Shadowlands looks to be going heavy into expanding character customization options through new model features, decoupling Legion artifacts from spec for transmog, and adding sex changing to the in-game recustomization services (finally! \o/). I’m very happy to see all of this, but there’s another way Blizzard could open up an absolutely massive degree of new customization options for players without having to add a single new thing to the game.
Drop armor type transmog restrictions.
You can keep the requirement that gear can only be collected to the wardrobe via the class it’s meant for, but allowing players to transmog appearances outside of a single armor type would add more new transmog options for players than multiple entire expansions of new gear.
It’s certainly not lore-breaking, either. NPCs both major and minor frequently break these restrictions, especially Horde-side. Garrison followers were especially notorious for this. I remember in particular a poster back in WoD who badly wanted to replicate the outfit worn by one of her rogue followers on her own rogue, and had to be turned away disappointed because the entire outfit was cloth. Thrall spent the first three expansions wearing plate before switching it out for cloth until BfA, where he’s wearing… leather? I think? I can’t even confidently categorize it, which raises the point that items themselves often flip the very concept of clearly delineated armor types the bird.
Lots of items that are classified into certain armor types look far more like another, and even more could reasonably pass for any armor type at all. Robes are especially prone to this, tending to come across as cloth regardless of their actual armor type. Further muddying the waters, many appearances are reused across multiple armor types, particularly mail having a lot of appearances that are shared with plate and leather.
Then there are cosmetic sets like the Stormwind Guard and Orgrimmar Grunt which are clearly plate and leather respectively, but have absolutely no restrictions on class. Ditto heritage armor sets. Between the tauren and Highmountain heritage sets and how they outfit the vast majority of bovine NPCs, the art department certainly seems to think tauren look best in leathers, and I’m inclined to agree, but I can’t transmog appropriately unless it’s to one specific heritage set.
Sure, there’s potential for people to transmog themselves to look like other classes than what they are with these restrictions dropped, but that potential already exists with current restrictions, and we hardly ever see it. Not because it’s not possible, but because people don’t want to do it. By and large, most people want to look like the class they’re playing, or like a particular variant of that class. When Legion turned Combat rogues into Outlaws and forced a pirate theme on the entire spec, a lot of players were very excited for that flavor, but found themselves severely lacking in appropriate transmog options because the most iconic “pirate” transmog pieces were cloth. A lot of warriors would surely be thrilled to able to dress down to leather for a more appropriate “barbarian” look, while priests and paladins would love to be able to raid one anothers’ closets for on-point holy vestments.
Dropping armor restrictions for transmog would open up a massive degree of new customization options for players without Blizzard having to add a single new asset to the game. Keep the requirement that items can only be added to the wardrobe by their intended classes if you want, but there’s very little rationale in either the lore or even the items themselves for these restrictions to be so rigid.
[edit] Coming back to this, let’s talk about a couple more restrictions I didn’t make time for the first time around: Weapon cross-mogging, and Nonmagical items.
Nonmagical items are the straightforward one. White and grey items have always been excluded from transmog, but why? There are numerous good-looking white and gray items in the game that currently serve absolutely 0 purpose but to be vendor trash, when they aren’t solely available from vendors in the first place. Weapon and Armor Vendor NPCs are little more than glorified repair anvils because their actual wares are worthless. Further, the lowest level magical world drops such as the Infantry Mail and Ceremonial Leather sets are mixes of green and white items, making it impossible to transmog their full sets unless their white pieces are recycled as higher level greens. We should be able to transmog these.
As for weapons, unlike armor, I’m not looking for classes to be able to transmog weapons they can’t normally use. However, the last few barriers on cross-mogging weapons they can use should be going away. Once upon a time these restrictions were rationalized on the basis that different weapon types had different swing animations that might present a technical hurdle (which was always somewhat suspect, given that bows, crossbows, and guns have always been cross-moggable, despite having different animations), but Legion artifact transmogs have firmly stabbed this argument in the heart, as we can now do things like transmog a mace and an off-hand into a single staff.
Daggers are the biggest offenders here, but wands, shields, and off-hands are all also currently not allowed to cross-mog into anything else. This is most egregious for cloth classes, whose weapon proficiencies are all “Staff, Wand, Dagger, Off-Hand, and one other 1h melee weapon,” meaning that literally none of their weapon types can cross-mog.
Right off the bat, daggers should be cross-moggable with any other 1h melee weapon. The only possible argument against this is class and spec visual identification, but you can already tell a rogue’s class from the fact that it just Cheap Shot you from Stealth, and good luck telling whether they’re an Assassin or Subtlety based on whether they’re dual wielding daggers, or also dual wielding daggers.
Wands should also be crossmoggable with any other 1h weapon. There is some rationale for this not being allowed, as wands are the only 1h ranged weapon type, but they are also exclusively usable by the cloth casters for whom casting magic through any weapon shouldn’t be raising eyebrows, and how often does a mage swing their weapon in melee for a sparkly star of a stick to break immersion?
Shields and off-hands should be cross-moggable. This would mainly benefit shaman and paladin casters with a particular aesthetic preference that’s denied by drop luck or feeling forced to use a shield for its armor bonus.
Which brings us to the big question: cross-mogging 1h with 2h. At the very least, cloth classes should be allowed to cross-mog their staves with their 1h/oh combos, since what weapons a clothie is using makes as close to literally no difference as possible mechanically, but a huge one aesthetically. If this could be applied upward based on specs, so that caster monks, druids, shaman, and paladins could cross-mog this way as well, there should be few if any problems. A holy paladin with a two-handed mace would be no harder to differentiate from a ret paladin than they currently are from their prot brethren when wielding a sword and shield.
Melee specs is where this starts to get tricky. There is a stronger argument that recognizing an enemy warrior’s spec based on whether they’re dual wielding, using a two-hander, or charging with sword and board is important. But in the end, I have to come back to the same conclusion I made about armor types: most players choose the classes and specs they do because they want to play that role, including its aesthetics. Just because a prot warrior could transmog their shield into a bundle of flowers doesn’t mean that many will, because if they signed up to tank, they probably want the aesthetic of wielding a shield. Even if they did choose to transmog their sword and board into a two-hander, would a little more visual variety be the end of the world?
Besides, Legion artifacts mogging across specs is already starting the final nail in that coffin.
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