Whenever these anniversary events pop up I find myself logging into old havent-been-logged-into-in-a-long-time characters and I notice some of them have heirloom gear in their bags
Mousing over some of these heirloom pieces last night I see stuff like “3/6” or “4/6” which indicates what tier of “upgrade” they are at, and I dunno… it just seems sooo dated, so… archaic? Just make them “1-70” by default imo
The way they work in their current form is such pointless goldsink. Especially considering they no longer make you feel “powerful” and the iLvL is equivalent to questing greens or even slightly less iLvL than quest greens. And worse, collectively over the years I’ve easily already spent 200k+ gold on upgrades, but with each new expansion they need upgrading again 
I also notice the individual “upgrade” tokens are still priced at 5000-7500 gold each… even though the gear itself is watered down/nerfed (roughly equivalent to questing greens) and no longer provides +XP like it used to 
Big reason why I havent bother to upgrade any heirlooms since they destroyed them back in 7.3 I think? I would rather have 200-300ilvl gear less than currently than spending those amounts for basically mediocre bonuses specially when leveling is far easier.
3 Likes
Currency sink is my guess.
And heirlooms don’t even drive WoW token sales or anything like that, or at least, I’ve never heard of a player buying WoW tokens specifically for the purpose of maxxing out heirloom upgrade tiers
The whole thing just inconveniences the player for no logical reason
Honestly, I think “Heirlooms” are an antiquated system now. They made sense back in the day when leveling took weeks or months, and before transmog and account-wide appearances. They let you “feel” like a high-level character, in terms of looking cool and being OP, but now, they just feel a bit tedious.
I would honestly remove them entirely, and replace them with an “Heirloom Tabard” that simply increases your Exp. It’s the one piece of gear that doesn’t have to “compete” with other loot, meaning you get to be excited about new loot while leveling, and none of the headache of “wait, which pieces do I need for which spec? and which ones have I upgraded?”
I would say that for each individual heirloom, and then each subsequent upgrade, add 1% to exp earned. It honestly wouldn’t even be a game-changer, it would just simplify the process.
However, what I might ALSO suggest is converted Legendary weapons into “Heirlooms” as well. It would honestly be kind of cool to be able to level characters with those older Legendary items, and it actually WOULD be cool to upgrade those to each new expansion, even if they were only entry-level Heroic Dungeon ilvl.