Today in WoW: Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 29th 2011 at 11:59PM
Don't forget to check out The Daily Quest and our Weekly Podcast Roundup to find out what else is going on in the WoW community. And if you have a news tip, feel free to drop us a line and let us know.
Blue posts
Transmogging Legendary Items
Quote:
i have sulfuras and thunderfury and they were a pain to make so why cant i use it? letting every other wep that takes very little skill to get be usable over having farm mc for months for one half of thunderfury to drop, and 10 blood of the mountains and sulfurian ignots which have a LOWWWWWW drop rate. what is the legit reason.
i have sulfuras and thunderfury and they were a pain to make so why cant i use it? letting every other wep that takes very little skill to get be usable over having farm mc for months for one half of thunderfury to drop, and 10 blood of the mountains and sulfurian ignots which have a LOWWWWWW drop rate. what is the legit reason.
The current philosophy is that we want legendaries to remain quite rare on each realm. You don't see that many people running around wielding old legendary items with outdated stats -- it's a prestige/flavor thing. That said, a lot of the old legendary weapons still exist in the game, and the challenge to obtain them today is greatly trivialized. But if people want to go back and get them for nostalgic reasons, that's cool. Again, it'd be for prestige, fun, and flavor, but not a feasible decision for obtaining a new combat look.
What's not cool, at least in our minds, is watching people go back in droves to trivialize old content for legendary-quality items so they can replace their current weapon look with one that's supposed to be incredibly rare.
Under the Transmogrification system we're adding in patch 4.3, we really only see two options for legendary items: A) we keep them out of the system so they don't flood the realms and lose uniqueness; or B) we remove every legendary item from the game as soon as the originally intended challenges of obtaining them are trivialized.
I'm sure plenty of people would go with the latter option, but for now we see option A as less cause for frustration on the part of the playerbase at-large.
WoW news from other sites
- MMO-Champion Season 11 Armor Sets Model Preview, Patch 4.3 5-Man Dungeon Loot Preview
- Wowhead News 4.3 Preview: Professions, Holiday Pets, Spell Effects, and More
- Patch 4.3: Raid Finder feature preview
- It Came from the Blog: Join us for Brewfest 2011
- The OverAchiever: Examining patch 4.3's new achievements
- 15 Minutes of Fame: Progressive guild thrives under uncommon leadership team
- WoW Insider Live Stream: End Time
- Addon Spotlight: Raiding essentials for tanks
- Patch 4.3: Tier 13 set bonus changes announced
- Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses
- World of Wardrobe: Going out in Outland for tier 4
- WoW Rookie: Why you should care about patch 4.3
- Patch 4.3: New color-blind accessibility mode
- World of WarCrafts: Crafts from around the web
- Patch 4.3 PTR Video: New spell effects for shaman, warlocks, druids
- WoW Moviewatch: Alexstrasza
- The Queue: Sealab 2021 Insider
- Around Azeroth: Dance like no one is watching, please
- Mine of WorldCraft blockifies Azeroth
- Breakfast Topic: Is it time to implement artifacts?
- Star Wars: The Old Republic accidentally taunts potential testers
- Conquer Online taking itself on to the iPad
- Future making hard choices about U.S. publications
- Assassin's Creed: Revelations delayed until December on PC
Today in WoW brings you the preceding days's WoW and gaming news. Also of community interest: our podcast listing, staff blog and Twitter listings and WoW websites and blogs (all part of our Guide to WoW Resources). Find out what's going on in the WoW player community every week in The Classifieds.
Filed under: Today in WoW
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SamLowry Sep 30th 2011 12:10AM
Oh noes--we can't have people running around with current weapons that look like old legendaries! The horror, the horror!
And yet the people who actually looted old legendaries back in the day will just keep them in the bank because they're pointless to equip...unless you just want to stand on the bank steps and show off.
Helston Sep 30th 2011 12:36AM
"What's not cool, at least in our minds, is watching people go back in droves to trivialize old content for legendary-quality items so they can replace their current weapon look with one that's supposed to be incredibly rare."
Legendaries are meant to be legendary. The word "epic" both in WoW and in general has already lost all meaning (although Blizzard did a good job in making sure they were hard to get at the start of Cata). I'd much prefer if they tried to stop that happening to 'legendary'.
Al Sep 30th 2011 1:56AM
I would thought have the stats, underlying story, and effort involved made something "legendary". Apparently I missed definition 12: "Superiority derived from 24 other people boosting you over an artifical hurdle."
DarkWalker Sep 30th 2011 9:30AM
@Al:
I agree.
In fact, I actually see the fact Legendaries take more social than gaming skills to obtain (i.e., it's far more important to convince 24 other players to work on your behalf than to be a skilled player in the first place) as a very negative point.
Also, I really dislike the very concept of uniqueness through artificial scarcity.
Marius W. Sep 30th 2011 1:05AM
How about just letting us have fun in this GAME and let us transmog our current weapons to look like old legendaries.
What difference does it really make?!? A handful of people showing off awesome art that you made. Sounds good to me. Running old raids and doing the legendary quest chain sounds good to me. Or are we supposed to forget about old content as soon as a new xpac comes out? I like the game as a whole, not just the current xpac. Could just be me.
Mummrah Sep 30th 2011 1:08AM
The only time you show off things is in town. If you're in town you can simply equip the legendary.
Marius W. Sep 30th 2011 1:12AM
I like my toon to be appealing to me and the artwork of a legendary works for me. Im only showing off to myself, really.
I will also say that is why most others equip older high end items as they love the look.
Again, its a game. Let's have fun with it.
Zapwidget Sep 30th 2011 1:37AM
"How about just letting us have fun in this GAME and let us transmog our current weapons to look like old legendaries."
Having old legendaries is fun because not everyone has them. If you are able to xmog them then people will go back in droves to acquire them, more so than they already do, and they will cease to be unique, and thus cease to be fun.
Now, if they find a way to caveat it so that you can only xmog your gear to look like the legendary if and only if you acquired that legendary during the tier it was introduced in, that would be something, but seeing every rogue, warriors, paladin, and DK in the realm with a Thunderfury because they decided to solo farm it? No thank you.
Marius W. Sep 30th 2011 1:48AM
The server Im on does a lot more raids from previous xpacs than the actual current raids of Cata. Its an RP server so old gear is still relevant as it has a high population of actual RP'rs still active.
Walk around enough and you will see 1 or 2 people with whatever legendary fits them and their class.
Its fun to see.
Now the reality of legendaries is this. They aren't easy to get. They don't drop each and every time you down a boss. The drop percentage is still very low. Even if it does drop you still have to roll against other people to get it.
There are some legendaries that have a quest chain to get through that requires other rare drops. Its not an easy process to get a legendary.
So "seeing every rogue, warriors, paladin, and DK in the realm with a Thunderfury because they decided to solo farm it? No thank you." is not going to happen. Its a lot of work to get a few of the legendaries and most wont put in the time to do it.
The azzinoth legendary from Illidan was unique as there wasn't really much to it other than getting it to drop. That wasn't ever a guaranteed drop and people have been farming for it for months before even seeing it drop if at all.
People forgot what it takes to get a legendary. Its not easy and never will you see a whole realm with it. We all look the same anyway so why not add some awesome artwork to mix it up a bit more, along with the old tier gear that we are going to use to mog our new gear with.
Once again, its a game. Let us have fun with it.
Artificial Sep 30th 2011 2:02AM
"Having old legendaries is fun because not everyone has them. ...they will cease to be unique, and thus cease to be fun."
I have never understood that sentiment. If it's cool, it's cool, regardless of its popularity. If it isn't, it isn't, again regardless of its popularity. If I think it looks nifty, I want it, and I couldn't get a flying leap whether everyone else or no one else has it. What possible difference would that make to how cool it looks?
DarkWalker Sep 30th 2011 9:46AM
@Artificial:
In my specific case, I go a step further: if I like something, I want to share it, to make it available to more players.
I see anything that I have, but other players are prevented from obtaining, as worthless. I don't try to obtain such unique things, and usually, as soon as anything I have is made unattainable for new players, I stop using it.
I also don't even consider rarity or difficulty of obtaining items when deciding what to wear/use. I don't care that showing a set of T13 gear is supposed to be a mark of skill; I don't like their look, so I would transmogrify them to something else - say, the new dungeon set - as soon as I got any of them. I don't care that a mount is rare; the moment I didn't have to use a Proto-Drake to have faster flight, I went back to my old engineer mounts. The only rare drop mount I've ever used was the Headless Horseman mount, and just because, for a time, it was one of the few flying mounts that could be used underwater.
I'm not sure how rare other players like me are, but for someone like me, the current scarcity policy around legendary items pushes me away from ever wanting to get one of those, and, to a smaller degree, pushes me towards other MMOs that don't have this kind of BS around the highest end gear.
Ithrandil Sep 30th 2011 3:40PM
There is something to be said for earning an item. Just as in real life, something you work for has more intrinsic value than something you are given. For instance my favorite mount is the Netherwing Drake. It's no longer the best looking mount in game, but at the time it took QUITE a bit of time and effort to attain, first getting epic flying (5k gold was an achievement in and of itself back then) then doing the the dailys for weeks, slowly earning rep. Add in the story of who you were helping and who they are fighting and you have a mount has more meaning than simply "it looks neat". There are items that don't look as cool as other items, but they have a certain meaning to me becuase of how I got them.
And of course there's something to be said for having something rare. Rarity adds it's own coolness factor to something which can be a lot or only a little depending on the person. If everyone has something, it loses the rarity factor and something you might have been proud of getting becuase it was hard or you were just lucky takes a back seat to pure aesthetics.
Ninerva Sep 30th 2011 1:34AM
Solution: Legendaries can be only be transmogrified into, and used to transmogrify, other Legendaries. In this case, they wouldn't have to be the same type of weapon since there are so few of them, but your class would still have to be able to equip both of them.
flokofcgulls Sep 30th 2011 8:11AM
I think this is a very interesting solution to the problem!
I'm currently farming Thunderfury and Sulfuras on my warrior, and have yet to see either binding drop, or the eye of ragnaros. I will probably never have the opportunity to get my hands on a current-tier legendary, so this solution would not apply to me. But still, I think this topic brings up the same feelings of seeing people in T1/T2 back in vanilla...seeing something you don't see everyday gives it a certain mystique and excitement, at least for me.
Take that away, and I agree it does lessen the experience of seeing these things. Once you see it every day, it's not that big a deal anymore. Sure it will be fun for the person wearing it, but I think this decision was made for the group, and not the individual.
This solution would be an awesome compromise.
Morgatho Sep 30th 2011 2:19AM
I'm still working on a Thunderfury on my hunter, I've been going in a killing Garra scene ToC days trying to get it, and scene lvl 85 I've been soloing the whole place with no binding still. But when I do get it and I equip it for the 1st time and feel that tingly feeling of accomplishment Ill feel really proud of my self. Then Ill hearth to see 20 other people with it Xmoged onto something, that feeling will be gone cause ill just be one of the crowd. So I'm completely ok with blizzards desolation on this
Arrohon Sep 30th 2011 6:09AM
"The current philosophy is that we want legendaries to remain quite rare on each realm."
I didn't know that allowing you to make your weapon to look like a legendary will suddenly cause them to start appearing. They already exist, but you don't see them because it's an inconvenience. If someone likes a weapon model and have the weapon that sports it, let them see the model on other items no matter what that model is!
Thayer Sep 30th 2011 8:16AM
I don't have a legendary, I'm not about to go start farming for one now, but a guildie has one. I saw the effort he had to put in to get his legendary and I think he deserves to be able to use it for transmogrification if he wants to. Letting legendary owners transmog their hard earned legendaries isn't going to suddenly make them easier for others to acquire. Maybe restrict them this first go around, but allow them to be mogged later after the majority of folks have already mogged their weapons and so won't be as tempted to go farm a legendary? But really, if someone does decide to assemble a legendary to transmogrify, they deserve to be able to use it after all that effort. The only legendaries that are "easy" to acquire are the warglaives and Thori'dal, and even those have depressing drop rates.
puffcake Sep 30th 2011 8:35AM
"The current philosophy is that we want legendaries to remain quite rare on each realm."
Well, then there are more than just those two solutions to this:
1. Anyone who obtains a legendary while content is still current gets a feat of strength which unlocks the ability to transmog that legendary. Anyone getting one after the content is trivialized simply gets an achievement like they currently do.
2. Legendary weapons act like heirlooms and scale appropriately with level, but are unobtainable after content is trivialized. This removes the transmog issue altogether.
I completely agree that legendaries should be rare, they should be hard to obtain, and they should be true status symbols, not common pieces found everywhere. But the input to get one versus the relatively short lifetime of being able to use said weapon is absolutely absurd. Replacing a legendary weapon with a green or blue from the next expansion is ridiculous. If these are legendary quality weapons, they should be useable indefintely in some form or another by the people who obtained them when they were truly difficult to get. Besides, not every legendary can be used by every class, so the wait until a particular class's weapon "comes around again" is ridiculously long.
Amaxe Sep 30th 2011 11:04AM
"The current philosophy is that we want legendaries to remain quite rare on each realm. You don't see that many people running around wielding old legendary items with outdated stats -- it's a prestige/flavor thing. That said, a lot of the old legendary weapons still exist in the game, and the challenge to obtain them today is greatly trivialized."
There is a self-contradiction here. If a lot of them exist, they aren't rare.
So that's the problem here: The best way to keep them rare is to remove them once the new expansion makes the acquisition easy. They failed to do this and now it is easy to farm.
The problem is, we can use the argument against transmogging in general. We don't want too many [X} running around. Therefore [X] shouldn't be transmogged. That stylish hunter gun from Karazhan, that grand marshal's bow (which btw is what I plan to use on my hunter)... we don't want too many of them around... it should be a prestige thing with outdated stats.
It's Blizz' game and they can make whatever decrees they want, but their logic here is bad and it makes them seem arbitrary.
My proposal is:
1) Permit legendaries BUT...
2) Make it so a key component can no longer be acquired once a new level cap makes getting it trivial.
Ithrandil Sep 30th 2011 3:20PM
I would hardly call getting any of the legendary weapons "trivial" now. The BC ones are simply luck, but you still need a party to go through and do BT and sunwell. Wrath legendaries are generally harder to get since you need to either convince a guild to go back and farm that old content for weeks or run your own pugs. Maybe in a few expansions when you can solo or 2 man ICC25, but you still have the infusions that make it a pain. For my thunderfury it took me a year and a half of killing garr every week to get the 2nd binding. At the same time, my friend was farming the mats for the sulfuron hammer, it took him about 6 months to get all the materials.
There's certainly a lot more legendaries floating around now than when the weapons were current and it's certainly easier at 85, but they are hardly so common that you would see them everywhere. Sure, a lot of people would go out and start farming for them and they will probably quickly lose interest. And I'm sure a few will finish a legendary that wouldn't have finished it before just so they could mog it, but due to the effort involved I think most people that really really want a legendary are going to get it whether you can mog it or not, and I don't see an issue with allowing these people to show it off.