Posts with tag vanity

Blizzard EU Community Blue Ancilorn has posted a poll over on the EU forums asking players about one of the more prickly pieces of loot in the game: Mr. Pinchy. Usually with loot, Blizzard has been pretty good lately: if there's a piece that you want, there are usually a few different ways to get it, one of which usually requires grinding (i.e. picking up tons of Badges) rather than just getting really, really lucky. But with vanity stuff, it seems like they feel free to just put us at the will of the dice roll, and almost no other pet is more random than Mr. Pinchy. Not only do you need to level fishing (which, admittedly, is much less random than it used to be), and not only do you need to fish up a random item, but then, you need to hit a random choice of five different options. It's a slim chance on a rare chance on a nearly impossible chance.

Which explains why even those who have been trying for him for so long (ahem, me -- as you've probably heard on our podcast) haven't picked him up yet. The biggest percentage in the poll (about 26% of respondents, as of this writing) says they've been trying a lot and haven't gotten him. But strangely enough, the lowest percentage says "an absolutely enormous amount" of effort went into getting him. Which suggests that the people who are getting him are underestimating the amount of time they're putting in -- just how much fishing is "a moderate amount"?

At any rate, it seems like Ancilorn is just asking to be asking. Mr. Pinchy is definitely as much of a vanity item as they come, and there should at least be some items in the game that are very, very rare. It does seem at times that every time I suggest Blizzard won't move on something, they do, but I'd say in this case Mr. Pinchy will stay as rare as he is.

Reader Dave sent word of another bug in the game after the latest patch (thanks!) that might cost players some money. A player was trying to sell his Hyacinth pet on the Auction House (there's a small craze on vanity pets right now, thanks to the achievements) when he ran into a problem -- an error told him that you couldn't AH "an item with used charges." Except that he hadn't used the pet yet -- it wasn't in his pets screen. But Blues have confirmed that with pets purchased or obtained but not used before the patch, this can happen -- the pet will be unsellable.

Darkmoon Faire cards are apparently having the same issue, but as you might expect, it's unlikely that Blizzard will take steps to fix this, both because all we're talking about here is AH selling (not a critical game mechanic), and because this problem doesn't seem to be affecting new pets and cards, only cards that were purchased and owned before the patch. But maybe they will hotfix it, we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyone that horded pets to sell on the AH could be in trouble, though -- if you've got a significant amount of gold stored up in pets you were intending to sell, you might be out ot luck.

There's been some talk as of late on the topic of having vanity gear in WoW, or gear that is just for looks and separate from the gear you wear for stats. It's even come up in our very own WoW Insider Show. The idea is that you have one set of gear that affects your character, and another set that is what people see. A couple other games are doing it, and mixed thoughts aside, there are rumblings of this feature possibly coming to Azeroth.

My personal take is that it's a horrible idea. I think having epic gear look good and not so epic gear look not good is all part of the motivation for me to get epic gear. But instead of just being a nay sayer, I've thought up a simple solution.

A lot of players are already carrying a separate set in their bags for vanity purposes. There are all kinds of great add-ons (like Outfitter) that allow you to swap all your clothes at the click of your mouse. I like this. I think this suits game play better from a role playing perspective. When you're out in the middle of Netherstorm, you're gonna wear the best gear you got to protect yourself, but when you arrive in Stormwind, you wouldn't trudge around in your armor. You'd get some stylin' city clothes on before you hit the pub.

Blizzard had mentioned plans of bringing Outfitter functionality to the game as a standard feature way back at Blizzcon for raiding purposes. Wouldn't it be great if they integrated vanity features as well? They could give us options to automate gear swapping based on what zone we're in or what day of the week it is!

So what do you think? Should vanity gear come to WoW or does it kill gear progression?