Are common quality items rare to find?
by Anne Stickney 
Dec 14th 2011 at 8:00PM
Common may not be quite so common anymore. While working on an article about a legendary quest chain, I recalled the days of class quests -- specifically, the days of Molten Core and The Eye of Divinity, along with the Ancient Petrified Leaf that started the class quests for epic weapons. Epic anything was rare to see in the early days of vanilla, and even when Molten Core first came out, it was rare to see people decked out in purple gear. But these days, it seems everyone is wearing epics, as it's dropping from dungeons with alarming frequency.
When you look at gear labels, each color of gear is assigned a different label. Common quality items are white, uncommon are green, rare are blue, and purple of course are epic. But as the game has evolved over time, each expansion offered more raids and more epic gear, which led me to the question -- just how common is common gear? How rare is rare? Is uncommon gear really that uncommon? I hit Wowhead just for a quick look at these items to compare numbers, and the results were actually pretty surprising.
When you look at gear labels, each color of gear is assigned a different label. Common quality items are white, uncommon are green, rare are blue, and purple of course are epic. But as the game has evolved over time, each expansion offered more raids and more epic gear, which led me to the question -- just how common is common gear? How rare is rare? Is uncommon gear really that uncommon? I hit Wowhead just for a quick look at these items to compare numbers, and the results were actually pretty surprising.
According to an oh-so-brief glimpse at Wowhead's database using its filter, there are 12,492 common-quality items in the game's database at this point. That's a lot of common junk, all right -- but there are 12,442 uncommon-quality items. That's just a few less than common quality. Rare is actually suitably rare in comparison, with only 9,404 items in Wowhead's database. Epic, on the other hand -- that's a different story altogether.
That brief glimpse at Wowhead turned up 13,971 epic-quality items in game. Again, this is after the most cursory of searches, and that number may be a little high or a little low. But that's almost 2,000 more items than your average common-quality item. Sure, I could just be arguing semantics at this point, but the point is still there -- epic items are not at all scarce in supply, even though they're rated far, far higher than their supposedly common cousins. It can be safely assumed that as we progress even further into WoW's expansions to come, this number will only get larger.
All this makes me wonder if we've outgrown the days where common items are ... well, common. As we level and particularly with the leveling revamp, our quest rewards -- even at the lowest of levels -- are still of green quality, and many of the end quest chains in those shiny new zones even offer rare-quality items as rewards. With the new transmogrification feature, it is impossible to transmogrify armor that is common quality, no matter how nice it may look. In fact, it seems as if common-quality items are slowly on the way to being phased out altogether, since they serve no real purpose.
Are we slowly approaching a day where common-quality items, weapons and armor become as rare and elusive to find as legendaries? What do you think?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Shane Dec 14th 2011 8:04PM
Just because there are a higher number of Epic items does not mean they are more common than uncommon. Consider Wrath Gems. There were just as many Epic gems as there were uncommon, but there was a much higher frequency of the uncommon when prospecting.
Ace Dec 14th 2011 8:12PM
I was going to say something similar.
While I will admit that purple gear is much more common to find on toons now than it was in vanilla, the logic and premise for the article is flawed.
More variety does not mean more items in game, or more common drops. The Breastplate of Despair, an epic quality item, drops nowhere near as frequently as Embersilk Cloth. But with a scan of the wowhead database, you are comparing them as a 1:1.
Instead, from your scan of WowHead, we can assess that there is definitely more VARIETY in epic-quality items than in common-quality items.
In order to assess how rare they truly are, you would need to take the item, multiplied by the mobs that drop it and the drop chance each mob has, and then you might get something close to an idea of how rare purples truly are compared to whites.
Interesting article though, it IS odd that there are so many more varieties of epic gear than common...
bushkanaka86 Dec 14th 2011 10:52PM
You are correct that her logic is flawed on this topic, however, part of what she said is correct. I had some time so I did a little research of my own. While it doesn't include drop rate comparison, I would say that this indicates that "common" items might be getting phased out.
I did a comparison of how many of each kind of item were added each expansion by searching required levels of 1-60, 61-70, 71-80, and 81-85. (I realize it isn't completely accurate since there is stuff from Northrend that would fall into the 61-70 range, etc. Also, there are more common items need for low levels. It also doen't take into account items that were added in an expansion that required a level of 1 to use.)
1-60
11574 Common
7878 Uncommon
4863 Rare
2319 Epic
Looks about right and for comparison sake, there are 1.47, 2.38, and 4.99 times MORE COMMON items than Uncommon, Rare, and Epic respectively.
61-70
518 Common
1708 Uncommon
1806 Rare
2655 Epic
A complete reversal here. There were 3.3, 3.49, and 5.12 times LESS COMMON items in Burning Crusade.
71-80
367 Common
2169 Uncommon
1494 Rare
5403 Epic
There were 5.91, 4.07, and 14.7 time LESS COMMON items in Wrath.
81-85
33 Common
687 Uncommon
1241 Rare
3594 Epic
There are currently 20.8, 37.6, and 109 times LESS COMMON items in Cata.
As you can see, it appears common items are going bye-bye!
Numb Dec 14th 2011 11:27PM
I basically said this elsewhere in this thread, but it applies here as well: It makes sense that you're seeing a lot less "common" items as you get higher level; at level 70+ you're well beyond the area where "common" people would be using "common" weapons. Remember, even in WoW the world isn't filled with adventurers - in theory most of the folk are townspeople/farmers/businessmen/etc.
NetherLands Dec 15th 2011 3:49AM
@ Numb
"Remember, even in WoW the world isn't filled with adventurers - in theory most of the folk are townspeople/farmers/businessmen/etc. "
The moment annonymous spear-carriers, rodents and other background fluff 'wildlife' stays common-level as well, you'd be right.
But so far the trainees of the super-secret wolf commando-troops in eg Howling Fjord, the superb training practices of the Twlight cult (commoners become level 80 in days! No wonder they get so many recruits) and the limitless-supply of lowly footguards that give older Bosses a run for their money and what not belie that statement.
Not saying that having eg common guards be level 85 doesn't break immersion and make little sense from a world-building view, but still.
Caz Dec 15th 2011 11:23AM
It has been my experience that Common and Uncommon items are much harder to find - and far rarer - than Rare and Epic items.
Try farming up a named set of greens, for instance - they have drop rates less than 1% from sometimes hundreds of different mobs. That's far from being 'uncommon' and falls more into the realm of impossible. You can search the auction house for months on end and never see a single piece from many of these sets. I know this is in part to there being so few players out leveling, but that should not matter - common items and uncommon items should have common and uncommon drop rates and not lower drop rates than rare items.
Consider this: Anyone can farm a dungeon boss for a blue or purple, eventually you'll get it, and probably in less than a week. No one can farm supposedly common and uncommon wolrd drops. It's a statistical impossibility that you'll ever get what you are looking for.
Snuzzle Dec 15th 2011 1:24PM
I agree with Caz. I've been looking for the Buccaneer Vest for m priest's transmog set for months, and the closest I've gotten to having one is seeing it on the AH for 1k gold. I refuse to spend that much on a level 18 green. But the best I can do I farm Stocks and Deadmines and pray. On the other hand, getting Cataclysm shoulders for my shaman was dead easy. I got together a coupleof friends and we farmed Leotheras and Loot Reaver and got them easily.
Uncommon items for transmog are truly epic.
Evelinda Dec 15th 2011 11:54PM
Ace makes a pretty damn good point. I've been soloing kara on my druid since the end of wrath. I'll usually skip netherspite, so I'll do 10 bosses, which means 20 epics. Each of those bosses might have 10 items on their loot table, so let's say 100 different epics on offer. But i only get 20. I'll also get maybe twice that in uncommon items, however, and hundreds upon hundreds of commons (if you count individual cloth items as one common item).
Granted, modern raids have a hell of a lot less trash, but the game in general doesn't, and despite what people may be wearing, i reckon of you turn out their backpacks, they'll have more commons than epics. I know i have way more cloth,food and healing potions than I have epics.
Numb Dec 14th 2011 8:08PM
You know, technically speaking "common," "uncommon," and "rare" all imply quantities (at least to some degree) while "epic" really only implies scope... So while it may seem a bit odd to have more epics than commons, it isn't really *wrong* grammatically.
Erebos Dec 14th 2011 8:14PM
My thoughts exactly. "Epic" doesn't imply anything about rarity. And since uncommon items did turn out less common (only by 50, but still), and rare items were rarer in comparison, then I'd say it's still accurate.
goldeneye Dec 15th 2011 10:14AM
Gray/Common items are Zerg. Epics/Legendaries are Protoss. Uncommon/Rare are Terran :)
DaSandman Dec 14th 2011 8:10PM
Maybe Blizzard should bump down the quality of gear each expansion - so for example purples become blue, blues become green etc.
Then being all decked out in purple would actually mean something again?
razion Dec 14th 2011 8:29PM
This actually happens every expansion (not really degrading old gear directly, but by making the gear you get for the new expansion, greens from quests, replace epics), but it doesn't seem to help with the "value" of epics very much. I'm not sure degrading past gear from the last expansion would really do anything, either, as it doesn't really impact the current gear "scaling problem". If anything people would be upset that their old epic gear doesn't have the status it held anymore.
People go through greens and blues far too quickly in the start of an expansion. People don't spend most of their time in the uncommon to rare gear 'gear progression zone/path' for it to feel "normal" or even uncommon/rare as the name implies anymore. You quest to the level cap, you do dungeons, get full blues, and from that point it's points until epics and you don't ever go down until the next expansion, meaning for the next three or more patches, you never go to rare, let alone green again. It's a progression line that only has to be dealt with once (and as such, in my opinion, doesn't feel very effective).
And this doesn't say anything for mob-dropped or store-bought grays and whites--they're never used, unless you by chance are either trying to role-play or you just got hacked and all your gear is missing so you need literally 'something' to cover-up.
Jawn Dec 15th 2011 2:39AM
"Then being all decked out in purple would actually mean something again?"
Actually, it does mean something, though maybe not what some people want it to mean.
It means: that the gear you are wearing is better quality than blue gear.
artifex Dec 14th 2011 8:13PM
Anne, if 50% of kobolds carry a melted candle, and 10% carry 1 of 4 uncommon candles, do the uncommon items outnumber the common ones?
Pyromelter Dec 14th 2011 8:24PM
I agree with your point, Anne is using kind of a flawed logic... there may be that many uniquely different items, but common items drop at a significantly higher rate than uncommon, rare, or epic items.
Look at a demonic orc grunt from hellfire peninsula, for example:
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=16871
Excluding quest items, he drops only 9 different common items, while there are over 200 different uncommon items on his loot table, as well as 19 rare items. But then look at the drop rates. Those 9 items have drop rates from .2%-7%, while all of the other green/blue drops are .06% and under.
So to answer the header question, no, common quality items are not that hard to find, they drop all the time, and I don't see why that would change in the future.
Eliandor Dec 14th 2011 9:44PM
I had similar thoughts as Pyromelter, common items are what common people wear. We PCs are very uncommon, even epic, and we wear armor to reflect that. Also, how many kinds of "twill shirts" or "wool pants" are there, vs green items that change every 5 levels?
DaSandman Dec 14th 2011 8:13PM
BTW how do you edit your forum avatar?
Micheal Dec 14th 2011 8:13PM
I always thought the terms referred to how likely we were to loot the item off a world mob, just out there in the zones and not in a dungeon/raid/vendor.
That way it still works. You're most likely to loot trash, less likely too loot greens, very unlikely to loot blues, and have a in a gazillion chance to find an epic.
Micheal Dec 14th 2011 8:15PM
yeah so i'm seeing that doesn't quite work in terms of the English used, even if in my mind it made sense.