Were they there? I feel like I remember them being added later, and in vanilla it was all about stats and level requirements. Though, I was ten… so its kinda foggy.
Not a Vanilla feature and something that is meaningless in game because item level has very little to do with how good an item in Vanilla actually is.
Long story short, you’re better off with out item level to distract you of an items worth.
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item level was in the game but the value was hidden.
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They “were there” but they weren’t something you’d see in the default tooltip to start with.
They didn’t mean much to anybody until you started getting into the level 60 gear anyhow, and that was once players were in Molten Core and Blizzard started explaining a concept called “item levels” and associated “ilevel budgets” for why items were itemized certain ways. Those discussions ultimately lead to many of the re-itemization tweaks made in 1.10.
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Items are weird in vanilla, sometimes the chance on hit or +healing/spell damage or “green stats” make an item BiS even if its a low level and item level. Just because some tier 1/tier2 piece drops and has a high item level in vanilla does not mean it’s even good for your spec and class, it could be worse than a blue from a level 50 dungeon.
Wow, so like could you turn it on? Or could addons display it? Thanks for clarifying!
As I recall, addons could, and did, make the information available to players. Ilevel was there from the start, but as I said, it just wasn’t visible to players from the start, and for the dataminers, they could find the data, but it took awhile before it meant anything.
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ilvl was always there but it wasn’t shown to the player, there were add-ons that showed it, but because of stat distribution being so poorly optimised ilvl was a terrible metric to use.
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This is what will be the saddest part for me in Classic. Everyone being able to math it out. Already found out T0 sets were garbage which sort of kills the fun of wanting to collect them. Actually saw an old BiS list that showed shadowcraft helm was better than valor for warriors. But luckily I am mostly around to PvP with so my gear path is more set than not.
This.
Items levels were in the game from Day 1 of Vanilla.
However, the values were hidden. Blizzard used it to budget stats on gear, but didn’t display item levels on the gear itself.
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Like others have said, ilvl was in vanilla however it was hidden on the tooltip, you could manually check ilvl with an in game command like in a macro or you could get an addon to show it.
Ilvl determined the total amount of stats an item could have, however since items did not follow a proper distribution some or most of those stats could be in a stat that did not matter to you.
If you are a mage if ilvl 60 had 30 str and 30 int but ilvl 45 had 45 int you would take the ilvl 45 piece because that 30 str does nothing for you even though it has higher ilvl and more total stats.
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Anyone remember when gear score came about? I remember it was BIG in wrath.
But yeah to sum up what others are saying, it wouldn’t do you much good in Vanilla. There were a ton more stats (hence the more like RPG) that make numbering an item hard. For example, hit cap is big important. If you get an item with +hit, you already know it’s in the upper echelon of items. What if you are already capped tho? etc. There are countless examples of stats that have very specific ideal weights. You have to bounce items around until you get something you want.
That is why when you see pre-BIS or BIS lists, the list maker generally lists EVERY item slot as a set. That way they can account for every item you could be wearing and make a theoretical “best”.
It’s not like today in retail where I go down the flow chart.
- Is it cloth
- Is the ILVL higher than what I’m wearing now?
- if yes, equip.
The system was dumbed down because at some point daddy blizz decided to tie in stamina to ilvl. Stamina is big important in higher end content.
![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
I’d give you 100 likes, but the forum configuration won’t let me.
WoW became exclusionist when item levels were added. Prior to that, a cognitive THOUGHT process was required to determine if a piece of gear was better or worse than what you already had. When item levels came into being, all that was required was a knowledge of how the numbering system progresses from 0 to infinity.
And players started being excluded from groups solely because their item level wasn’t high enough, regardless of what their skill was playing their character. Which evolved into exclusion because of a lack of a particular achievement. And on and on, ad infinitum ad nauseum.
To paraphrase from Blazing Saddles: “Item level? Item level? We don need no steenkin’ item level.”
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“I want to raid ICC to get some ICC gear but I need ICC gear to raid ICC”
Side-tangent: I love how everyone thinks how ilevel being slapped on our character screen mucked everything up. Yes, gear score was the first cog in the machine, but after we started measuring people’s capabilities by a numbers it was already over. ilevel was just a consolidated gearscore in-game, if they hid ilevel we’d go for achievements (we already do anyways), and if we hid achievements we’d go for primary stat, then secondaries, and then health as a way to measure your gear. Pretty soon people would be rating you on your mog.
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They were there, technically, but they were an extremely poor indication of how good an item was because itemization was so… Erm. “Eclectic”.
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Item level was there but:
Is the correct answer.
The iLvL is vanilla is not the same as it is now. iLvL in vanilla was much more hard coded. Now, if Blizzard increases the iLvL the stats on the item scale with that increase.
As has been said, there were ilevels values, they were there just hidden and not really used the same way.
The Enchantrix addon I used for Enchanting in Vanilla displayed the hidden ilevels. I remember having to go look up what those numbers were the first time I saw them.
As I understood it Enchantrix used the ilevels to give a guesstimate of what mats the item would DE into, Eternal Essence vs Magic Essence as an example.
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No. There was pre-raid BiS, however.
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Item level had almost 0 effect on how gearing worked in Vanilla.
Gearscore will ONLY kill people’s experiences in Classic.
Dont try to push for it or have that RaiderIO bullcrap XD it wont mean anything in the old world
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