By this point, it's actually been a long time since we had such a system, but back in the day, there was something called Badge gear.
In Burning Crusade, vendors were introduced who would sell high-quality gear for a currency called Badges of Justice. You could get these badges by beating Heroic Dungeon bosses (Heroics in BC were considered quite difficult, at least by those days' standards.) New gear was introduced to these vendors with the release of new raids like Zul'Aman and Sunwell Plateau, and so players were incentivized to keep running heroic dungeons in order to earn the badges to purchase that gear. Later, they made it so that raid bosses would drop these badges (2 at a time for every raid beyond Karazhan, the intro raid).
In Wrath of the Lich King, they introduced new Emblems which served a similar purpose. However, Emblems came in various varieties. Emblems of Heroism would drop in Heroic dungeons and the easier 10-player version of Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and Obsidian Sanctum, while Emblems of Valor would drop in the 25-player versions.
When Ulduar was introduced in 3.1, the 10-player version gave Emblems of Valor while the 25-player one gave Emblems of Conquest. Then, in 3.2, with the introduction of Trial of the Crusade, the system got streamlined - now, every bit of old content that could drop Emblems would give Emblems of Conquest, and the new Heroic mode of raiding for Trial of the Crusader gave Emblems of Triumph (I'll be honest, I might have some of this wrong - effectively there were three raid difficulties at that point, because 10-player heroic was seen as equivalent to 25-player normal.) Finally, when 3.3 brought Icecrown Citadel, the final Emblem was introduced - Emblem of Frost - which was used to purchase, among other things, the tier 10 raid set (Triumph had also been the way you got tier 9.)
In Cataclysm, they came up with a much more elegant system for this - "Old Content" would give a currency called Justice Points, which could be spent on any of the older gear (there was also some initial Justice Point gear you could get when you were starting heroics) while Valor Points were introduced as the always-cutting-edge currency - something you could acquire a limited amount of per week, but which you could get from doing both raids and random heroic dungeons.
And while Cataclysm was sort of the first disappointment of an expansion (other than heroics or raiding, there was practically nothing to do at the level cap - though I still think the old-world revamp was a great change, even though what had been an update after 6 years is now 10 years old) I think this system was really great.
But Blizzard has moved farther and farther away from deterministic gearing. To define the term: deterministic gearing is the idea that if you complete the content you intend to, kill the raid bosses or clear the dungeons that you need to, you will be guaranteed after a certain number of successes to get the piece you're aiming for. Random drops are not deterministic - you can run a dungeon over and over and just get unlucky and never get the thing you want.
I think there's an argument for random drops - it makes it more exciting when you kill something to see if this time you'll get the thing. And I think that's been Blizzard's argument in favor of it. (The cynical view could be that they figure this will make content last longer and thus get people to stay subscribed longer, but I'll be honest, I don't really believe that - I think Blizzard understands that what gets people to keep playing is that the game is fun, and if I ever find myself with everything I want on a main character while I'm still enjoying myself, I'll just play one of my million alts.)
But we never lost those random drops when we had a currency-based deterministic system. And given that these systems generally require well over a single dungeon run to get loot equivalent to what might drop in it, the big benefit to a currency system is that no run feels wasted. These days, if I take a character through a mythic dungeon and I don't get a single piece of gear, it feels like my time was wasted and in fact, I've lost opportunity given the weekly lockout. But if I were also getting a Badge of Justice off of each of those bosses, and that for 15 of those I could get a decent trinket, helmet, or even a weapon to fill in that last bit of questing gear I still have, I'd feel much better about having succeeded in that dungeon run.
So, I do think that we need to bring back a system like we had in Wrath and Cataclysm (Mists of Pandaria also had Valor gear, but it was locked behind reputations that could only be attained after months of daily quests, which was a major pain.) This is especially true given that Callings are not nearly as useful for gearing as Emissaries were in Legion and BFA. Indeed, even world quests themselves seem to be far less gear-oriented in terms of rewards.
Furthermore, I've talked before about Crafter's Marks. In theory, these are a fantastic system that allows any professional recipe to continue to be relevant as long as new Crafter's Marks are made available. The problem right now is that the absolute pinnacle of Crafter's Marks are A: only enough to raise the piece's item level to 161 - which is 10 points below heroic dungeon gear - and B: locked behind a reputation that will likely take a few more weeks for anyone to get to the level needed to attain it. (Don't get me wrong, I love Ve'nari and think that making that rep grind a slow one is fine.)
Crafting gear is supposed to be the original deterministic gear acquisition method. But it's always been hamstrung I think a bit by Blizzard worrying that it'll be too pay-to-win (especially given that they resorted in Warlords to selling gold - kind of the video game economy version of parents letting their kids smoke pot as long as they only do so safe at home.) And I think that's fair - WoW would be in terrible shape if they had to balance around people just buying player power, and I think they've been very wise in avoiding some of the pitfalls of F2P MMOs.
The ecstasy and the agony of random loot drops is something we've always had in WoW, and I don't think we'll ever lose it entirely. But I do feel that giving players a sense that their time isn't totally wasted if they don't get the loot they want out of an instance is a really great way to make the game feel better.
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