I agree, op. I’m someone who really cares about the rpg aspects of the game. One thing I love about Classic is…what you see is what you get. What people are wearing or wielding is what they’re wearing or wielding. It’s also a visual indicator about their power, and of course there’s the prestige factor.
I do understand the positives of transmog though. In the Current WoW it has great value. It gives a lot of players something to do. But it’s nice to have two versions of the game so drastically different.
Yes it blows. I personally find immersion to be important and transmog is just another step in removing that. Just about everything about Retail is meant to remove any sense of immersion though. Its just a meaningless treadmill of furrys who like playing dressup and hop around in circles.
Players in the best gear rarely “look like a god”. With clashing designs and no way to recolor them, they more often look like clowns.
Look at Bonereaver’s Edge. It’s one of the best weapons in Classic, especially for how early its available, but it looks like a level 30-something blue that’s been dyed brown… because that’s what it is.
If you want to show off your gear, there’s nothing stopping you. Transmog doesn’t change that relevant gear is only available to those who put in the effort. An informed player will recognize that you’re wearing Mythic gear from the current tier. It also allows for prestige outfits like Challenge Mode sets or PVP gear.
Okay, so your taking the prestige approach. I agree, those who put in the work get the rewards. I think we’ve all relatively started on the same playing ground. Right? We aren’t born pro! All starting at the same point, and playing by the same rules, it is only our own neglect that will yield poor results. Fair game is fair game. 2. Yes, transmog could be confusing. We are human, we have an innate ability to adapt. Try it! I know you can do it! I’m no blizzard employee, but I think most of us can agree that us, as players, we want new things. If blizzard doesn’t change things in one way or another we’ll be stuck with Naxx until the end of time.
I would say if Frodo puts on the Pants of the Pwn and they look like Diapers of the Peasant that makes no sense and is in fact in no way immersive. So no, wearing a paper Tunic and appearing like your in Platemail Dragon Slaying Armor makes absolutely no sense and has no immersive properties.
You beat me to it. I was about to use a LotR reference to answer his question.
Frodo gets the dagger, Sting, from Bilbo, and then in Lorien he gets the green elven cloak. Imagine one day, the Fellowship turns and looks at Frodo, and his dagger is now a long skinny rapier, like the one used by the “you keep using that word” dude from Princess Bride. And his green cape now looks like Batman’s cape. Aragorn and the rest would be like wtf just happened???
It weakens immersion and RPG elements in games when items don’t look like they really look.
Think of another, more modern game series, where gear is also a central part, Dark Souls. No transmog. Oversight? I doubt it. The Souls series would be a very different game with transmog, and would lose a lot of its RPG character, IMO.
You don’t spend the entirety of Dark Souls building up a fantastic Giant Armor set, glistening in the dying sun, slaughtering anything that dares step up to challenge you because you just can’t get moved unless you want to move and then warp to Dark Souls II retaining this gear.
The complete reset of power from expansion to expansion moots all of this entirely. Random spore-men on an alien swamp are able to DISCARD some piece of equipment as “thanks” for saving 15 of their disgusting pod things and it will have equal or greater power than the ancient relic you pried from the cold dead(er) fingers of some foul creation of the Lich King himself. Further, because we’re in wonky-stat-land that is Vanilla, some otherwise unadorned, uninteresting items maintain their fantastic usefulness despite literal “this item is so fabled and powerful that ANYONE that wields it becomes akin to a GOD” existing and being treated as “meh”
Which match the overall aesthetic of not only a Hobbit, but the fantasy universe writ large. If LotR was WoW, we’d quest to destroy the One Ring of Power by completing the final raid of “Classic LotR” called Mt. Doom… only to have some new continent open up with an even BIGGER threat with even MORE power and oh by the way, here are some weird hippy forest dwarfs that make really fun wood items as standard gear, congratulations your new Water Dwarf Dagger is twice as powerful as Sting, lighter, never breaks, cooks your breakfast, and also works as a make-shift girlfriend for the truly desperate. Also note that all Frodo got were a select few accessories, not an entire wardrobe change.
If WoW was realigned into a singular story, from Vanilla to whatever expansion you prefer, you’d have a point, maybe. But given the rather ridiculous scaling power of nearly every race in the game (story-wise), there’s no reason some fantastic set of Dark Iron gear couldn’t match or exceed a lot of Qiraji, Nerubian, or Titan equipment.
Transmog would be far less necessary if we had customizable base looks and designs for our characters. Warlocks who always have the ability to sort of tatter up their robes, add fel crystals, skulls, etc. Everyone gets the same base equipment piece of leather or plate, but it becomes unique in the hands of a Druid vs a Warrior, and you can at-a-glance tell what kind of progress they’ve made. But we didn’t… so we don’t.
This is Classic. There are no expansions to this game, not yet. My character has no idea that Illidan is out there somewhere, and that he thinks we’re not prepared.
transmog, while at the same time having 90% of your raid content not give anything that will improve your character. blizzard seems to be good at this item scaling thing. why not make all raids doable at level 60 now, and make all loot relatively the same power level? that way we can do any raid we want to and still get some competitive gear? obviously some raids might give slightly higher item level gear if they are more mechanically complex, like 1 or 2 item levels higher, but id like to see all raids be viable again, and i think blizzard has the full capability to make it happen.
Which would be relevant if we were to get transmogrification now, rather than in Cataclysm. Not sure why this particular pile of straw is your favorite to burn but no one is making an argument for Classic to gain xmog now.
Illidan is a known factor, along with Arthas. The legends surrounding the various dragonflights and the Burning Legion are also known, at least to any half-decent scholar.
It feels like Kerg thinks that by suggesting transmog is better than no transmog, you are inherently demanding Classic also get transmog? That’s all I can make of this anyway.
It is certainly a grab-bag of categorical errors that’s for sure. Transmogrification being good or bad at all with regards to the totality of the game is a far cry from suggesting transmogrification be added to Classic. Perhaps his confusion stems from the (understandable) mockery of Classic gearing? Classic makes people look like goobers for the most part, or largely unchanged from tier to tier. Paladins won’t look interesting until Naxx clearing is standard, where we finally ditch a lot of our cloth in favor of T3 (but not all of it).
Meanwhile this Druid will remain nearly identical to what he looks like now since Naxx offers very little in the way of upgrades.
In thread on the Classic forums, I think people saying that they love transmog while complaining about how characters look in Classic can be interpreted as a criticism of the fact that Classic does not have it. And I think you are being disingenuous by pretending that’s it’s such a huge stretch.