Burning Crusade weapon models 'mogged the most
by Mathew McCurley 
Dec 27th 2011 at 5:00PM
The Burning Crusade is heralded as the golden age of World of Warcraft, a time when the genre that WoW perfected hit a beautiful peak, a wonderful balance between difficulty and accessibility, that appealed to the hardcore MMO veterans who dominated the genre until the Wrath of the Lich King days. Others hated it entirely. No matter which way you lean, it's clear that The Burning Crusade had strong art direction, with otherworldly weapons and armor juxtaposed against traditional fantasy tropes. The fact that Burning Crusade items are the most popular right now does not surprise me in the least.
Check out all of the statistics, as well as each class' top five transmogged weapons, over at MMO-Champion.
Filed under: The Burning Crusade, Transmogrification, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Udderpowered Dec 27th 2011 5:04PM
My clearest memory of the TBC days was the constant complaints of gear being covered in 'crystals and pink shit', very funny to see people are all too keen to go back to it.
Twill Dec 27th 2011 5:08PM
This only applies to weapons.
However, this is my orc:
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll305/chaoswolf1982/WoWstuff/outlandclownsuit.jpg
also..
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/238356799_jy85z-L-2.jpg
Chris Dec 27th 2011 6:24PM
Took me many days to find a BS who could make me the Helm of the Stalwart Defender. Now I can properly look like a Warrior Clown.
Djbrill Dec 27th 2011 6:36PM
I think the main problem was that all gear had very distinctive designs with flashy colors. If all your gear was out of one (design) set, it looked decent. However, once you started combining pieces of gear from different designs, you most likely started to look like a clown.
LynMars Dec 27th 2011 8:37PM
You had to search far and wide to make a matching gear set, and some of the gear 'sets" are incomplete, requiring further searching for substitute pieces. That's why so many folks felt it so "clownish" I think, especially since many pieces that were good for one's class didn't match at all.
I know my first impression was questing in Hellfire and getting a tight top and mageweave-style "pants" on my priest, with a bright hat. It was crazy, and the weapons at endgame were really bright and bulky for the most part. However, I seriously considered T5 or T6 for my priest, and the lookalikes for my mage.
I wanted Outland gear for my paladin, a human born and raised on Draenor while Azerothians were stuck there. I went with purple judgement for tanking, righteous plate for ret with a Reforged Trollbane, and the Aldori Legacy Defender with an Inuuro's Blade for tanking (I wanted the nice simple crystalforged sword, but stupid main hand vs one-hand restrictions...).
Accessibility had a part in it; I can solo all the dungeon content easily, and you don't need a large group for raids at all (even BT and Sunwell can be done in smallish groups). The look I wanted for RP reasons were another.
My priest did end up in 25man T7, because it's the closest I can get to the original T3 set now; she's using a staff from a Classic priest chain (not Benediction, though it's in my bank), and I have the mace from the Quel'Delar chain and the dagger from the AQ Gates for other weapons. My mage, I just need the white dress from End Time and she's set with a simple BC staff. My Rogue is in T9 with Fear & Vengeance equipped. My Hunter will be in revamped-Classic quest gear and weapons. So I'm pretty much all over the board.
Going back to get Loremaster and some Reps there on my pally, there were a lot of neat quests and storylines I'd forgotten about. There were aspects of Vanilla-style questing but some early ideas that seeded Wrath-style streamlined questing. It was pretty fun in the end, but like Classic, people look at it through tinted lenses.
Evelinda Jan 9th 2012 7:12AM
If nothing else, the clown suit helped drive people's desire to actually get a tier, because it was the best way to get an outfit that looked good. i was so happy when i got my gladiator's chain spaulders on my hunter. you can see them on my profile pic, and i've got her shoulders mogged to them now.
all the same, BC absolutely contained my favourite armor sets. priest tiers 5 and 6, shaman tier 5, warlock tier 6, and most of all paladin tier 6 (my absolute favourite set in game) are all just incredible. And the design of the weapons; they may have been covered in crystals and pink shit (hell, they definitely were) but they were iconic, and they were beautiful. too much of WOTLK was drab, which is not unfitting for an expansion dominated by the undead, and i feel like a great deal of Cata has gone the same way, which i must admit, is a little more surprising.
TLDR, i'm not at all surprised, BC was a damn fine looking expansion.
Twill Dec 27th 2011 5:07PM
Classic WOULD be used the most, but we CANT because of the one-hand / main-hand / off-hand fiasco!
RAGE.
It's so freaking annoying that I can't use a main-hand from classic on a one-hand 85 weapon. UGH
radda Dec 27th 2011 6:10PM
They do that because putting a main-hand weapon in your off-hand looks awful because it was never intended to go there.
One-hand weapons were modeled for both hands, but turning it into a main-hand means you can potentially equip a main-hand in the off-hand slot. They'd rather piss off a few people than have a bunch running around with glitchy looking weapons.
loop_not_defined Dec 27th 2011 6:20PM
Thanks for this comment, radda. Never even occurred to me. I'm betting Fist weapons are the worst offenders when it comes to modeling specifically to left and right hands.
Chris Dec 27th 2011 6:46PM
@Twill - Great picture of your Orc. Can you tell me what the gear is called? I would love ot collect the rest of my clown outfit for my warrior?.
Revynn Dec 27th 2011 7:14PM
Not necessarily.
There's OH weapons that are classified as such because they're vendor items (PvP gear, JP blues) priced the same as a shield or caster OH to keep pricing fair for all classes without making MH weapons (often more important for melee classes) too easily accessible
Caster MH's are classified that way because BC Resto Shaman (and more recently, Enhancement Shaman) were dipping down into the Enhancement tree far enough to grab Dual Wield and then rocking two caster weapons, which was a HUGE boost to throughput. Rather than rework the Shaman talent tree, Blizz went through the game and reclassified all caster weapons as MH.
There are some MH/OH weapons that are specific to a slot because of asymetrical art, but the majority of those are Fist Weapons. But stuff like Maimgor's Bite or Aurastone Hammer? Nah.
I'm hoping they'll loosen the rules on that a bit in the future. The Aurastone Hammer is one of the few (read: only) 1H Mace models in the game that I actually enjoy and it annoys me that I can't even use it on my melee classes that are currently using 1H maces as their primary weapons. Some people like walking around hitting things with Tankards of Terror, I don't.
Telwar Dec 27th 2011 5:10PM
I wonder how much of that is the pretty high accessibility of TBC content.
You can go and solo or duo most of the TBC raids, albeit with a bit more work than you can vanilla raids. Compare this to Wrath stuff, which both generally needs more warm bodies to complete, and the stuff is more familiar, since we were using it relatively recently.
lazymangaka Dec 27th 2011 5:21PM
My thoughts on the matter exactly. There's very little TBC content that a reasonably geared player of any class can't solo at least some of, making even the highest levels of TBC gear very widely available. Add to that the fact that a full set of Brutal Gladiator gear takes all of 2 or 3 BGs to farm, and you've got the perfect storm good and brewed.
spike.hemans Dec 27th 2011 5:12PM
If you look at most of the weapons being Transmogrified on MMO Champion, most of the popular Burning Crusade models are just the ones that are sold by vendors in capital cities for cheap prices, giving players a good looking alternative to their current Cata ones. This doesn't mean they are the best in the game, just that most people want to grab something quick thats a visual upgrade not spend 1000 years doing ICC runs for Wrath weapons
razion Dec 27th 2011 6:04PM
My thoughts exactly. The feature hasn't even been out for a year yet and we're already piling up reports and the like. I think these sorts of surveys will be much more interesting at least once we start heading into Mists, and no sooner.
Minstrel Dec 27th 2011 6:21PM
Though, I wouldn't discount the idea that a lot of the most popular art comes from BC. Though this article was about weapons, many tier sets that are considered iconic come from tier 5 and tier 6. I look through transmog-related threads a fair amount on MMO Champion and a lot of the most popular weapons are things like the Apostle of Argus and Exodar Life-Staff/Staff of the Redeemer.
Of course, I'm a bit biased...my personal opinion is that equipment art hit a creative peak in Burning Crusade. Vanilla items (many of which do have an appeal for me) are much simpler, and Wrath and Cata struck me as having "bigger and spikier" aesthetic which I know appeals to many, but not me, I suppose. So perhaps my sense that BC art is very popular on transmog threads is just confirmation bias!
Kierbuu Dec 27th 2011 6:55PM
I agree, Minstrel. Everything in my transmogged set came from Burning Crusade content. I didn't do it on purpose, however, when I assembled a set for looks in modelviewer it all came from BC. Vanilla gear is nice, but has too few polygons. The Wrath and Cataclysm gear is too 'sparkle pony' for my tastes.
Imnick Dec 27th 2011 5:14PM
I guess it makes sense that people aren't transmogging as many Cataclysm or Wrath weapons, it's hard to get groups for raids there if you don't already have them, and using Cata weapons might just make people think you're wearing bad gear.
Nagaina Dec 27th 2011 5:22PM
.....I will freely confess to solo-grinding my way to Outland Dungeon Hero on not one but two toons in pursuit of transmog gear. The visual design of some of the BC era gear and weapons might have been made of pure crack -- stripper plate and that staff that looks like a miniaturized, stretched-out felpuppy, I'm lookin' at YOU -- but some of it was pure gold. Like the Righteous set. (No, I'm not sorry I kept killing you, Kargath. Suck it up.) And the Greatsword of Forlorn Visions. (Also not sorry that I kept deforesting the Botanica.)
And, yeah, I do suspect the accessibility of Outland dungeon content very much had something to do with it. My death knight wears his transmogged starting blues everywhere because the next-nearest set of gear that I would like for him drops in Ulduar. *Heroic* Ulduar at that.
Peitry Jan 18th 2012 7:16PM
Most of BC is easily soloable. I'm sure if people could solo BWL then classic wow transmog would be ALOT higher. Best looking armor/weapons imo. :D