why cant we transmog legendarys?

The current philosophy is that we want legendaries to remain quite rare on each realm. You don't see that many people running around wielding old legendary items with outdated stats -- it's a prestige/flavor thing. That said, a lot of the old legendary weapons still exist in the game, and the challenge to obtain them today is greatly trivialized. But if people want to go back and get them for nostalgic reasons, that's cool. Again, it'd be for prestige, fun, and flavor, but not a feasible decision for obtaining a new combat look.

What's not cool, at least in our minds, is watching people go back in droves to trivialize old content for legendary-quality items so they can replace their current weapon look with one that's supposed to be incredibly rare.

Under the Transmogrification system we're adding in patch 4.3, we really only see two options for legendary items: A) we keep them out of the system so they don't flood the realms and lose uniqueness; or B) we remove every legendary item from the game as soon as the originally intended challenges of obtaining them are trivialized.

I'm sure plenty of people would go with the latter option, but for now we see option A as less cause for frustration on the part of the playerbase at-large.

09/26/2011 12:38 AMPosted by Gargarensis

i have sulfuras and thunderfury and they were a pain to make so why cant i use it? letting every other wep that takes very little skill to get be usable over having farm mc for months for one half of thunderfury to drop, and 10 blood of the mountains and sulfurian ignots which have a LOWWWWWW drop rate. what is the legit reason.

I spent many months to waste bank space? That's a little upsetting. Transmog would allow these weapons to be more than an achievement/feat of strength for me.
If you truly wanted them to be rare, you wouldn't make them obtainable.

Oh well, guess all my future weapons will look like my Rag weapon!

Did you waste months? What'd you do it for then? Were you going for a weapon because, years later, maybe there'd be a chance you could make another weapon look like it?

1.) Legendary drop rates have not changed. Legendaries remain rare to this day mostly in part to their already low drop rate. People have been triviallizing content in droves, doing BT to try and reserve Warglaives, or running MC and so on for quite a long time now. This isn't anything new - the people who would want those legendaries for transmog and the vanity or "prestige" as you put it, will already have been trying to obtain them.

Totally. And we didn't remove the items because their usefulness automatically regulates their commonality as endgame progression continues.

2.) Doesn't the limitation on weapon transmogrification having to match weapon types already limit their use as it is on top of the low drop rates and time required to obtain a legendary item? The weapon selection is diverse enough each new content patch that you seldom see two of the same weapon type in each hand. For example where Warglaives are concerned, the optimal weapon set up for all three classes eligible to wield them in Firelands is a 1H axe or 1H mace. I can't honestly recall that there are even any swords that drop in Firelands for melee, or 2H maces for Sulfuras.

Frankly I think Blizzard's anticipation that the use of legendaries for transmogrification would devalue their rarity or prestige is rather exaggerated.

I'll be the first to admit you might be right. But this system will introduce thousands of new gear customization options for players, and we design legendary weapons to be in their own unique class, more rare and prestigious than anything else in the game. And many in this thread have retorted with, "What about everyone running around in the Judgement set?" Well, those aren't legendary items. How many gear sets or purples have we put in the game compared to legendaries?

I digress... As I said before, you have so many new customization options at your disposal now. We've opened the door pretty far and wide when you consider the context of how many items in the game can now be worn without diminishing a player's combat effectiveness. What we don't want to do is take the door off its hinges altogether with the first implementation of this brand new feature, then pull back when we see behavior we don't think enhances the game (many would refer to this as "nerfing fun"). What's incredibly likely is the Transmogrification rules will evolve and potentially loosen up with time.

But for now, let's focus on the reality that this system is coming to World of Warcraft soon, it's completely new, and will enrich the play experience for an incredible number of people. Once it's out and you're in your favored digs -- and you see how everyone else is using it -- then let's get into more in-depth discussions about what feels missing from it.

Zarhym, people are already going back in droves getting those weapons.. They have been since guild achievements came out with these as achievements, not feats of strength, achievements! People aren't getting the legendaries at an accelerated rate at all. It takes just as long to get them now as it did then. The only difference is that more people can do it, as the content has become possible to complete for the average player. The relative concentration of legendaries however will not and cannot surpass the level it was when the legendaries in question were current content. Blizzard has already made sure of that. Sure, maybe some day, Valanyr and warglaives will be soloable.. when that happens, you can just lower the drop rates. It's not rocket science.

Yea, we just don't think the behavior you're referring to is anywhere near what the motivation would be to go back and get those weapons if they could be displayed at all times without penalty to the player.

The current philosophy

Notice the 'current' in there? Just give them some time and I'm sure their philosophy will change. It usually does.

I did very intentionally include that word, by the way. There are other possibilities we could explore to try and implement an elegant way for players to use legendaries, without removing them from the game, and without them flooding the servers. But we have no plans for this in patch 4.3. There are plenty of tasks on our programmers' collective plate at the moment, almost all of which would probably be deemed by the community to be more valuable. ;)

09/29/2011 05:14 PMPosted by Liquidlife

well the fact is you had to do it eventually to keep the game modern and competitive. try not to pretend too hard that the company is doing the players a favor. they are mostly doing it for themselves, to keep the game an attractive option for people with money seeking entertainment.

I don't really follow. Are these concepts just always mutually exclusive to you? Have you worked somewhere that leaves you passionate -- that drives you to improve and iterate upon your work because it's what you know and love... and how you make a living?