We were having a debate in our Guild about the term Best in Slot and when it started to become such a commonplace term thrown around, trying to find a date in time when it started to become second nature to say.
The idea has always existed, but I personally remember reading and referring to it as one of the following: “Min-Maxing”, “Theorycrafting”, or an “Elitist” (ala Elitist Jerks).
For me personally, I don’t think I came across the term until maybe late BC / WotLK but it’s hard to remember back. I personally never really used it and instead would say “Min-Maxing” or “Theorycrafter”.
Just wondering, what’s the earliest you remember coming across the term Best in Slot? When do you think it really became popular, it’s hard to look up any information these days or guides for Vanilla without it having BiS in the title it seems.
I’m sure this happened way before wow but me personally I started using this term around Kara in tbc. This is because a lot of the times the epics in Kara were actually worse than heroic gear so we would always go for he bis items instead of what was the hardest gear to obtain.
We used BiS during Vanilla, as early as Molten Core. I remember hearing it in reference to resist gear vs. half-tier gear debates about what pieces to get and enchants. They’d call it a BiS enchant or a BiS resist piece.
Some folks definitely remember the term in Vanilla that I’ve chatted with, and as a concept - I 100% agree that BiS has been around since the games inception and even before that.
I just personally never used the term, and at least on my Server, it didn’t seem to come up at least within my Guild or in conversation with other folks until maybe BC.
Even then, I don’t think in BC it was a commonplace term yet.
This is for sure something that will differ between person to person, realm to realm, etc. It’s an interesting observation, as someone who’s stepped away from everything for a few years to come back and see the term slapped on anything and everything was a bit jarring at first.
I think it really only got heavy use in early days from people who were super into theorycrafting for raids…and twinking.
Level 19 twinks were HUGE during Vanilla, and I know they used the term more than anyone else, even back then.
Raiding guilds who were having trouble progressing would dig into numbers and search for the best item for x slot…and so it was mostly a raid and twink concern.
I didn’t see huge emphasis on BiS gear until Wrath heroics, however. I think you’re right about when it became common.
Around June 2005, when my Rogue flatmate was trying to work out whether the Barman’s Shanker or Ironfoe was the best in slot weapon for him to decide whether he went maces or daggers. I thought the term was self-explanatory. He was on a forum with a bunch of spreadsheet nerds but their problem was lack of data and formulas.
I always referred it to Twinking. Because Twinks would have a limited amount of items they can choose from.
As for level cap, I never thought of a “best in slot” item seriously. There was always some, but I didn’t focus on that. I focused on progressing. If an upgrade dropped, then it was not best-in-slot. If an update didn’t drop, then it was my personal best-in-slot, regardless of what it was, because I couldn’t upgrade until I got something new.
Pretty sure I heard it before World of Warcraft was a thing. I distinctly remember some mentioning in Everquest and it possibly predates that, but I wouldn’t know.