Gear Score just came to WoW Season of Discovery, and it could ruin the Classic experience

For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, Gear Score has made its way to Classic, and there’s a decent chance it could ruin the game.

Since WoW Classic Season of Discovery launched on Nov. 30 with Blackfathom Deeps, I’ve been seeing a rise in guilds and groups asking you to meet a certain Gear Score to join them. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, Gear Score assigns you a numerical value based on your equipped gear. The better gear you have, the better your Gear Score. 

It baffles me that players introduced the system, which is commonplace in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, to Season of Discovery. It’s widely known that WoW Classic is far from a mechanically-intensive game. For the most part, WoW Classic is a slower and more mundane iteration of the MMORPG where most classes press the same button repeatedly until the boss is dead, and most fights last roughly three to five minutes. Bosses in WoW Classic just aren’t that demanding, with the new content being cleared just hours after release.

In the new raid, Blackfathom Deeps, the only fight that poses a considerable challenge is the penultimate boss, Twilight Lord Kelris. The catch is his second phase, which is actually a DPS race. During this phase, you can’t taunt Kelris, and he casts damaging spells on all raid members. So, your goal is to nuke him down before he does the same to you. With a bit of coordination and progress, the boss goes down easily. In fact, it took my guild and I two nights and a couple of wipes to get it right. Soon after we downed Kelris, Aku’mai followed.

Don’t get me wrong, Gear Score has its advantages. It can improve your chances of success in a PUG—if all your raid members have good gear and have already cleared Blackfathom Deeps, the odds are drastically higher that you’ll kill the bosses without a hitch. Gear Score can make the entire process smoother and more streamlined, so you won’t spend hours and hours wiping on the same boss while a couple of newbies learn the encounter. 

But at the end of the day, despite its advantages, Gear Score just isn’t necessary in Season of Discovery. The content isn’t that demanding, and Gear Score only makes clearing the raid exclusive, turning off veterans and discouraging new players from even giving it a go. Raiding should be fun and engaging for everyone, not a superficial grind where numbers are everything. After all, WoW Classic is all about the journey, and not the destination.