(WoW) Gear Scaling

Y'know, I've seen a lot of things mentioned and talked about from the Mists beta, giving an idea of what to expect in certain areas. I think it was a post about raid testing that actually made me step back and realize there's a new (sort of - we'll get to that) mechanic involved behind the scenes: gear that scales in power. There was a throw-away line in talk about dungeon challenges, and another in the raiding post. It was touched on a bit more thoroughly in a post about how valor points will be used to upgrade gear rather than buy new gear.

But what that means is that MoP items are being designed in such a way that they can be increased and decreased in item level, and thus stats. It's interesting to me because it's a decidedly different way of doing things. Currently, items are what they are, even though they might come in different sub-tiers (ie. LFR, normal, heroic) or be a potential requirement for a better item (legendaries)... with the sole exception of scaling heirlooms. When they were introduced and increased with character level, I didn't really consider they might be a prototype of a more robust system, but it appears they turned into exactly that.

While I don't think Blizzard wants to give people items they can keep and use forever (as it takes away the alure of finding new and better stuff), it's interesting to think they are now (well, in MoP) able to. And they can do temporary scaling, too, as shown by the normalization in play for challenge dungeons and the boost they're giving beta testers for trying out the first raid. They could scale item level for specific quests (probably instanced - more past/future selves, anyone?) or adjust everyone to the same item level for a competition. It doesn't strike me as groundbreaking, but it is a technical advancement that leaves me curious to see if they come up with any other interesting applications.