Filed under: Transmogrification

What you see above is the result of time marching on - in my draenei's right hand is Sulfuras, the Extinguished Hand, a drop from Firelands. In the left hand, Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, the legendary drop from the original Molten Core. (Yes, I know technically it doesn't drop, the Eye drops, you craft a Sulfuron Hammer and then use the Eye on it, I've had the thing since MC I know how I got it.) What I'm showing you is essentially the orderly progression of time via graphic upgrades - you can essentially see the history of the game unfolding via the difference between these two weapons.

Everything from the spikes to the grip to the shape of the head, it's all more detailed and crisp on the newer model. The older model is a collection of polygonal shapes that bear only a vague resemblance to a hammer compared to the newer model, which is itself still not as good as models we have in the game now, never mind some of the Warlords drops we're about to see. The gap between these two hammers is the gap between 2004 and 2011, and here we are, three years later than that - and they show us how much a ten year old game can in fact change.

On live servers you can't transmog polearms over swords, axes or maces (and vice versa), but on the Alpha it's a totally different story, as you can see in the header image above. No idea if this is an intended change or not (I hope it is) but it's certainly a welcome one for those of us who happen to carry a Hellreaver in our bags.

If, like me, you bought the Grand Expedition Yak (at an obscene price) because you just had to have a reforger on your mount -- maybe you have as big a problem as I do with the concept of monetary value, I don't know -- you were probably slightly saddened to discover that reforging was leaving the game. For it meant that you would no longer have a reforger right there on your mount for that one time you used it for yourself before ending up the entire raid's reforge buddy when they all got new gear.

But now with reforging gone, we've all been asking what Mystic Birdhat's ultimate fate would be. Would he simply be removed? Would he be replaced with someone else? No and no. Instead, he's now apparently a transmogrification vendor, and there was much rejoicing. Now, be warned, this is the Alpha. Things are subject to change. I couldn't actually get Mystic Birdhat to transmog any of my gear - he just sat there, smug about his new job description.

I don't usually take a lot of time with my alts. Sure, I'll level them, I'll get them moderately geared, but I don't dedicate huge amounts of time to them. However, I will always without fail make sure that they look nice -- a task made much easier with transmog. But even then, I'm still picky about what my characters will wear. If I'm going to make them look snazzy, I'm going to take the time to make sure they look really, really snazzy.

Which means that I'm not just paying attention to the outfits that they're wearing, I'm also paying attention to what mounts that set goes with -- both ground and flying. This may seem like overkill to most sane people, but I figure if you're going to go to the trouble of putting together a look, you may as well make it cohesive enough that people can tell some thought went into putting it all together, right? I am, however, fully aware that not everyone indulges in my particular brand of armor collection and carefully crafted looks.

But I'm curious, because the feature has been out for quite some time now, and I can't really imagine the game without it at this point. How far do you go for transmog? Do you craft cool sets for your alts, as well as your main character? Is your bank alt dressed up, too? Do you match with mounts and other accessories, or is simply having an outfit that doesn't look like a clown suit enough for you? Have you farmed endless instances looking for that one particular piece of armor that brings the whole set together? Or is transmog just something that isn't for you?

Transmog addicts may have some good news for patch 6.0. When LFR was introduced with Dragon Soul, the last raid in Cataclysm, players flocked to the content and gathered armor and items that had their own unique color schemes. After Mists of Pandaria was introduced, players leveled to 90 -- and the ability to run Dragon Soul on LFR difficulty disappeared. While players can still farm the raid on Normal and Heroic difficulties, the unique color sets released specifically for LFR were no longer available to those max level characters.

This was in part due to the nature of LFR. The only way to raid LFR level content is to queue for it through the raid finder interface -- you can't simply change the dropdown difficulty on a per-character basis, as you can with Normal and Heroic difficulties. Once you've passed the level threshold for Cataclysm content, the option to raid Dragon Soul LFR simply disappears from the raid finder interface. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem -- but transmogrification addicts everywhere have been looking for a solution to obtaining those older, uniquely colored items, and Lead Game Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas just tweeted that a solution may be on the way in patch 6.0.