Looking retro

The WOW 4.3 patch announcement just hit the internet and there are some juicy things to discuss.  The thing that interests me the most is the addition of the Transmogrifier who will change the appearance of your armor to something else.  It looks at the moment like you have to change the appearance to something of the same armor or weapon type and that you need to actually own the piece you want to look like.  Predictably the forums are full of Death Knights complaining that they are getting shafted on this feature because they don't have armor sets tailored to them from the old, low level raids and dungeons.  People are AWFUL.

You might also wonder why I am concerned about this when I retired from WOW months ago and am not likely to return.  I think it is because when you live in an alternate world for years it is hard to let go completely.

This is a feature that people have been clamoring for for many years now.  Every time a new armor set comes out that the masses think looks dorky they complain that they want to continue to wear their old gearset for the cool looks and get the new stats of the improved version.  I think this is actually a pretty legit complaint because the tier system that Blizzard has introduced has certainly made using old gear completely impractical and yet they have tried to add lots of appearance tweaking options to the game.  Giving people the option to look how they want while still being numerically competitive seems like a good way to go.

I personally would use the old Tier .5 set.  I collected it back when the quests were still in the game and now there is no way to put it together.  It is part of Redcape's town set which is full of classic gear, much of which is now unobtainable like the sword from the opening of the gates of Ahn'Quiraj questline.  The armor is purple and silver and looks fine, though certainly not as great as paladin T2.  However, I would expect half the paladins in the game to start farming BWL for T2 pieces since that set is so well known to be awesome and it turns out that looking 'cool' for me isn't much good if everybody else looks exactly the same version of cool.  I do like that ability to pick a look for a character and go with it and to not be restricted by whatever came out in the most recent dungeon.

This certainly isn't going to save WOW though.  WOW is down something like 1 million subscribers from its peak and it seems clear that it is done with expanding and is headed down a long decline.  It isn't because the game is bad, because it certainly isn't, but rather just because it is old.  I quit because I had played WOW enough and there are plenty of other folks in that exact same situation.  New looks and the Deathwing raid are great and all but nothing will bring WOW back for me.

I logged onto WOW today to get a shot of Redcape in all his retro glory.  That's old school baby.