Quote Originally Posted by PinkamenaDiane View Post
Gearscore is in the base UI remember it was in a screenshot awhile back. Its probably needed for the dungeon finder to require a minimal lvl of gear before queuing up to ensure success is possible.
Gearscore was integrated into WOW after it became a huge 3rd party thing, like most of the popular 3rd party addons. But really, gear score was a symptom of the "problem", which is that having bad gear could not be made up for in skill at all. Most people who were at least somewhat knowledgeable about the game could spot a poorly geared player regardless of having the gearscore addon or not.

But eventually gearscore, after Blizzard integrated it into the default UI and relabeled it ilvl (item level) had a very useful function, which is not allowing undergeared people into hard mode dungeons via the cross-realm dungeon finder. First iteration dungeon finder was rampant with poorly geared dumb dumbs being carried by other people.