Days after climbing up the costs to transmogrify your armor in World of Warcraft, developer Blizzard introduced it’s lowering them in half—a choice that got here after overwhelming participant outrage.
The transmog fiasco began with the launch of the pre-expansion patch for World of Warcraft: Midnight on January 20. The patch launched a plethora of updates to quite a lot of the sport’s programs, and the transmog system, which permits gamers to alter the looks of armor items for beforehand acquired gear with out affecting their stats, was certainly one of them. The transmog overhaul ushered in two huge issues for the neighborhood: the brand new system is convoluted, and to make issues worse, it’s extremely costly. Or was, anyway, as Blizzard has already introduced it’s dialing the inflation charge again.
“We’re going to lower the cost of outfit creation prices by 50% to bring them more in line with what the prices were prior to the Transmog update,” neighborhood supervisor Linxy wrote on the Blizzard forums yesterday. “This price reduction is currently under development and should be available within the next day.”
The change is sensible, as the brand new system has characters beginning with simply two outfit slots for his or her transmog creations. You may unlock extra, after all, however preliminary costs began at 100 gold and ramped as much as nearly 800,000 gold to unlock all 20 slots on a given character. So, when you’re someone who juggles 5 characters directly and you want to interact with the in-game style, having 20 slots for all 5 of them would price nearly 4 million gold. And that is all with out contemplating the prices of fixing the person items in stated outfits.
Now, all of those costs are being halved. As well as, Linxy stated the crew is “going to try” to grant one free transmog to all player-characters quickly, earlier than patch 12.0.1. This could “hopefully” occur through a hotfix.
The free transmog can be a part of the response to neighborhood complaints. When Blizzard launched the pre-expansion patch, all transmogs that have been beforehand utilized to gear have been eliminated. As explained by neighborhood supervisor Kaivax on the boards, this was intentional to replicate the transition from a gear-based to a slot-based system. All beforehand saved loadouts are nonetheless current, transformed to Customized Units as a part of the brand new system. The issue, nonetheless, is that it prices the traditional quantity of gold to use the primary transmog to your character, even when you solely need to set your look again to the best way it was earlier than. Kaivax known as this “an oversight” on the builders’ half, as gamers ought to be capable of keep or reset their current look with out price.
“With the 12.0.1 update before the launch of Midnight, all player-characters will be granted one free Transmog,” continues the response. “This will be automatically applied to the next outfit created for each character. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by first-time Transmog costs.”
Pricing isn’t the one downside with the brand new transmog system
Whereas the pricing discount is a welcoming change, it hardly addresses the one qualm that World of Warcraft gamers have with the brand new transmog system. The neighborhood can be complaining in regards to the convoluted UX, because it was less complicated within the outdated system, in addition to the a number of added steps the newest modifications require.
“I think I’ve spent about half of my gametime playing dress up since transmog has been released as a feature,” reads a Reddit thread from a World of Warcraft participant who says they’re quitting the sport. “Now (…) trying to set up anything just fills me with apathy. Why was the icon selection and naming of sets downgraded for the ‘main’ transmog screen? The outdated all-in-one icon selection from classic, without search or prioritizing your outfit’s items is MASSIVELY more annoying than the previous transmog system’s auto-select that just went with the first item’s icon of your outfit. Also, 16 characters limit for outfit names is nonsense.”
This account is way from the one one voicing such complaints. Within the replies to an explainer by World of Warcraft fanatic web site Wowhead, folks have posted a number of questions in regards to the trivialities of the system. “I just opened up WoW and ALL my warriors look ridiculous,” reads one of many feedback. “All the gear I’ve put on them over the years is gone and they look like noobs. I have lost over 2K gold trying to figure out the new transmog bs and when I check them out, they’re still in the wrong stuff. I’ve saved, I’ve bought a slot. I’ve only played WoW since it’s inception so yes, I’m older than most but this is ridiculous and it’s enough to make me want to quit the game.”
These on roleplaying servers are notably impacted by these points, as for a lot of of them, transmogrification is especially necessary to defining character id, in addition to including to the immersion of sure occasions and actions. Say, for instance, that your character is carrying a hood or a helmet, and also you need to change out to a shawl when getting into a home. Within the outdated system, you would open your stock luggage and choose one other transmogged merchandise, switching it on the fly. Now, that particular person merchandise transmogging is not attainable.
As explained by a veteran roleplayer within the boards, folks in these servers are inclined to maintain taste objects of their possession, comparable to cloaks to alter relying on the climate surroundings, or a set of white gloves when a personality wants to supply medical care for somebody.
The use circumstances are many, however sadly, the newest modifications to transmogrification have launched limitations. As an alternative of choosing an merchandise out of your stock, you would need to pay gold to make a change to your present outfit, solely to pay once more when you revert it later. Plus, these actions take time, which may interrupt the movement of immersion throughout energetic scenes.
“I am not a coder, I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement a system where certain items are exempt from the outfit that your character is currently wearing, but I implore you Blizzard, please find a way to allow us to make changes to individual outfit slots on the fly without having to engage with the transmog interface and shell out gold every time,” concludes the publish from the roleplayer.
World of Warcraft: Midnight is releasing on March 2. Whether or not Blizzard decides to roll out extra modifications based mostly on neighborhood suggestions stays to be seen.
