Friday, October 25, 2013

Improving Transmogrification

Transmog was a fantastic addition to the game. Not only did it give us an opportunity to look different than our peers, but it gave us a great excuse to go run old content and see all the old stuff that we don't do anymore.

WoW Insider had a nice article talking about how the addition of transmog to Diablo III is an improvement over the way it's handled in WoW. I totally support the idea of continuing to opening up transmog more, and particularly on playing around with storage.

The biggest thing with Diablo III's transmog is that you don't actually have to have the piece of gear in your inventory to use it. Instead, any piece of gear you acquire is basically checked off on a list, and you can use any appearance you've unlocked.

This would mean huge things, but primarily it would make Void Storage obsolete. Right now, Void Storage is essentially a bank for things you never want to take out. Now that you can transmog directly from your Void Storage (which you actually could do previously, but needed an addon to do so,) the stuff sits there, never to be released. And granted, that's fine, but the main issue is that Void Storage is still limited in size.

I'm a packrat, in-game and out. I know I may never going to transmog my Death Knight to a full set of tier 7 with the Dark Edge of Insanity off C'thun, but I like having the option (seriously, while I'm not a huge fan of the overall tier 7 look, it goes very well with that axe.) I think Paladin tier 2 is overrated, but dammit, I've still got to have my set of it just in case!

But the best news regarding this new form of transmog is that it's account-wide. Now admittedly, Diablo's set up in a more account-wide style, having your characters share gold and be able to trade gear back and forth regardless of whether you've worn it or not, but I think WoW could stand to be a little more alt friendly in terms of cosmetic things.

Now, regarding Legendaries. Some day, I'd love to have Shadowmourne. It's the closest you can get to having Frostmourne, and is really, hands-down the ultimate Death Knight weapon (even if the proc effect was copied for a cooldown for Retribution Paladins, albeit with totally different flavor.) Yet the great effort put forth to create Shadowmourne would ultimately be to make something I'd only be able to show off when I wasn't fighting anything. Shadowmourne was the best possible weapon to use in ICC, but that was a time when doing anything over 10k DPS was seriously impressive.

I realize that Legendaries would be very popular, and this might diminish how special they were, but you'd eventually have something like the aforementioned Judgment Set. When transmog first came out, every Paladin scrambled to put a full set together for that look. Yet now, while it remains popular, you also see a lot more creativity.

So here's another question: should you still draw some lines? Should a Hunter be able to put on a bunch of Shaman tier gear (if we're going account-wide.) That's not too far outside the realm of possibility. and in fact can be achieved when using not-set pieces. But should a Paladin be able to dress up like a Mage? Personally, I'd love to put together a kind of battlemage look, with plate armor and a cloth hood (think tier 5 or season 2 Mage helmets) or possibly go the reverse, with a caster decked out in plate gear (an affliction Warlock dressed in Death Knight gear, or: "how Unholy Death Knights should have worked.")

But maybe that's too ridiculous. Sure, thanks to my spec choices, my Paladin tends to be dressed in mixes of Warrior and Death Knight lookalike gear, but maybe Blizzard wants to still at least separate classes by armor type. I don't know how strongly they feel about this, but if Diablo III's version of transmog is any indicator, it's that they're willing to experiment with it.

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