Not for the blue set. They released a second blue set in a later patch, but that was gold also. The battlegear sets are really mediocre, its literally just a base-line if you really need resilience, and even then no one but healers will ever use them realistically. Even in S1 no one would ever waste marks/honor on them
The epic off-set pieces (marshal/veteran/vindicator) take marks and honor. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of?
Yeah, but those grinds were quite long! I never bothered leveling an alt in TBC because of the grinds they’d face. This time through, Inprobably won’t raid much… So I’ll have more “alt time.”
I found WotLK to be a bit more more alt friendly, but it still had it’s gates. I’d say MoP and WoD both alt friendly, and fun to play with alts.
I was able to attune and maintain three raid ready characters–holy paladin, fire mage, and resto druid. All had T5+. Then there was my woefully underplayed prot warrior with ZA gear who had to come in and tank Gurtogg Bloodboil one night. Knocked that out with ease, too. I would give it a 7 for ease of alt play, however, as I was putting in 10 hours a day to do that. If not raiding that’s gonna be a 10/10 for ease of alt play.