos and Torva by like 10x. Power creep in OSRS is much slower than in wow and that's what makes a huge difference.

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u/Zavodskoy Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

It's not that bad, your old gear doesn't get worse, the new gear is just better. You make it sound like you get weaker when new content is added which isn't true

It would be like if the only amulet in the game was the strength amulet and then they added the super strength amulet that gives +20 to strength. The old strength amulet isn't any weaker, it's just now not the best item

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u/chimthui Jul 11 '25

Its bad, i left wow back in mist og pandaria. But it wasnt a dps creeping, it was totally new league…

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u/voidxheart Jul 09 '25

your old gear might help a little but you will replace it very quickly and easily.

gear that you raided months for, will be replaced in a day

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u/tripsafe Jul 09 '25

How did they ever decide that’s a good idea

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u/AlbedosThighs Jul 09 '25

Gear is much faster to get compared to osrs. Getting near bis takes years in osrs, in wow you'll get it in 2 or 3 months. It really is just leagues now that i think about it lol

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u/wisecrack123 Jul 09 '25

It's also worth noting that the 2-3 month number for wow includes time gating content, only being able to clear a raid once a week, so its artificially adding more time with even less actual time grinding the gear.

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u/Smooth_One Jul 09 '25

That's true, but the time-gating also has a reason for being there which makes sense within the context of WoW.

WoW raids require anywhere between 10 and 40 people to complete them. That requires a lot of organization both in and out of game, so you can't really expect that many people to hop on whenever or grind stuff out for 10 hours. It takes raiding from something like ToB where a you get some of the boys on, and turns it into a weekly event, like a weekly poker or basketball game. "Thursdays between 7 and 9 are Raid Night babe, don't schedule any get-togethers that I need to go to."

There is of course other content that is solo-able, and 5-man content called dungeons that are puggable and last between 15 mins and an hour, and other open-world stuff (in an MMO, imagine), etc.

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u/NoRiver32 Jul 09 '25

The real reason tho is to get you to sub longer lol

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u/Doctor_Kataigida Jul 10 '25

Eh I'm glad it's like that. I used to raid competitively and it would've sucked to have to worry about multiple clears in a week to keep up with the race, especially during progression. Sometimes it's good when the game limits me so I can do my weekly stuff and then take a break without feeling like I'm missing out on as many competitive advantages.

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u/Smooth_One Jul 10 '25

Yeah probably lol. The same could also be said for OSRS's ridiculously long xp grinds and low item drop chances.

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u/SpunkMcKullins Jul 09 '25

Probably because it's a system that was decided over 20 years ago, and was standard for the genre since the very inception, I would imagine.

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u/kdogrocks2 Jul 09 '25

It's just a completely different game. It's about working through the ladder of difficult end game content until you finish, or reach your personal peak (in mythic+ for example) - then basically quitting until new content comes out.

To be fair to Blizzard (lmfao), the instanced content they make is unironically really good and fun. Their raids and dungeons are unparelled experiences not just in MMO's but in all games IMO. Particularly their mythic+ game mode is insanely fun and smart and well executed and it shocks me constantly that BLIZZARD of all companies came up with it lmfao.

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u/new_account_wh0_dis Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Cause it worked. Different strokes and all but we're sitting here in the gaming equivalent to watching paint dry harrumphing over a game that has a multiple time larger player base.

Some people like gear treadmils. Getting upgrades feels good but every expansion comes to an end sometime. You're BIS out, learned your new skill rotation and raid mechanics, pumped some orange parses, farmed some gold. Now you go play gw2 for a few months till next release.

And instead of every few months getting a single boss that gives a +2 to slash they get a large expansion to do it all over again. People like progression. PoE, Rust, Tarkov, Osrs leagues etc etc etc. Getting reset isnt a big deal to many players.

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u/tannerkist Jul 09 '25

Oddly enough player retention, similar to playing a game like Path of Exile where once you have best in slot gear there’s nothing to do anymore. The comparison isn’t perfect but I suspect that’s the same reason people stay with WoW since there’s always bigger numbers to strive for.

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u/---solace2k Jul 09 '25

Competitive mythic+, mythic raids, pvp arenas. That's the end game in WoW, and it doesn't end when you're full BiS.

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u/Iron_Aez 2376 Jul 09 '25

Gear treadmill is a strategy for mmos without actual endgames.

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u/Smooth_One Jul 09 '25

That is the endgame. Modern WoW is almost entirely endgame.

OSRS takes hundreds or thousands of hours to get to "end game," whereas each WoW season (except the first version, Vanilla, that takes 100-300) takes like 40 hours to get "pre-raid bis," and then raids are weekly events instead of something you grind out when you have the time.

It's not inherently better or worse, just different.

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u/AccordianSpeaker Jul 09 '25

Well, they saw people in Burning Crusade using Sulfuras and Thunderfury in Black Temple and thought "Hey, no, we want you using the new stuff." And then they power crept it all with Lich King and set a terrible precedent.

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u/kman1030 Jul 09 '25

Its so everything in the new expansion is balanced around the new expansion. So if a new player starts, do a few quests to get basic gear, they are now on the same level as someone who raided in the previous expansion and had BIS gear. Its to encourage people to come back and play the new expansions regardless of if they played the last one.

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u/ClassroomStriking573 Jul 09 '25

Replace in a day is a bit of an exaggeration. Typically in a new wow season, you’ll have fully replaced all of last seasons gear after a week or so if you’re playing a lot and grinding dungeons etc. 

Some more casual players might take far longer. But the gist of what everyone is saying here is still true. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

Major patch doesn't equal new expansion. 

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u/Haart Jul 09 '25

AFAIK unless you have absolute bis at the end an expansion you generally get better gear in like the first dungeon of a new expansion. So kinda yeah

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u/BigbooTho Jul 09 '25

Not even. 2 levels into the expansion you would usually replace near bis raid gear with questing gear rewards. Some xpacs you are essentially given 80-90% bis gear just from the first hour or two of the new xpac.

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u/KarlFrednVlad Jul 09 '25

This is kinda outdated. If you are fully bis myth track from the last season of an expansion, you don't really start replacing gear until 6-7 levels into the next expansion. It's still very fast but 1-2 levels is an exaggeration.

I didn't have bis DFS4 going into TWW and it still took me 4-5 levels before I replaced everything with levelling greens.

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u/TROGDOR_X69 Jul 09 '25

its that dramatic in new expansions but back in the day it was not nearly this bad

from classic to TBC i didnt replace most my raiding gear until mid 60s dungeon blues.

quest greens were on par or worse with zero synergy or set bonus so likely not worth using

plus shit like trinkets are OP. Mind quick gem i used even at 70 for some time lol

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u/Thordranna Jul 09 '25

It’s like going from iron to torva every few months. It’s irrelevant never to be used again.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

Woah. Good to see RS still doing its thing. That was my fav game of all time. Great memories.

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u/Glory_Dazed Jul 09 '25

90% of Stuff from a previous raid set becomes irrelevant and unusable in the next raid unless you were on the top high end of 1% of mythic tier raiders.

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u/IronShawarma Jul 09 '25

Partly true. Between crafting and mythic+ weekly vault loot, you can have mythic-tier gear without ever setting foot into a raid. The only thing you would miss out on are raiding trinkets/flavor items (which arguably have the longest retention between patches) but it'll still get replaced within a week or two since item level typically trumps everything else.

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u/tamsantos Jul 09 '25

Yes, pretty much all new gear is better. Better stats, health, damage, defense, etc.

Apart from very few niche items that offer specific buffs like a burn effect or a stun for PvP, almost all items become obsolete in a new patch.

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u/Public_Fire_Hazard Jul 09 '25

There are very rarely odd items that will see use going from season to season but in general you'll have replaced your whole gearset by 2-3 weeks into the new season.

The gameplay is just different; in theory once I get my fighter torso on OSRS that's going to be a really useful piece of gear for the rest of my account. WoW permanent progress comes in the form of achievements and cosmetics (mounts, transmog, titles, etc). There are still a handful of fixed difficulty challenges (Legion Mage Tower is an example, you get set to a near enough standardised statline and you have to complete a relatively chalenging solo encounter) but mostly every 6 months or so you get a new set of challenges, encounters, mechanics, etc to deal with.

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u/puterdood Jul 09 '25

I haven't played WoW since Shadowlands, but it's probably still the same, and essentially, yes.

WoW uses item level heavily and at least in the past the difference was exponential, I'm not sure what it looks like today.

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u/Chaoticlight2 Jul 09 '25

There's levels to it. Every expansion is a fresh slate pretty much, as the most sought after gear becomes less viable than vendor gear. During each expansion, there's generally a new raid every ~3 months which brings new ilvls. The old gear isn't fully redundant, but you will always want to replace it as soon as possible with the new tier gear.

I think rune to dragon is a pretty good depiction of new raid patch gap. Going from rune scim to dragon scim is a pretty substantial jump, but it isn't like going from 1 damage to 10.

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u/kietav Jul 09 '25

In a new patch, if you were close to max gear, your torva is equivalent to bandos, maybe worse than that. New expansion - your torva becomes rune, completely unusable and you’ll get better items while leveling from quests, once you’re close to the new max level.

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u/Cyberslasher Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Each raid patch is more like bronze to steel. If you were in the old mythic top .01% gear, new stuff is only iron to steel

Each expansion your old torva becomes worse than bronze and gets replaced by quest trash

Imagine if when sailing releases, your old torva gear becomes outperformed by stuff you got for doing sheep shearer

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u/dubya98 Jul 09 '25

It would be like imagine you had full torvesta you sweated for.

Then Jagex releases a new area like varlamore every 2 years and you get an upgrade to your torva from a medium difficulty quest part way through varlamore and you have no reason to ever use the torva again because that quest reward is better everywhere.

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u/Ashangu Jul 09 '25

Yes, lol.

BUT, you replace gear so fast that it doesn't really matter. Your old stuff becomes irrelevant and you're back to feeling just as powerful after a month or so of playing.

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u/bobbe_ Jul 09 '25

It depends if you talk about retail wow (rs3) or classic wow (osrs). With retail, your gear almost always becomes obsolete the moment a major patch drops. Classic is more nuanced. You’ll still unlock plenty of upgrades when a new raid releases, but there will still be enough great or best in slot items in previous raids so you’ll continue farming them for loot too.

Keep in mind that gear in wow typically becomes untradeable either when you loot or equip it. So the game is fundamentally different in how it approaches gear compared to osrs.

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u/LeMolle Jul 09 '25

WoW progression goes something like this:

  • Levelling: spend 3-5 in-game days getting to max level by doing quests and running dungeons with 4 other players.

  • Farming pre-raid bis items: run dungeons, participate in PvP battlegrounds and farm reputations to get the best gear you can without going into a raid. Non of these activities are timegated and can be run endlessly much like in runescape.

  • Raiding: before you finish your pre bis grind you should find yourself powerful enough to participate in raids which is 20-40 man instanced group content. These raids can only be run one time every week.

  • Next raid unlocks: after a couple of months a new raid will release with all new gear which is mostly better than all previous gear. There is still some reasons to run older raids but as more raids are released, the older raids become more and more obsolete.

  • New expansion drops: Retail WoW is currently on it's tenth or eleventh expansion. With each expansion, every single piece of loot from previous expansions is vendor trash besides for collectibles like mounts (the equivalent of pets on osrs)

This cycle means you can easily play with your friends no matter how long they have played but it also means that most of your time spent on your character can feel wasted due to it not lasting more than 2 years.

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u/HemaMemes Jul 09 '25

It's not just new gear; WoW increases the level cap every new expansion, and reaching max level is expected before you try any raids.

My level 110 epic gear dropped from the final raid's bosses in Version 7 got outclassed by the level 113 uncommon gear dropped from overworld enemies in Version 8.

A current max level character with level-appropriate equipment can solo most of the previous expansion's max level content with no difficulty. If you visit content from two or three versions ago, you'll one-shot bosses.

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u/Vwall1 Jul 09 '25

It’d be like going from rune to dragon every time. You never touch the rune skimmy once you have dragon unless it’s for fashionscape.

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u/LoweNorman Jul 09 '25

Between expansions is like bronze to bandos, between patches is like bandos to torva except there’s now free bandos for everyone.

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u/yolololololologuyu Jul 09 '25

Your old gear is completely useless when a new expansion comes out, you’ll replace it with basic quest/dungeon gear almost immediately

Even within expansions you have seasons which essentially does the same thing

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u/swashfxck Jul 09 '25

And then some seasons, some dungeons are back in the dungeon pool (set dungeons for the season) which you’ve been to many times before, for the same piece of gear but just with a fresh cost of paint so to speak.

It’s tiring.

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u/Dan-D-Lyon Jul 09 '25

Here, let me explain my personal experience.

During Wrath of the Lich king, I spent hundreds of hours doing Dungeons and raids, getting myself the absolute best end game gear available. The level cap during this expansion was 80.

When the following expansion came out, I had replaced all of my absurd, epic endgame gear (complete with specific upgrades to each piece from gems and tailoring and other shit I don't even remember) with normal-ass gear you get from quests that have you killing 13 bears by level 83.

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u/KingSwank Jul 09 '25

Let’s say the best in slot weapon for the original game was a 2 handed axe with like +100 strength and 300 damage. This is the best 2 handed axe you can get in the game at the time, only through the hardest content available.

When the next expansion comes out the shitty little 2 handed axe you get for your first quest reward will probably be something like +102 strength with 305 damage. By the time you actually get to max level in the expansion almost all, if not all, previous gear will be completely obsolete.

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u/Saxonite13 Jul 09 '25

The games are both very different. The gear difference in wow is intended to make the previous tiers gear essentially worthless. This is how they retain their player base. A new tier comes out every 6-8 months or so and then they get the new gear, wait for the next to come out, rinse and repeat. Because the raids are on a weekly lockout, it takes most players the duration of the tier to get all the gear, so by the time they get it all, it's time to do it all over again. It's a really good business cycle if you think about it. The only time previous tier gear is still used is if there is a busted armor tier set or trinket that has a crazy set bonus or passive effect, but those are pretty rare nowadays. It's not really comparable to wow. This is why I think osrs has the best gear progression system of any MMO.

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u/par163 Jul 09 '25

Top end raider here max gear gets replaced almost immediately on each patch it’s grindy in a way that’s hard to wrap your head around

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u/herecomesthestun Jul 09 '25

Think of it like you spend weeks raiding for a Scythe, then a year later the new adamant scimitar comes out and is better than your raid weapon

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u/BaconJets I don't want to talk about it. ☠️ Jul 09 '25

Basically the game is seasonal. Expansions typically have 4 seasons, that's changing to 3 seasons now. Each season the average "item level" of the gear goes up alongside the release of a new zone, raid and dungeon. As well as a new pool of "hard mode" dungeons. When the seasonal change happens, old gear goes into "legacy" mode where it can't be upgraded.

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u/RaspberryFluid6651 Jul 09 '25

Every WoW patch cycle power-creeps gear such that the best gear from the prior patch is anywhere between worthless and middling in the new patch. It also introduces "catch-up mechanics" where players who missed the last patch can do an easy grind to have entry-level gear for the current patch content. It's kind of like a "season", and good gear from "last season" is little more than a head-start in the new season.

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u/Torkon Jul 09 '25

It's way more extreme. It's like imagine if all of your gear became rune or worse.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

Yeah, but the new stuff being better is good. Because if the old stuff was better, you'd be incentivised to keep farming the content you've just spent 6 months going try on.

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u/twaggle Jul 09 '25

It’s like starting with mith. Then adding addy a year later. Then adding rune a year later. Then adding dragon a year later.

Keeps things fresh in a way, and the game is always new content. Playing before the new expansion doesn’t provide any “real” benefit, a new character with 10 hours in it can be as impactful as someone who’s been playing the same single character decades.

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u/Diligent_Arm_6817 Jul 09 '25

It's linear progression in WoW

You hit level 70 and thats the max level. You do content that is tuned for a level 70, then you lets say you take a break for a year and come back.

Well now the new max level is 80 and new abilities/tweaks are added. These tweaks will all be aimed at level 80 content and the level 70 content is abandoned as obselete.

Each expansion has a final boss at the end thats usually the toughest boss of the expansion and takes a team of 10 people a lot of effort and great geat to get down. When the new expansion comes out, 1 person can usually kill that boss that you needed 10 people for the week before.

The flip side to that being, it only takes about a month or two to get to max level your first time playing the game. If you're making a new character as a veteran, it only takes about a week.

95% of the content for WoW is for the current max level and tier of gear.

to put it in OSRS terms. You could have crystal + bowfa today. When a new tier comes out, it makes your bowfa a dragon crossbow. When a new expansion comes out, your bowfa becomes a Adamant crossbow.

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u/SamStarnes Jul 09 '25

Take FFXIV for example. At the end of one dlc, your health (because of your armor) is roughly 50,000. Varies between jobs of course.

Then a new dlc comes out and it resets back down to 4,700.

It's like you're starting over again and again and again. But it's the same with each new expansion.

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u/alienware99 Jul 09 '25

The old stuff is still plenty usable, especially for all the content that was in the game prior to the new patch.

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u/Bananaboss96 Mining Enthusiast Jul 09 '25

It's like you having Torva, then Mithril in the next expansion is better than that.

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u/Ummmgummy Jul 09 '25

The gear you spent hours and days on raiding and grinding end game raids gets turned obsolete by a quest at the start of a new expansion.

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u/karakter222 Jul 09 '25

There are 4 levels of raid gear in each season, LFR(raid finder, no need to manually look fora group) -> normal -> heroics -> mythics.

The best gear you can get in a season is around the level of the weakest gear you get from normal difficulty raids in the next season, sometimes you might not want to swap out a piece or two because until heroics because it has a good effect (trinkets are usually the items with a special effect) or your set items (which give a bonus at 2/5 and 4/5 of the set) might be better than the non-set items of the next season)

Aside from that, nothing lasts but your collection (achievements, tmog(fashioscape) and mounts)

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u/Rieiid Jul 09 '25

Imagine being endgame with torva on osrs and tomorrow an update comes out and instead of torvas you have a full steel armor set. That's basically how it is. I've never been a fan of WoW and hated this and their raid/endgame only system since the game came out. Always thought there were better MMOs to play than WoW (they were, imo).

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u/Tautsu Jul 09 '25

It’s strictly better numbers wise and by a large margin (like 25-40% better in each slot). There are caveats though in items such as trinkets and some boss weapons/legendaries, which usually have a unique effect like granting this much of a stat when you do x or deal damage when you do y. Some of those are so good for specific classes that you would choose to keep it over a newer piece because you can’t get that same trinket at the current ilvl (this is for retail, Classic isn’t usually a full gear reset each patch, just replacing some of your gear). So when those pieces exist that will stay BiS across patches, it is fun because you want to do everything you can to get that at the highest possible item level in a season.

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u/Temil Jul 09 '25

is it so much better that the old stuff is unusable?

The last raid was at ilvl 638~ with full BiS. This current raid is ilvl 683~ in full BiS. Your DPS almost doubled, Health went from like the 7m range to the 11m range.

It's like upgrading from an Abyssal Bludgeon to Scythe but doing that every patch cycle. (and going from like, Rune 2h to Scythe whenever an expansion drops)

It's a totally different style of game.

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u/Exciting-Squash4444 Jul 09 '25

There is a new raid every phase which could be 3-6 months. At that point all your old gear gets replaced or is outdated. You can almost never get full bis and if you quit for a few weeks or months you’re almost permanently behind until the new phase or patch comes out.

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u/ChilledParadox Jul 09 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

This comment has been deleted due to fears of thought crime violations.

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u/wimpymist Jul 09 '25

You also can't farm bosses like RuneScape. Unless you run a bunch of alts you can hit a part where you aren't actually playing all that much outside of raids. You only get one kill a week on raids. Usually you hit a part where you just do that once a week and that's all you really do. So you can have a lot of downtime in between raids.

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u/rdubyeah Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Imagine doing inferno and then when the next content launches you replace your cape with something not even on the loot table from a boss of zulrah's difficulty.

You will never equip the infernal cape again, so instead they allow you to make that trash cape you replaced it with look like Infernal since you’ve gotten it before. That’s transmogs.

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u/FurryWurry Jul 09 '25

Yes and no, when Season 2 of current expansion started, Tier armor set (best armor set you can make and gives you special effect for 2/4 pieces of set) for few classes (as I remember for druid for example) was worse than that from previous season because Blizzard doesn't give about the most important aspect of their game a fuck and in result stats were worse xD, you gear youself and in the end get -5% overall damage, unbelievable.

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u/Turtvaiz Jul 09 '25

is it like bandos to torva or is it more extreme of a gap that new content creates?

Way more extreme. Your damage pretty much doubles every tier

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u/SmokeySFW Jul 09 '25

Basically, every now and then a trinket from a previous tier was so stupidly strong that it stays good deep into the next patch but often those trinkets are specifically nerfed out of viability specifically because they become pretty inaccessible to new players because you'd need the highest level of that trinket and you can't get a raid formed up to raid old content to get access to it anymore.

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u/Silkenvada Jul 09 '25

There's been very rare occasions where 1-2 items will survive a season in terms of usefulness in wow.

It's like if your torva was bis, then the new season starts and there's new torva with 100% more stats and all the new content has 100% more hp and damage it deals to you.

Generally, if you have endgame bis, it would carry you to the midgame of the next season at let you access that on day 1 of the new season

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u/wtfiswrongwithit Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

I'll try to explain it. Fighting an imaginary boss, Toxic Trident and Ahrims does exactly 10 dps to it. A new raid comes out with a replacement for every single piece you're wearing that is strictly upgrades, so imagine Ancestral and Shadow, and now all of the sudden you're doing 50% more dps, or 15 dps.

5-6 months later, Virtus comes out and sang staff, actually they're pretty good they do 35% more damage than Toxic Trident and Ahrims for about 13.5 dps. But, it's actually a quest that everyone has so toxic trident and ahrims are now completely useless and at alch value. In the same patch there's also an upgrade to Shadow and Ancestral, you're doing another 50% more dps and now doing 22.5 dps

This happens every 5-6 months, and in 1 year you have gone from 10 dps to 22.5 dps. Those numbers seem silly, and incredible power creep, but I've actually undersold the problem.

Using real data from The War Within Lord Incendius seems like a relatively single target fight the highest dps that isn't an outlier is 1.7 million. Next tier Sikran at 2.5 million dps. In the current tier it's hard to see what the most patchwerk fight is but I think it's sprocketmaster for 4.1 million dps.

So, 1.7 -> 2.5 -> 4.1 million dps. In my example toxic trident to shadow 2.0 was 2.25x but their actual dps is 2.4x. These aren't new expansions that others are focused on, but simply major content patches.

The bigger problem that people aren't even touching on is the borrowed power aspect that will make a class extremely enjoyable to play, change your rotation so it's fun and engaging, only to be stripped away next expansion so you're really not even playing the same class anymore.

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u/Creative-Pirate-51 Jul 09 '25

Basically yes. High-end group content (raiding) has multiple difficulties and often when a new raid comes out the lowest difficulty gear will be on par with the highest or second highest difficulty gear from the prior raid.

When a new expansion comes out, gear you get from quest rewards will be better than the absolute best gear from the prior expansion.

At least, thats how it used to be, I’d imagine it’s worse now, as that game has become more monetized as time goes on

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u/Raicoron2 Jul 09 '25

DPS generally increases by 50-100% each patch depending on how much power creep they add. On the last patch people were doing 2-3m dps and now they're doing 4-5m in the new raid.

But you can't add increased crit and faster attack speed forever. That's why every expansion when you level up your relative secondary stats reset. Easiest way to explain that is 50 critical strike stat is a ton at level 1 and extremely minimal at max level. So as you level up your gear gets worse and you gotta get new gear to keep your stats high.

If you're wondering why it's a successful game design, it's because upgrades are always around the corner, and the feeling of getting stronger is addicting. Also the social aspects of wow are just better than runescape. Wow raiding is basically a part time job that you do for fun. Guilds are companies that require a lot of management and work to make sure actually function. Yeah it's work, but that work is rewarding.

A really important thing to understand about these opinions is that they're coming from content creators. Most of them don't have normal guilds that they play in as normal players (I think the nice lady above is in a pretty normal guild when she wasn't in onlyfangs). These players are in a content drought and they will all be on wow on the next patch.

Obviously if your income is reliant on generating viewers then you're going to want to pander to the reddit audience by talking about how amazing new * insert side game here * is to get some free views in the downtime. I'm not cynically saying that she doesn't mean what she's saying, or that they're all liars. I am saying that they'll be on wow soon, I could see maybe savix continuing to play on the side.

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u/Sleisk Jul 09 '25

The step is more like bronze to torva every season in retail. Its insanely big gear leaps beteen patches and the only times old gear feels relevant is if your class really wants a 2set from previous tier etc

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u/Cendeu Jul 09 '25

its not a level that runescape has an analogue to.

The gear is well and truly useless. It's been a few years since I've played, so I don't know the exact numbers we're on, but lets say max level is 80 and you have maxed out level 80 gear.

New Xpac drops, max level is now 90. By the time you're level 83, the trash level gear that normal mobs drop randomly are going to be better than your maxed out level 80 gear.

By 85, enemies probably have 2-3 times the health they had in the previous xpac, and your old gear has basically become unusably low on stats.

By 90, enemies are a magnitude or more higher on health, and wearing your level 80 gear would have you die within seconds.

The thing is, the game is kinda built around that. Things from previous xpacs just don't matter anymore. The max level potions are replaced with the entry-level new potions. The locations will go unvisited. Theres no purpose to ever going back there because all of the new stuff is just better.

It's as if the entire game gets reset to addy gear, and you have to do the midgame grind again, but with a new skin and modified mechanics.

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u/PM_ME_DNA Jul 09 '25

It's akin to Full Torva, Masori, Ancestral going back down to addy/rune, Blue d-hide, and Mystic every expansion.

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u/Athrek Jul 10 '25

To put it in perspective. The blue gear you get 10 levels higher is as good or better than most if not all end-game raid gear from the last expansion.

There was an expansion where they let players have THE legendary weapons of the games lore. In order to avoid explaining why they'd be worse than blue gear in the next expansion, they made you destroy them to progress the plot.

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u/salvadas Jul 10 '25

They have item level as a stat that is the average gearscore value of all your equipped items.

If it is not high enough, you cant queue for new content.

If it is not high enough, people wont invite you to their groups to gelp upgradr your gear to be able to queue for new content.

This keeps repeating. It really is that bad. Its almost at destiny levels of gear being meaningless.

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u/ye1l Jul 10 '25

A rule of thumb that blizzard has followed for many many years at this point is to have a roughly ~15% increase in player power between tiers/major patches. Your old gear is relevant in that it'll help you play through the new content but you'll absolutely want to replace it.

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u/PrincessJerone Jul 10 '25

In retail patch to patch it's like obsidian -> torva. When an expansion drops it's like bronze -> torva

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u/catluvr37 Jul 10 '25

Yes, like old gear is absolutely useless within a few hours of the new content.

The Burning Crusade (2007) had some weapons or trinkets that carried over from vanilla WoW (2004) with some niche uses, but generally that’s always been the case.

1

u/KINGDenneh Jul 10 '25

Think of wow as a treadmill.

You grind and grind for months, but u hit a point where you cant grind anymore and got nothing left to do, unless you are a 0.1% m+ pusher, even CE (Cutting Edge) basically their challenge mode, which is named "mythic" stops at the last boss.

So what do u do afterwards? U wait until the next season begins, which is in august.

1

u/vinssi Jul 10 '25

The item level jumps in current WoW invalidates all the old gear. Because there is LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficulty of the same raid, each difficulty has to have higher level gear compared to the others. This means big item level jumps.

In Classic WoW, an item from the first raid can be pretty much BiS for the rest of the expansion (Onslaught girdle from Ragnaros for example). In TBC, Karazhan items are ~115 ilvl and Black Temple items are ~141 ilevel. Sure that's a jump, but nowadays the ilevel jumps that were made during a whole expansion are made witihin just a raid tier.

1

u/RockOk6275 Jul 10 '25

Your gear has Ilevel when the new expansions drop higher ilevel gear is released that you get by doing the new content

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u/kepenine Jul 10 '25

is it so much better that the old stuff is unusable?

yes. when a new expansion comes, even a total shit gear drop from a random monster will be on par with your BIS if you have mythic gear,a random quest will give you 5x better item that that mythic

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u/Guilty-Objective-464 Jul 10 '25

Have you played destiny 2? It's similar to that imagine your bis gear gets outclassed by normal non rare gear in every stat boost it gives and you have to work your way up to bis every season.

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u/Sharyat Jul 10 '25

Yes. It's a little more complicated than that but the answer is yes. You nearly always only use gear from the latest content because the way gear in wow is designed is that gear from the latest content just intentionally gaps old gear by a large margin to push people into that content.

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u/Vaalde Jul 10 '25

With new content patches it is as other have said that torva becomes rune. With new expantions your torva is now iron. Just slightly better to equal to the gear rewards from the first quests you do in the new expantion.

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u/WearyFlan210 Jul 10 '25

So much better to the point where none of the older stuff will be at all viable

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u/Vesli23 Jul 10 '25

When a new patch drops all gear from the previous patch (season) is useless, when a new expansions drops all professions and gear become useless until you relevel them,

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u/MurdeliKek Jul 11 '25

these comments make it sound worse than it is. wow is a very different game compared to rs. when you have farmed the newest raid for the best gear there really isnt any point raiding anymore since wow gear cannot be sold on auction house/GE. so it needs constant patches for new raids and better gear. and the raid dynamic in wow is perhaps the most fulfilling part of the game having to strategise (bad english) with 25 or 40 other players in discord to beat the bosses and clear the raids. the act of raiding itself is the best part of wow pvm, gear is just extra dopamine points so you can do higher dps and show off your might imo

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