Artifact appearances: the mage tower case

Gameplay Transmogrification
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Hello! I hope you are having an excellent day and a hot cup of coffee while you read this lengthy post! :coffee:

TLDR:
I am writing to implore Blizzard to bring back the mage tower legion artifact appearances during the legion timewalking events, and here I explain why I think this is the fair thing to do.

We are talking weapon appearances - something for ourselves and other players to look at - not about anything that is or produces a number that could affect fight or class mechanics or even interfere with world competitions results. So I think the central question is: what are those artifact appearances meant to represent? What should we think when we see one?

Are they to show that 1) a player is skilled enough to beat a tough challenge in the game or 2) a player was able to beat this challenge >at a specific past moment<? Given that so many things that have nothing to do skill or effort - such as work, health or family - can keep one away from their hobbies at times, it would not make much sense to be the second option. Many players could not even be around during Legion and I honestly think that not having the opportunity to experience those order halls full of people to interact and have fun with is enough of a punishment to those who did not subscribe and support the game from 30 Aug 2016 to 14 Aug 2018.

Speaking for myself, I was fortunate enough to be around and play Legion from tip to tail. It is by far my favorite expansion - even though it took away my totems!! coughs exaggeratedly - for its lore was deeply attractive, its raids were fun, its zones are gorgeous and, above all, the class fantasy was beautifully well developed. Though I am a healer at heart, I made sure to learn both my DPS specs well enough to beat their respective challenges and get all the mage tower appearances on my main (and beloved) character, but keeping up with the richness of constant content updates, along with a full-time job and a family, prevented me from making, gearing up and learning all the other classes and specs whose artifact appearances clearly received a lot of love from devs when they were designed. Does that mean I am not good enough to, for example, keep Jarod and his gang alive playing Mistweaver? No, it just means I did not have a monk at that time.

I hear and, to a certain extend, resonate with all the voices that say that making those appearances obtainable once again would devalue the hardship we had to go through to get them. After all, until today my PTSD triggers whenever I hear the name ‘Jarod’. But, well… Would that not be easily solved by making the mage tower challenge even harder? Recreating the exact same level of difficulty now seems undoable mainly due to the legendary system Legion had. That is why I suggest to just make it harder - with a full legendary restriction, for example - so the real meaning of a challenge can be preserved. Not only preserved, but extended to anyone - players old and new - willing to take it up and interested in showing off the fruits of their labor through a really good-looking piece of transmog.

My apologies for the long text (I actually left out several arguments, trust me) and thank you for reading it. I hope it has touched your heart at least the minimum necessary for you to consider bringing the chance to have those appearances back one day. :blush:

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Exclusive rewards aren’t a punishment for people who were absent for a period of gameplay, they’re a reward for those that were present. Just like the classic aq opening rewards, wotlk pre-patch armor sets, naxx titles/mounts, the legacy ZA and ZG mounts/mog, the MoP challenge mode rewards, the SoO boa weapons and aotc mount, the WoD challenge mode weapons, the HFC aotc mount, the ABT aotc mount, the Nyalotha aotc mount, every KSM mount/title, every single elite pvp set, illusion, and glad mount.

Part of the marketing strategy of many games with challenging content is to earn it in a given time with a given set of skilled opponents or power level. If any content that was billed as “limited time” were to be brought back, they’d basically justify any request for all “limited time” rewards to be made available again.

At the end of the day, they’ve responded to this issue by creating a werebear that allows people who were not around in Legion to have that unique character model available going forward. There were no weapons from Mage Tower that are any more unique than any other challenge mode reward is unique. So earn the mount and the new mog tints if you like, and next time there’s a limited reward (literally every m+ and pvp season), weigh whether you want to put forth the effort, knowing it will be gone at some point.

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All this boils down to is giving players a false sense of pride around an object that does not exist in the real world. Since Legion is expired content and had it’s lifetime live, the appearances should be available. See when I first joined Wow, I had to go back to old raids, dungeons and the like to hunt for Transmog. I like having character options to match my mood. And choose a look that represents my character’s personality not their SKILL LEVEL. That’s the biggest difference I noticed in this community. People are obsessed with fashion being a sign of power and elitism. As for players like myself, we choose fashion that accentuates one’s class/spec personality.

It sucks how so many appearances are gated behind elite metagaming philosophies.

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If all you view exclusive transmog as is a “false sense of pride” for something that “does not exist in the real world” then why should they be made available to you? you obviously don’t feel that they have intrinsic value, so logically you shouldn’t care that they’re exclusive. There’s plenty of gear of all types that’s available to collect, including many weapons with similar quality of design. Denigrating people who have exclusive transmog for enjoying it and complaining that the exclusive transmog isn’t attainable and you would get it if it were seem to be contradictory stances.

Either the exclusive things are nice, valuable, and you’d like to have them back, or the people who have them are delusional about them being valuable and they represent the toxicity of the community.

If you don’t care to go after current elite pvp sets or glad mounts, why are you complaining about similar time-limited content that was challenging when it offered the rewards you don’t have? Blizzard can, and always does, make rewards that are time-locked. It’s a marketing strategy and a reward for the players that are subbed and engaged at certain points in the lifecycle of the game. If you don’t like it, feel free to not participate.

Also, what are “elite metagaming philosophies”? The idea that blizzard is a business and uses reward incentives to create revenue? Welcome to literally every mmo currently running.

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