Gaming: Wow's Rough 2.0 Transmog Overhaul Is Mostly Fixed, And I'm Left...

This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer's very own MMO column. Every other week, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we've all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.

There's been some drama in the World of Warcraft community—I know, we live in a wild and mad world—over its overhauled transmog system, and I can't say it's entirely unwarranted. For the completely uninitiated, 'transmog' is a very fancy MMO lingo word for 'playing dressup', and for World of Warcraft: Midnight, Blizzard's changed the entire economy around how it works.

Before this week's pre-patch, players could create and save outfits, which would apply a sort of 'new skin' over their existing gear. If they got a new piece of gear, it'd pop up in their currently-equipped item, requiring them to visit an NPC to re-apply the transmog over it again.

That old transmog system is gone: In its place, players are now able to create outfits that will not visibly change as new gear is acquired—with a limited amount of slots they need to unlock with gold. The upshot of this is that you no longer have to re-visit an NPC to put your look back the way it was when you get a new piece of gear. The new system keeps you locked to your current skin.

So why were people so mad that Blizzard sliced costs in half this week? Well, firstly, we're playing World of Warcraft. It's a prerequisite. But the primary reason is because this system was a lot more expensive—kinda.

The idea was that in the long run, it'd be cheaper. Let's say you're a max-level character playing a new patch. In the previous system, you'd wind up nickel-and-dimed as you slowly ran the gear treadmill, having to revisit the NPCs to pay your transmog dues just so your new bits of kit wouldn't make you ugly as hell.

In theory, this new system saves you money in that scenario. It'd also save you money while levelling, too. So what was the problem?

The major issue was that the new system didn't account for the fact that folks play dress-up in different ways—it made the assumption that players stuck with one outfit for long periods of time. But some players might want to change clothes as often as they might in real life, and for them, they were paying more in raw gold than before.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

To state the obvious: It's not a

Source: PC Gamer