First off Destiny isn't an MMO. It would be a joke to say it is. If Destiny is comparable to any genre of game it's RPG's and people seem to forget that these MMO's they are comparing Destiny to are MMORPG's. (I recently put a little more thought into this to come up with this.) I can't really agree with you on the stat stick part, while yes the weapons in destiny do vary in stats, perks, and looks. In the current game it's not difficult to have two different guns with the similar perks and stats which just leaves looks (which isn't much of a case in my opinion). The biggest problem I've found throughout my experience with the game is the Devs' way of replacing and trashing old perks so easily. I understand some of them were vastly more powerful than other options and that's probably why they stopped releasing weapons with those perks. Ex: Final Round snipers. Quite honestly they should of got around to just balancing these perks instead of just downright getting rid of them which is one of the biggest grievances of HoW. I don't know what they plan on doing for TTK, but with the current 2.0 patch for weapon balance coming in I could see these perks that people desire could make a come back into the game, but who knows........ Anyways back to the main point of my case is that if the new weapons give us the same viability and perks we have now then it makes sense (at least in an RPG way) that old stuff would get left behind as a new challenge requires better gear. The biggest problem with the game right now is the reward system which I believe creates this level of attachment to a weapon. In most RPG's you can easily craft, buy, or find these weapons of power which is why you don't see people complaining about leaving their enchanted Iron sword for an enchanted steel sword, but in Destiny you have to rely on luck to get a new weapon with the same perks as your old one. The reforging option was a good way to tackle this dilema, but the biggest problem this lead to was the lack of weapon variety. Ex: Shotguns in Crucible. If RNG wasn't as unforgiving as it is I believe the attachment people make to a weapon wouldn't be so strong. Did you play WoW and how much of it did you really play? I'm no vanilla player, but from my experience from WotLK to MoP new players don't have to deal with anything the old players had to put up with. Old raid gear is easily replaced by uncommon gear immediately after an expansion drops and old raids are run for achievement purposes and transmog and no one trying to level up to the current expansion is going to waste time making a pit stop to get raid gear that's easily replaced in a couple levels. Then you can't forget important updates in the expansions that introduce new raids/pvp seasons that introduce new gear. While the best of the best gear will be slightly better than some of the new gear, your old gear is easily replaced by the new top tier items. Ex: I played the entirety of MoP and the last update for that expansion introduced an area that gave armor (from daily quest grinding) better than the initial raid gear from the expansion. You'll easily have 'proof' you've been here from the beginning. Grimoire, emblems, and your memories of this game use to be are all momento's people will have that new players don't have. I've honestly never thought of armor as 'part of my legend' especially since the beginning of Destiny and since my time of playing WoW because everyone in the end game content looked the same. The addition of the ascension system was cool and it definitely helped with giving people the chance to play with armor variety, but I couldn't see this game being enjoyable for the long run if it was viable to keep the same thing for years. I don't play most RPG's more than a few times because once you reach the point of 'top tier' gear and finish the story it doesn't give me anymore incentive to play.