In last weeks Q&A, Ion talked about Blizzard’s plan to loosen transmog restrictions.
Since then, they’ve announced plans to allow the hiding of 3 additional slots, Gloves, Bracers, and Chests. Allowing us to hide all slots but our pants. This is (in my opinion) going to add a great deal of additional freedom when designing outfits, and is a very good move overall.
How else can transmog be improved?
As a frequent poster on the Transmogrification subreddit and the infamous “Transmog Baron” of the Rogue Discord, I’ve reached out to the mog community and assembled a megathread of possible improvements to the current Transmog system.
These changes are broken up into three categories, based on difficulty of implementation.
Let’s start with the easiest changes.
These are the changes that would take very little work to implement, mostly by changing keywords or removing restrictions. They would have the biggest positive impact on the transmog system for the smallest required work.
- Standardize 1-Hand and 2-Hand weapons : A lot of improvements have been made to the transmog system as far as weapons go, most recently with fist weapons being able to be mogged with maces, axes, and swords. However, some weapons like daggers are still unable to be transmogrified onto other 1-hand weapons. Any weapon a class can use should be able to be transmogrified onto any weapon with the same hand requirement.
- Make iconic boss armor cosmetic rather than gear type specific : Over the past 5 years, iconic bosses have had a tradition of dropping a piece of their armor as a trophy of their defeat. From the Tusks of Mannoroth, to Archimonde’s regalia, to Xavius’ colossal shoulderpads. However, these pieces of gear have always been limited to one gear type. Warriors didn’t kill Garrosh, everyone killed Garrosh. Letting any class use these rare pieces of armor not only adds additional incentives to farm old content, but lets any player lucky enough to get them show off that they bested a legendary villain of azeroth. The cosmetic armor system is already in place for all class transmog pieces, and would just require a keyword change for those pieces.
Boss armor pieces include Tusks of Mannoroth, Eredar Lord’s Regalia, The First Satyr’s Spaulders, Doomed Crown of Lei’Shen, and Lockjaw Shoulderplates.
- Review and fix belt/tabard interactions : The ends of tabards automatically hide when wearing a belt with a hanging 3D element… except when they don’t. Some belts with no hanging element still hide the tabard, while others with a long hanging element don’t The existing belts should be reviewed to more accurately respond to tabards.
(Alternatively hiding/unhiding tabard bottoms could be a toggle, which I’ll mention in a later part).
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Allow past legendary weapons to be transmogged: We can transmog the MoP legendary cloaks and the Legion legendary armor, paladins can transmog ashbringer and shamans can transmog doomhammer. So why not let us transmog weapons like Fangs of the Father or Shadowmourne? They’re no more prestigious then the artifact weapons we’re already allowed to transmog.
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Allow collection of any armor type on any character : This one is pretty self explanatory, if a priest runs Throne of Thunder and they get plate armor, add that armor to their appearance collection even if they can’t personally transmog it. (I’ll mention the priest being able to actually transmog that armor lower down).
Next, let’s look at the somewhat difficult changes.
These are changes that would still work with WoW’s current transmog system, but would require more work to implement.
- Fix 1-hand artifact weapon transmogrification : Since BFA’s release, players with 1-hand artifact weapons have been unable to use only one artifact in transmog. A paladin with Truthguard has been unable to use just the shield, and a rogue with thunderfury has been unable to use only 1 sword, despite these transmogs being possible in legion. This is because of how the artifact mog system was fixed to accommodate druid forms, but all other 1-Hand class artifact mogs were broken in the process.
There are two fixes for this, either an easy but more patchwork fix by reverting non-druids to the artifact mog system we used in the beta, or a more complex fix by overhauling artifact transmog.
- Toggle tabard bottoms : Rather than have belts decide which tabards get their lower half hidden, make a long/short tabard choice while assembling an outfit. This would remove the need to have blizzard look through every belt, but could be harder to implement.
- Remove armor requirements for transmog alltoghether : This is an idea that’s thrown around from time to time in the transmogrification community and it’s one of the more controversial suggestions, but I’ll still put it here since it’s a megathread. Keep gear types in game, but remove their restrictions in transmogrificaiton. Treat all armor appearances as cosmetic and allow any class to transmog any armor.
Finally, let’s talk about the hard changes.
These are the things that would be incredibly difficult to implement, and might not even work in WoW’s current mog system or engine. I wouldn’t hold my breath for any of these, but it’d be cool if we got them.
- Dyes : You can’t talk about transmog without talking about armor dyes. A customization system that allows you to recolor pieces of armor with a variety of various dyes, several popular MMO’s and singleplayer games already have Dye systems, and adding one to WoW would allow for a much greater variety of outfits.
- Remove 1-hand/2-hand restrictions entirely : Earlier, I mentioned removing 1 and 2 hand restrictions. Another (far more difficult) change would be to remove all restrictions on weapon mog. Allowing a paladin to transmog any weapon type he could use, regardless of source weapon. This would have to utilize a system like the Artifact transmog system, and it’s unclear how it would affect some abilites (how do you shield slam with a mace?). It would be extremely difficult to implement, but it would open up outfit freedom.
And there we have it, a collection of the mog changes I’ve seen recommended by my various communities.
If you have any additional suggestions for how to improve the transmog system, please feel free to add them below. My hope is that this serves as a sort of megathread for Blizzard when looking at what changes the community would like to the Transmog system.
Thanks, and happy mogging!
