Originally Posted by
Hitei
There's only a small handful of unobtainable items from vanilla (particularly once you remove the ones that have identical models still obtainable), and most of them both A) look like absolute shit because they're from Vanilla, and B) aren't even readily recognizable as being some exclusive thing unless you are part of the insignificant fraction of the playerbase who knows what those particular items are and look like, so it's a pretty silly thing to worry about.
Like this:
There's already zero prestige except in the heads of the people holding on to those items. It's a weird narrative people make up to pat themselves on the back, like people who want transmog to go away beacuse they think anyone has been impressed with seeing someone in raid gear after 2005.
99% of the playerbase passes by someone an Ancient Frostsaber and do not even register the mount. Of the 1% who do happen to even notice there is a mount there they don't see often, 90% will not know off-hand that it is an unobtainable mount and will just think "Man, those old cat models are really ugly", or "I wonder if that's a brand new player or they just really like their old mounts".
Of 0.1% of the players who both notice the mount and also know it's unobtainable, most are not going to find it prestigious, they're just going to go "Oh, an Ancient Frostsaber, haven't seen someone on one those in a while." It's novelty, not prestige. They won't even note the name of the player, people don't even note the name of a Scarab Lord they happen to pass by. And unless they're already someone obsessed with unobtainable items, they don't even get the "man I wish I had that" feeling, because the mount looks like ass.
The "prestige" is just some weird circlejerk happening solely in the head of the kind of people who sit on a mount like that in a city going "Did that player notice me!? Oh that player clicked on me, I bet they're impressed with my mount! Did that player just stop for a second?! That's right, I'm on an Ancient Frostsaber! Of course you'd be shocked!"