#1 - June 22, 2016, 3:30 p.m.
We hope you’re enjoying the new transmog system. We’re very excited about it on the Development team as well. I’d be lying if I said that no one on the team didn’t have stacks of salvage crates and banks full of items ready to go. It’s going to be awesome!
I want to caution, and (hopefully) reassure all of you hardcore transmoggers out there. Firstly, what you see in the Legion Beta is a work in progress. What is and isn’t available for transmog will change as we find and fix bugs. Yes, that means some appearances that currently show up in the Beta will not be there when Legion launches, while others that are not currently being shown will be added.
A challenge with a system like this is the sheer amount of data we’re working with. There are approximately 30,000 appearances in the game, and we have about 150,000 items. As you can imagine, our processes have changed over the years, leaving a lot of different ways that items, appearances, and sources can link up. We always try to fix problems in a systematic way (if this appearance/item is not unlocking correctly, there are probably hundreds or thousands of appearances that are also wrong in the same way), but those changes can also cause different bugs to appear, affecting appearances that had previously been correct. That leads to fixes where some items need to be changed (either by hiding or unhiding), and the cycle continues. While we are achieving a higher overall success rate as we go, what is and isn’t unlocked may appear to be unpredictable.
That can be scary. However, you need the context of what we’re doing, so that you’re better equipped to find and report issues with the system.
Our primary goal for appearances is to ensure that all appearances that a character can currently use as a transmog source in Warlords of Draenor will continue to use that transmog source in Legion. We know of a few Beta issues that violate this rule (racial restrictions, armor type changes), and we’re working through them. However, we will probably have a few appearances that are still missing (examples: low-level mail/leather conversions). Don’t panic! Let us know what we missed, and we’ll address them as soon as we can.
Our next goal is that we’d like to maintain the same restrictions on what you can and cannot transmog to in Legion as we currently have in Warlords of Draenor. There are numerous reasons for this, but the primary reason is to avoid players feeling that they need to faction change or race change just to unlock a piece of equipment. We know that some of you have done that in the past, and we’re going to respect those items, but we’d like for players to not feel obligated to do so in the future. The end result of this is that there are currently some bugs in the Beta with items that look like we’ve loosened the restriction on, but we don’t intend to. These are just bugs. On the other hand, there are some items that look like we added restrictions when none existed before (i.e. Death Knight starting equipment), but nothing is actually changing with them: only Death Knights can get that gear, and only Death Knights can use that gear for transmog purposes.
Everyone has been amazing at finding and reporting bugs, and I cannot stress enough how much we appreciate that and how much it helps us get things right. We’re monitoring the forums and bug reports and keeping track of everything that’s being reporting. Rest assured, we’re working to make sure that we aren’t taking anything away in Legion that you can transmog in Warlords of Draenor, even if we have to fix it in a future patch. We will get it right.
Thank you!