The Queue: Transmogrification
by Mathew McCurley 
Aug 17th 2011 at 11:00AM
So, we've learned from Gamescom that patch 4.3 will contain a feature that allows you to change what your gear looks like with some sort of cosmetic slot or reforging. We have no idea how gear transmogrification will work, but I think that it will work similar to reforging, maybe? I don't know. I'll be honest -- I never thought that this was something Blizzard would do, because of its adamant stance on what gear means in WoW as a status symbol and gauging players' progress just by looking at them.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I am excited for more character customization options and armor transmogrification. To be truthful, I would rather have more customization for my character's face, skin, build, and all that over gear, but I will take what I can get. Now to decide which warrior tier to wear ...
Oh, right. Questions.
mik3st3r asked:
Why do only some flying mounts work in ground mount-only areas? For example, my Netherwing Drake does not work in a raid such as the Firelands, however my Windrider does. I believe somebody asked something similar to this before, and the answer was they tried to make creatures which made sense as ground mounts usable. Windriders have legs. But so do Netherwing Drakes?
Interestingly enough, drake mounts did work as ground mounts in the Cataclysm beta. When we were running Blackrock Depths for the first time, we could mount up inside the dungeon on ground mounts, and the drakes were perfectly capable of being summoned and used inside. I would love to have the ability to run with my drake-type mounts on the ground, but I would imagine it is a size thing. Also, a jump animation. The jump animation on the drakes in BRD was wonky and weird. It probably just didn't look the way Blizzard wanted it to look.
Now that I think about it, I don't think it's a size issue. I mean, the mammoths are in game and they are ludicrously large and annoying, more so than drakes.
Sergel asked:
What obstacles do you feel an mmorpg faces in telling a deep and dynamic story compared to a solo rpg?
Well, for starters, an MMO has a hard time making you, personally, the hero. A single-player RPG can easily create and weave a story around the central character -- you -- and make it a compelling exercise in storytelling. In an MMO, you are the quintessential grunt on the ground, part of a larger group that has to make allowances for game play designs that cut into the heart of storytelling.
My idea for how to make that type of story compelling, especially when you have to play what is essentially a cog in the machine, is to make the game about the cogs. Stonetalon Mountains for the Horde does this remarkably well, creating the most single-player experience in WoW. But the MMO is a different beast -- you have to tell story through not only the quests and the interactions but the world itself, which is something I think Cataclysm did pretty well.
Compelling storytelling is not impossible in an MMO; it's just different. The focus isn't on you, which makes your progression that much more weird to deal with.
Shinae commented:
Speaking about asking questions at Blizzcon, we should make a list of questions that are a waste of time because they've been asked ad nauseum and the devs are not going to say anything just because YOU asked about it.
I'll start out:
Please don't ask about the next legendary weapon (especially at the lore panel).
Yes, please. Please, this. I know that we all love to get up in front of the mic and try to Red Shirt Guy the creative devs and the dev teams at BlizzCon, but one of my biggest pet peeves about the show is the amount of unrelated-to-the-panel questions people ask. We're all here to learn and interact, not to be privy to your guild's dumb in-joke that no one gets.
mikesauch asked:
Q4TQ
What is the 10th icon in archaeology next to Vrykul? The one that's a picture of a hat with a pick and shovel.
I believe that's the placeholder icon for whatever new archaeology races Blizzard will be adding in the future. I don't think it actually refers to any next race, but just a placeholder.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Boz Aug 17th 2011 11:01AM
One of the statements yesterday by Ghostcrawler went largely overlooked, but really caught my attention:
"That gets us dangerously close to the old model of stacking a single uber stat (like Stamina or defense), which makes gearing choices too simplistic for tanks. Did something drop? Okay, put it on. (Contrast this to a DPS caster who might want more or less hit or might favor haste over crit, etc.)"
This was surprising to me because since 4.0.1 gearing decisions outside sets and trinkets have largely been determined by iLevel due to the availability of reforging. The secondary stats are the only stats within a given iLevel that change much, but those matter very so much less than core stats* like Strength, Agility, and Intellect that I had to wonder if Blizzard wanted us making any gearing decisions at all. For example, using Decimation Treads over Earthen Scale Sabatons or vice versa is going to yield very little noticable difference, if any.
However, Ghostcrawler's statement seems to state the opposite, so now I'm confused. Are we supposed to have a variety of gearing options, or has gear of the same iLevel become relatively equivalent?
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*Obviously there are exceptions as shield tanks need Mastery, but the importance of primary stats and their similarity at a given iLevel cannot be denied.
MattKrotzer Aug 17th 2011 11:21AM
I agree that GC's off-base with this. Knowledgeable tanks are very mindful of their stats, balancing a need for dodge, parry, mastery, and stamina, just as a melee DPS will mind their hit, expertise, crit and strength/agility. Healers watch their intellect, crit, spirit and haste.
Each role generally focuses (mostly) on 4 stats. From the implications of GCs blog post, they're going to try and push tanks into watching 6, rolling hit and expertise into the mix as a means of applying them to the new "active mitigation" paradigm.
It's a bad idea, and undoes a LOT of the work they did to simplify the game for new and casual players. Overcomplicated stat weights isn't going to help tanks, and by not helping tanks, it doesn't help anyone else, either. (If a tank decides it's too frustrating, then there's less tanks, and RDF gets worse.)
Grovinofdarkhour Aug 17th 2011 11:42AM
I thought the idea with equalizing primary stats across a given ilvl was that it allowed us to focus on optimization via secondary stats and make gear decisions faster. Nobody wants to spend 6 minutes killing a boss just to spend another 6 while people "crunch the numbers" to see if the drop is better than their current piece.
Vorenos Aug 17th 2011 11:59AM
i think that quote was kind of taken out of context. from what i understood of GC's article, it seems like they aren't simplifying tanking, just threat. As such, tanks aren't going to HAVE to max hit/exp. this is a good thing to me. as a tank, i have always found survivability stats to be much more of a priority, and reforging into hit/exp always seemed like a slap in the face to me. personally, i look forward to the change. i would rather NOT get hit, then focus on making sure i hit, ya heard?
/rant
Sir Broose Aug 17th 2011 12:23PM
The way I read it, his comments could be paraphrased, "by minimizing aggro issues, we want to be mindful to not over-simplify tanking, so we will be considering making the stats that are currently used to build threat still important to the tank in other ways."
This is not all about tanks. The threat change, in my eyes, is at least as much for dps quality of life as it is for tanks. Not pulling aggro has always been a dps responsibility. And if you're a dps on top of your game, you know that there are times when you have to seriously throttle yourself, and sometimes threat still sneaks up and surprises you, because the tank has to deal with holding aggro on multiple targets, picking up new ads, using interrupts, and such, and just can't always be pounding "skull" with his/her most threat inducing abilities.
The goal here is to make the interaction of the roles (tank, dps, and heals) work better together - not to simplify tanking. So I think he's just saying, "we're going to be careful to make sure this doesn't over-simplify tanking."
Boz Aug 17th 2011 12:24PM
@MattKrotzer
"From the implications of GCs blog post, they're going to try and push tanks into watching 6, rolling hit and expertise into the mix as a means of applying them to the new "active mitigation" paradigm."
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No; the idea is to increase threat so tanks do NOT have to focus on those stats. Indeed, he states, "We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in 4.3 to where it's generally not a major consideration." Since taunts are not longer able to miss, tanks should be able to all but ignore threat stats such as +Hit and +Expertise in favor of focusing on mitigation stats on their gear.
@Grovinofdarkhour
"I thought the idea with equalizing primary stats across a given ilvl was that it allowed us to focus on optimization via secondary stats and make gear decisions faster."
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This might be true, except pretty much any higher iLevel piece is going to be an upgrade because reforging allows players such huge versatility. Not once have I seen a player pass on an upgrade because secondary stats were suboptimal; you can always reforge other gear to compensate (e.g. Reforge excess +Hit to +Crit, for example).
@Vorenos
"i think that quote was kind of taken out of context. from what i understood of GC's article, it seems like they aren't simplifying tanking, just threat..."
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My question has nothing to do with tanking, and everything to do with the thought process behind upgrades in gear. I'm picking it out from a tanking post, but he specifically discusses DPS classes here, "Contrast this to a DPS caster who might want more or less hit or might favor haste over crit, etc." This is the part that has me confused, because gear decisions are very easy: Whatever is a higher iLevel almost always seems to be the better choice outside sets and trinkets.
It's not stacking a single stat, but it has simplified gearing considerably; rarely is someone going to wonder from where their next upgrade comes, and it limits gear variety, to some extent, if I'm interpreting it correctly.
Boz Aug 17th 2011 12:28PM
@Sir Broose
My question has nothing to do with tanking or the threat changes: It's about the philosophy behind gear design buried in a subtext of the post.
On one hand Ghostcrawler says that they do not want gearing choices to be too simplistic, and on the other gearing choices were made very, very simplistic with the introduction of reforging, so what does this say about the direction of gear design?
Japith Aug 17th 2011 12:29PM
I am very interested to see how this shapes up. At the start of Cataclysm I was 100% about avoidance / mitigation on tanking. Recently, I have found much greater success by including expertise into my strategy, which has resulted in much more control of all situations from trash to bosses, with ultimate survivability loss at a bare minimum. It was hard to make myself believe that losing dodge was ok, much like giving up Wrath-era Stam Stacking, but it has proven to be much better.
This may or may not be what the devs are attempting to accomplish - make us use more of the color pallette, instead of just the primary colors of survival stats.
My main is a bear tank and our survival is affected by our damage, which may make this less useful to you plate guys.
/rawr
Jack Mynock Aug 17th 2011 1:20PM
@Boz
Actually, I've passed on higher iLvl gear several times. it really jsut depends on your class/spec. Take Enh Shaman for example. For them haste is so incredibly bad, that it's not unusual for higher ilvl haste/crit gear to be a downgrade from lower tier mastery/ crit or hit gear, despite the increased agility.
Also it seems worth pointing out, given the subject of the article, that this scenario is much more common with tanks. Many tanks view mastery as their most important stat. Being a secondary stat, it's not uncommon to see a lower ilvl piece that is more desirable than it's higher ilvl, mastery-lacking counterpart.
MattKrotzer Aug 17th 2011 1:38PM
@Boz:
"No; the idea is to increase threat so tanks do NOT have to focus on those stats. Indeed, he states, "We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in 4.3 to where it's generally not a major consideration." Since taunts are not longer able to miss, tanks should be able to all but ignore threat stats such as +Hit and +Expertise in favor of focusing on mitigation stats on their gear."
You need to read past the part where GC talks about the threat hotfix changes...
"However, we want to move the shorter cooldowns like Shield Block, Holy Shield and Savage Defense so that they work more like Death Strike. Blood DKs have a lot of control over the survivability they get from Death Strike, BUT AS PART OF THAT GAMEPLAY, THEY HAVE TO ACTUALLY HIT THEIR TARGET."
I capitalized that so you could see it. The next line he says is, "The other three tanks will get similar active defense mechanics."
As DKs are the only tank that currently seem to concern themselves with hit and expertise, it's a fairly reasonable path to follow that it will become a concern for the rest of us, based on what Ghostcrawler said.
ady5078 Aug 17th 2011 11:09AM
According to Kotaku, transmogrification has you "combining" two gear sets, for instance Rogue Tier 2 and Rogue Tier 12. Then, the new set should have the look of the Tier 2 but the stats of the Tier 12.
http://kotaku.com/5831732/cataclysm-comes-full-circle-deathwing-is-going-down
"The biggest tweak coming with patch 4.3 is the Ethereal ability to transmogrify a players armor.
Starting with the patch, players will be able to choose the armor they think looks the best, as well as the armor that is most powerful to combine them into a single set.
"We have a wealth of armor sets we created that people no longer use," said Tom Chilton, lead World of Warcraft game designer.
Worse still, Chilton said, as players start to top out they being to look very similar because many players seem to stick to the high level, epic gear.
The hope is that players will use "transmogrification" not just to mix and max their favorite armor, but that this new ability will encourage some players to go back through the game on the hunt for some of the armor they may have passed up because it was under-powered.
To transmogrify a piece of armor it has to be the same type (cloth, leather, mail, plate) and stay within the class. Players just take it to an Ethereal who has set up shop in town; they transmogrify the two pieces into one."
Amanda A. Aug 17th 2011 11:15AM
So... do you lose the original piece? ;_;
Argojax Aug 17th 2011 11:23AM
As long as I can get rid of my WWE championship belt in favor of something nicer, I'll be happy.
Puntable Aug 17th 2011 11:33AM
If I have to go back and farm every piece of a tier set to transmogrify my armor to that set, I won't bother. I already had every piece of every tier (except 3) back when it was relevant content. I'm not doing it again.
AudreyR Aug 17th 2011 11:40AM
I'm kind of uncertain how to react to this.
First thought is "More bank slots!"
But my next thought is "Now I'll have to collect more old gear set pieces for when I replace what I'm wearing."
Sinfulle Aug 17th 2011 11:50AM
Imperial plate sets for my plate users! Will be even more fun to look like a Stormwind guard and have the stats of current gear(I know, the flashy weapon ruins the disguise). Though, some revealing BC plate armor might be fun also.
@Amanda if players lost the original piece just to change the look of a replaceable tier item.......geeze I hope they don't do that, some older armors people collected took a great deal of effort to acquire.
Sir Broose Aug 17th 2011 12:01PM
This does, indeed, sound like you come to the Transm. guy with 2 pieces of armor, but leave with only 1. That puts a bit of a damper on it for me, unless, like reforging, it's reversible.
Caz Aug 17th 2011 12:13PM
Finally - my priest can wear white, and actually look like a fantasy-world priest. Or maybe I'll dress him up in the black Ironweave Battlesuit I spent months collecting before Cata launched. Or maybe I'll go for a Tier 5 set - I have all but one piece!
I could spend months putting together outfits and doing nothing else!
This is dangerous!
Minstrel Aug 17th 2011 12:19PM
What I'm curious about is whether you can only use the look from other "armor sets," or if you can choose specific one-offs. Like, can I only reskin my priest's robe with, say, the T9 priest chest, or could I skin it with the Black Embersilk Gown (a Catacylsm tailoring craftable with no stats)?
I hope any class-spec appropriate (so, in a priest's case, cloth) armor/clothing can be used for the appearance change. That would really open up massive customization possibilities. Only being able to use tier sets would really drop how different you could be, though still better than nothing!
absintheaffliction Aug 17th 2011 12:27PM
"@Amanda if players lost the original piece just to change the look of a replaceable tier item.......geeze I hope they don't do that, some older armors people collected took a great deal of effort to acquire."I don't see why it shouldn't honestly. I can accept some sort of cost for doing it, if needed.
Another consideration before we get too jumpy about the limitations of the system is how they code it to work, which could solve the problem of farming multiple appearance items to replace new current tier items when you get them. If they tag each piece of gear by "what it looks like" compared to "what item is this", then there won't be a problem. I.E. if you have pally T12 shoulders and transmogrify them to look like T2, the shoulders could then have the T2 appearance tag. Then when you get T13, and transmog them with your T12, the T2 tag is applied to the T13, because it was on the T12. So there is a possibility that one original item could allow you to customize unlimited items.