It did not matter the stats. It only mattered that it was purple and difficult for them to obtain because thats how the casuals were.
I was in an uber guild. World first Chromaggus kill. 5th world wide Nefarian. Tigole stood in our Nef raid which is the reason phase 1 was adjusted if you remember. Well you probably dont because I doubt you were anywhere close to Nef progression wise when we killed him. We shit all over Afterlife
You ask " Who cares if the gear looks the same"? Well I fucking do and apparently so do others. Your must have been a fucking scrub in Vanilla. All that teenage angst and jealousy showing.
Lol, wut. You're the one really angry that no one cared about your shoulders. When you stop being a little kid, it's enough that you have the achievements and the prestige of doing it first. In vanilla, that meant different gear. Now, it means different colored gear and achievements.
Nothing changed except your perception. Heroic epics are still more drool worthy than normal epics, and normal epics are still better than LFR epics. For the record, we weren't scrubs; we had a few top 10 serverwide kills. That's really neither here nor there though. As a druid in vanilla you were there for innervate and brez. The rest of us did the work.
(For any other druids, I'll say we had some really awesome druids that I loved, but we actually use to give innervates to hunters in BWL because well...it didn't really matter. I still love you guys though. Not this guy, but you guys. ALL OF YOU.)
Edit: It's like you're the only guy with that story. Everyone claims shit like this. As a druid in vanilla? Let's be realistic. You weren't a rogue/hunter that was required for progression. You were a druid. And even if you were the best god damn druid ever, you were still a druid, in 40 man raiding. You were still the least significant class, in a raid that could carry at the very least 1/4 of the fucking raid.
You honestly want to tell me vanilla was better than current fights? Then current content? The nostalgia was. The feeling was. The raids, weren't. Someone finishing current content shits all over anything anyone did in MC/BWL/AQ.
And you know what? I don't care if someone has the same gear I do; mine's a different color and I have the chievo that says I did Lei Shen before everyone else. That's all that's necessary.