Breakfast Topic: A few of your favorite things
by Danny Robertson 
Jun 7th 2010 at 8:00AM
Every once in a while, Blizzard truly raises the bar in designing a raid. My personal favorite is Ulduar from patch 3.1. The boss encounters required strategy, while still remaining unique, and the graphics in the zone are some of the coolest things in the game. However, one of the only things that a character can permanently keep from a raid is the loot.The legendary mace Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings and the Starshard Edge off Algalon the Observer are by far some of the coolest item graphics I've seen in this expansion.
Even in Icecrown Citadel, few items can measure up to the epicness of these stellar designs. After all, one can only see so many bone-spiked maces before they begin to get old. While a few items like Bryntroll the Bone Arbiter are pretty exciting and unique, Blizzard didn't even create new item models for the climactic boss in the Lich King: only two of the 28 weapons (excluding heroic versions) that the final boss drops are unique, and one of those is repeated between 10- and 25-man. In my opinion, Blizzard could have taken a few more days to design some really exciting and unique weapon designs before releasing the Lich King. While I'm no hardcore raider, I would really love to sit in Dalaran exhibiting a one-of-a-kind weapon from the hardest boss in the expansion, just as the Ulduar raiders could back in 3.1.
What do you think? Is there an item that sets the bar in graphic design? Do you think Blizzard should spend more time on item graphics so there aren't as many repeats for end-game encounters, or does a simple recoloring make the item cool enough for you?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Gamer am I Jun 7th 2010 8:08AM
We can't forget that there are a ton of items in this game that Blizzard needs to make models for. Between the items we get from quests, heroics, the four tiers of raiding, battlegrounds and arenas, and even the various factions, that's a lot of models to make if they want them all to be unique. I did a search on Wowhead, and there are almost 100 weapons in this game that are epic and have an ilevel of 200 or above, so that's more than 100 ideas that Blizzard would need to come up with if they didn't reuse models. Not to mention the non-epic weapons, which would surely sap some of their creative juices, and all of the armor pieces they need to make models for, as well. All things considered, I think they do a good job as it is.
PvtDeth Jun 7th 2010 8:43AM
Really, though, the Lich King can't drop unique models? It's the Lich King, not just the final boss of the expansion, but literally THE boss of the entire expansion. There are many weapons that drop throughout the expansion with entirely unique models, some of them in simple heroics. I would rather that those weapons would have been skimped on and that art time put toward Icecrown drops.
Someone later mentions the fist of the deity from Gundrak, in my opinion one of the best weapon designs ever. It doesn't especially match the boss it drops from, or specifically any boss or dungeon. Why not have saved that for a higher drop and made a matching off-hand?
The overall art motif of ICC is perfectly fitting, it could have used more depth and variety, though.
Kemikalkadet Jun 7th 2010 9:35AM
It's kind of sad that the sword dropped by LK on heroic-25 uses the same model as the sword dropped by marrowgar on 10-man. Only difference is one's orange and one's blue, i doubt most people would notice the difference.
Docrev Jun 7th 2010 2:36PM
There's actually more unique models that fall from LK25 than the writer gave credit to. He neglected the fact that the model for Heaven's Fall is only used by the normal and heroic versions.
James Jun 7th 2010 10:30PM
Either way, as many items that drop off of the Lich King, they should have given more items a more unique design.
I don't care if the models were used and heroics and they became sparkly in comparison. When it comes down to the Icecrown Epics when you walk by a random badass raider, it doesn't catch your eye. Most of the gear is opaque compared to tiers of the past (T6, T2, etc). You see it and you're like "he looks like Joe Schmo A who got his Triumph Gear"
Gear in the last two expansions has lost its originality, along with every other item in the game. Everything has been so homogenized that even Tier Gear is starting to all look like the same regurgitated BS.
While I tend to have Blizz's side, I hope that in lue of this design shortage they have been focusing on this expansion they are actually attempting to make Cataclysm the proverbial game changer. At his point, this game could have been digested by a cow and spit up onto the ground: Looks the same, feels the same, is the same, but with a different color in the facade.
Hal Jun 7th 2010 8:12AM
I liked a lot of the BC weapon designs, despite "clown adventurer" leveling syndrome.
There are certain models I've enjoyed that certainly didn't see enough use. I like the gargantuan vrykul 1h maces you can pick up. I loved several of the ToC weapons and off-handers. I even like several of the NPC weapons you saw in Wrath, such as the swords Dalaran guards carry (which I understand to be an Arena weapon from the BC days), as well as the glowing wrench carried by the Argent Tournament gnomes.
Repeats are just a tricky thing; there are some designs that get used dozens and dozens of times, while others make one appearance and then vanish. And, as we've seen here, there are many that go through design processes and then never see the light of day. I wonder if Blizzard has ever said anything about this, as it'd be interesting to know why things end up the way they do.
Luci Jun 7th 2010 9:06AM
I too liked a lot of the BC weapons/gear. The then-current tier sets all seemed really fitting to their classes and then there were also these little beautiful drops like the Pillar of Ferocity.
However, I love that gear in general matches better than it did in BC. I remember one time my mage had those blue and white cloth pants that drop in like BF reg and a purple long-sleeved tunic.... I bought new pants off the AH because I couldn't stand her looking so ridiculous.
Swifteye Jun 7th 2010 10:21AM
Speaking of "gargantuan 1H maces", I gotta give props to Melia's Magnificent Scepter. When I saw that thing in the AH, it *made* my Mage buy it to mail to my Priest when she became high enough level for it (Priest was in her 40's at the time).
Sure, there are better Priest weapons for the level out there, but to me the stats are good *enough* to justify wielding a BIG F***ING HAMMER!!! (the exact subject line used in the mail from Mage to Priest, only without asterisks) over the other available weapons... on my petite little stick-armed female human toon, no less. I still have it in the bank, and it still makes me laugh. :D
jealouspirate Jun 7th 2010 8:14AM
Call me crazy, but I really like the item design of the starting gear, particularly of the classes that start in robes.
Forget tier gear and fancy weapons with a thousand spikes, skulls and stars shooting out of them. I wish I could still fight with my simple robe while and a gnarled wooden staff.
Flowette Jun 7th 2010 10:31AM
Well hello there, Crazy!
Flint Jun 7th 2010 11:46AM
Bit similarly to this, I think my favourite group of gear as a whole is the Azeroth levelling gear you get throughout the 60 levels. As a whole it's really simple and doesn't have the flashiness of TBC gear or the gruffness of Wrath gear, but it simply works so well. For those 60 (well, 58 I suppose) levels you progress from simple rags to simple combat armour to finally proper gear you could actually imagine doing some proper fighting with. And it all goes so well together despite being a multitude of looks - a lot of things clearly have a distinctive design to other gear of the same level but put together it still looks like a reasonable, cohesive whole, and which never becomes WAY too similar like Wrath where everyone looks the same regardless of class or level. I'm currently in the middle of levelling a paladin and have recently stepped into wearing plate, and despite the fact that her gear has been put together from items all around the two continents it works so perfectly as a whole.
Felix_NZ Jun 7th 2010 5:05PM
For this reason, I send a bunch of those heirloom Honor tokens through to my alts to pick up some of the lvl60 PVP armour - some brilliant looking sets there, especially the plate (WoW needs more asymmetrical sets!) I also wish that one day some of the BC Season gear becomes available again :( I'd love to get my Pally a set of the red--cloth variety T6.
Duffman Jun 7th 2010 8:16AM
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Someone had to say it. :P But the weapons that caught my eyes are the Warglaives. Essentially, you're weilding FOUR weapons instead of two! :D
Rai Jun 7th 2010 8:19AM
There is only one decent looking dagger in Wrath and it drops from Algalon.
Sad rogue is sad.
Docrev Jun 7th 2010 2:33PM
The one they linked was the caster dagger. The melee dagger with the same model drops off of both hard mode Iron Council and Algalon in Ulduar 25: http://www.wowhead.com/item=45607
Keleron Jun 7th 2010 8:21AM
Not one item in particular, but the T5/S2 warlock sets were my favorite. When I saw warlocks out side the tournament grounds wearing navy blue versions I got a little excited and hoped maybe that was going to be T10:( Anyway I would love to see a slightly upgraded version of that in the xpac:) (the warlock T6/S3 is my 2nd favorite look)
wow Jun 7th 2010 10:52AM
T5 over T6? No way. T6 with the wings that unfurl periodically is the coolest outfit from vanilla thru Wrath, regardless of class.
phunkyjazz Jun 7th 2010 8:24AM
I think you are absolutely right, Danny. I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand that having a unique model for every item in the game would merely, in the long run, give us less items. But I do wonder why they don't save more of them for the high levels of raiding. All of my armor (hunter) from ICC has the same wire frame, and usually the same model entirely.
I wonder if they did it to avoid what Hal called "clown adventurer", but I am not sure that they couldn't come up with an array of mix and match models.
iltafas Jun 7th 2010 10:07AM
Yeah, well, but that's hunter gear.
zubbiefish Jun 7th 2010 8:27AM
I'd be happy if they re-used some of the older "unique" looking items.
I understand that they only have so much design time on any given segment so reclouring or just re-useing some of the more interesting bits from the past isn't a terrible thing.
Also, I recal seeing images of some stuff they didn't use. I think it was the shields that look like the CoS one but different colours that realy made me wonder just how much other cool stuff is tucked away somewhere that may never see the light of day.
Anywho, I don't think it's stupid or lazy of Blizz to only have 2 of 28 weapons off of Arthas (excluding Heroic) be unique. After all Val'anyr and Starshard Edge as examples of cool stuff you could get endgame are both exceptionaly difficult to get and therefore poor examples. I'd argue that unique looking weapons should only drop off of the Heroic version of the Lich King fight. I'll never own them but if Val'anyr and Starshard Edge are the benchmarks for "cool looking engame things you can walk around looking cool with" then to match the difficulty in attaining something so special that is how it would need to go.