There’s lot of excited folks out there. Finally, a way to lock yourself into a favorite wardrobe! Nostalgia is uniting teams of players to go farm those lost tier sets, players with a bank full of clothes are congratulating themselves on their foresight, and fashionably dressed blogs are reaping the readers.
How can something that reminds of us of Calvin and Hobbes not be win?
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I’m just not that excited about the transmogrifying closet, and here’s why.
1. Main… or alt
I get asked a lot why I don’t have the tree form glyph. Mainly I don’t care for it because I think being a giant treant of healing awesome is just way more fun than being a twig-boy. However, I’m also not nostalgic about tree form. I wasn’t a druid when tree form was available, so I’m not all teary-eyed about being a tree for entire fights instead of just periodically.
My main has changed over the years, but right now, my main doesn’t have any tier history. Farming up a bunch of clothes for days gone by doesn’t make any sense for me, because I don’t have those days!
2. Who Am I Wearing It For?
This is how I commonly view my characters:
Can you tell what I’m wearing? Me neither. I don’t stand around Stormwind showing off my clothes. I don’t RP. I don’t see them myself. So, who cares what I’m wearing? I think the only thing people would really notice is if I showed up to raid naked.
3. I Purged
I used to play a blood elf Paladin. She kept everything. But then came a day when I had to choose: gems or clothes? I just had to go with the fiery brilliance of a bank full of gems. If I had known that Blizzard might some day, maybe think about changing their policy about having a virtual closet, I might have fought harder to manage my bank space, perhaps even picking up an alt to store some of my dresses and things. However, practicality won out over flair, and it’s been that way for my characters ever since. After the first time, it’s real easy to go sell off entire bag loads of gear.
4. MC… again. Really?
The thing that really, honestly, horribly frustrates me about the closet system now is that like many driftless players during the Wrath expansion I had a lot of free time on my hands. I amused myself getting achievements and working on reputations.
While I’ll probably be back in old dungeon mode again one of these days, it sure as heck isn’t going to be right now. I’m still busy with new content, either new leveling toons or old toons working (slowly) on end-game content. Should I give up the shiny new stuff to go see Molten Core for the fifty-jillionth time? I’m not ready for that grind again folks.
5. Transmogri….what?
Kupo!
And finally, just because I know I’m going to be doing the eye-roll a lot in the coming patch: if people can’t spell Therazane, how in the bloody world do you expect them to manage Transmogrification. The shortened names started ~2 seconds after the announcement went live: transmog, mog , trans. I’m not looking forward to this world. No sir, not I.
I think I’m technically outside the date range, but reactions to transmogrification was a Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth. For more opinions, see the thread at BA and support those WoW bloggers!
Jaded Alt 
I’ve been a hardcore packrat since I started playing WoW 5.5 years ago. And since I’ve absolutely always had a bank alt, and started raiding back in the MC days, I pretty much have all my favorite sets stashed away. So for me, that will be something I will do, giving my faithful old characters a chance to finally be able to wear the outfits they loved for eternity.
I can’t really blame others for being excited about the addition, but for me personally, it’s too late in the game for me to get all excited about. I survived the BC-era, I can be happy wearing anything! 🙂
Windsoar it’s nice to see a post that WASN’T all hyped up about Transmogrification (though I can understand why – there were no “good old days” for your current toon!). And I just had to post a comment because that C+H comic is just epic when in conjunction with your post 🙂 Love it.
The best thing about transmogrification is the rebirth of Calvin & Hobbes on gaming boards everywhere!
I realize that I’ve been pretty negative about the whole transmogrification thing, so I’ve been trying really hard to find some positives in it and I think I might have found one.
What I would like to see happen is more people going back to the older instances, to get the gear they need to do this. I want people to see how much fun SSC, Hyjal, TK, Gruul’s Lair, etc. were and apply that to the current state of instances. I want people to recognize how great these places were and the awesome mechanics behind the bosses. I want people to see the thought that went into designing the gear from back then, compared to what we wear now.
I want people to walk away from those instances and demand better for themselves, to demand better from Blizzard. If people can see how great things were, maybe it will inspire them to insist on bringing some of these things back in the future. That’s my sincere hope for all of this. Maybe it’s a bit too “Martin Luther King, Jr.” for some people, but it’s how I feel.
I think a lot of players have run these instances–for reputation or the completion achievement if nothing else. I think that’s why I’m so “it’s too late Blizz!” I hate the idea of spending even more time in instances which I’ve already seen: when they were current, on alts for achievements and rep, and once again to fill up void storage. Are there Cataclysm babies? Maybe there’s some allure for them!
There are in fact cata babies. My first level-capped character became so when the cap was 85. Started playing literally a few weeks before Cata landed.
I’m pretty excited for transmog just because I never got to wear a lot of the awesome gear when it was current. Avatar raiment on my priest, Liadrin’s plate on my pally, just about anything on my warrior that doesn’t involve huge crystal shouledrs… this is all good stuff.
Remember, a lot of Cata’s content was designed to pull in new players or help establish alts. Being able to wear old gear again for the first time? That’s delicious. Being able to see the old raids (for a new player like me) – that’s icing.
I’m not OMGEXCITED about it, but I still think it’s fun. Not for tier reasons though. My druid is a little bit older than yours, but the only set I’ve actually earned and would like to wear is T8 (10-man). The problem is that I hate doing old dungeons/raids. Oestrus thinks retro-raiding might show people how awesome those places were… never having done MC (for example) at level, I just find it boring. You can’t see any boss mechanics if they all die in 30 seconds. The idea of going back to Ulduar and farming Yogg until he decides to drop my chest… yeah, no. I like dungeons if they’re challenging and/or provide me with an actual “tangible” benefit – for me, having a pretty dress isn’t worth it.
That being said, I can’t wait to find the skimpiest outfits in game for all my chars! My shammy already has the Battleforge armor [http://www.wowhead.com/item=6592/battleforge-armor] and I can’t wait to transmogrify it 😀 I used to heal heroics at the end of Wrath wearing Robes of the Triumvirate.. now I can do it in raids!
Oh, and a big YES on point 5. I can’t even pronounce that properly!
I can definitely see people having a lot of fun for it, it’s just not for me at this time. It’ll be interesting to see people dressed as they want to be even if I don’t make the effort myself ^^
Well, you might not be that excited for your main, but wouldn’t it be nice to change the look of the BOA gear so your priest didn’t have to look like a warlock?
I am looking forward to being able to customize my character to look how I want and to not have to look so clowish when leveling or upgrading pieces between sets. Plus, I haven’t really liked the look of most of the tier gear. The tier 12 pally gear is fugly.
I think it will be most interesting to see how they work this in PVP. When I started PVPing, i got mowed over because I am a healer and was clearly not wearing PVP gear.
Now that’s something I hadn’t thought of. It’s generally fairly easy in PvP to spot the “non-conformists” and quickly take them down. Of course they could also be eating your lunch because you heal things 😉 I can imagine this changing the dynamic a bit though as players find that they can’t easily spot the most dangerous/weak foes on the playing field by gear alone.
I thought the whole point of PvP gear was it being recognizable so you’d know what you’re facing… so I assumed transmogrifying wouldn’t work for it. I haven’t read up on the details – did Blizz confirm it works in BGs and arenas?
I’m working on Transmogrification template kits for my toons at this very moment — but I definitely agree with you on Point #5! The shortened forms of the word grate against my brain.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. This post is pretty much what I feel too. I was talking to my husband about it this weekend trying to explain that I don’t WANT to spend 2-3 nights a week doing all the old dungeons so I can make my armor look …. what? Like crap again? I really dislike most of the older tier/armor sets. I love my blue falling feathers for my druid now. I don’t want to give THOSE up. And I like dresses instead of vests so if I use it, I might just use tier 11 and call it good. After all, I already have them.
My husband said that I ‘disdain’ towards transmogrification which after thinking about it, I do. I think it’s stupid and a waste of time. But that’s not a popular opinion, so I will continue to keep to myself. Except for this comment! 😉