The standardization of allocation of stats

These are really uninformed rose tinted glasses. Every one of the products you listed have their niche location, which is true. However, that's not synonymous with RS gold the notion that having 40 or more BoE gloves as BiS is an intelligent and intelligent design choice.

The idea of putting every warrior in leather in order to cause competitive damage in no way a good "item design". Blizzard even acknowledged this, changing it slightly by going into AQ/Naxx.

This is the reason I dislike transmogs. They lose their charm when everyone is wearing the same style. I love walking by a Tauren Druid wearing a full moon-lit cloths and thinking, WTF? It's funny , but you also know the mfer is a hot sass.

The standardization of allocation of stats (in part just because of superior class design and knowing the needs of characters) reduced the possibility to create memorable objects through design for stats. All the most memorable items that are discussed today aren't planned for budget: on-use abilities, high-budget exceptions (War Glaives) and honorable mentions to the speed of weapons, which allow them to make some items objectively more valuable than others, but without having to budget for them.

Vanilla's vanilla characters didn't like their Tier Gear because it wasn't properly-selected or didn't match their spec (feral Druid or dps warlord). Tbc all tier gear in vanilla is at least decent, or even bis. So overall I'm of the opinion that there's less need to wait for tier gear to be decently equipped.

There are 5 upgrades to wild tank in Mc, and some of them were sought-after (accuria as well as the agi cloakoff). In addition to a few pieces which could be relevant to the set of fire-resistant tanks, tier equipment was useless. Other pieces, like the heavy dark iron ring as well as the fireguard shoulders, were also eliminated. The set wasn't particularly exciting.

While not as memorable, I think it's because there are more options. As an example, for instance, you could wear three different pants. One from buy OSRS gold heroic, one from Kara and one that you have crafted, the bis is only marginally edging over the other ones. Vanilla would transport players from the dungeon until the upgrade for that phase.