What Have They Done to Me?
I have a lot of positive feelings towards Blizzard’s 4.3 patch, primarily because of Transmogification. But… why? It has been 50 (!) days since I quit WoW. So why do I get excited about dressing up an avatar in a game I no longer play? Is it a function of my ~7700 hours of play time? Or perhaps unfulfilled dreams of legitimately using Ghoulslicer on every character that can equip 1H swords? I like cool armor as much as the next guy, but I behave this way in no other videogame, even ones that have item sets. Maybe it’s an MMO thing?
Anyway, imagine my consternation when the paladin PvP set was revealed:
...holy shit...
Prior to today, I was a big believer that paladin T6 was the best paladin set in WoW, Judgement be damned. I never legitimately raided Black Temple or got any of the tier set, but I did do quite a bit PvP in TBC (since that was all there was to do) and Season 3’s Vengeful Gladiator’s Vindication set was just as good as the real thing (or arguably better, if you prefer the red recolor to the normal blue). So my sort of fantasy tank set would have been Vindication + Bulwark of Azzinoth + Ghoulslicer. According to Wowhead, the whole thing would have looked like this:
Shut up. It looks WAY cooler in my head.
But Blizzard, defying years and years paladin-degrading precedence, has come out with a PvP (!) armor set that not only makes the PvE one look like a total joke, but honestly steals the whole goddamn Deathwing show from every other class. The only sets that come as close as this one is the Priest T12 and Priest Season 3. Between this new PvP set and the fact that they are putting older Season PvP gear back on vendors – letting me complete the Vindication set and/or get the priest set on an alt without scraping together a BT raid group – you have no idea how goddamn tempting it is to spend $15 on a dress-up simulator.
The only thing stopping me? My nine alts, seven of whom are level 85, are trapped on low-pop Alliance Auchindoun with full heirlooms, max level professions with most non-ultra rare recipes, and approximately 450,000g in liquid wealth. I am not paying $55 per character to move them and a max of 50,000g, nor am I interested in straight-up rerolling without the benefits my ~7700 hours of seniority entitle me. So until Blizzard gets their head out of their ass and tweak the server/faction transfer service price-points (seriously, would a weekend deal kill them?), all this renewed interest and goodwill is going to waste.
Which, given the ridiculousness of my desires in the scheme of things, is perhaps win-win anyway.
In An Age 
I completely agree; the new round of PvP armor is among the best they’ve ever done and the Paladin one outshines them all…was commenting to a guildie that I might have to take up PvP on my paladin for this one XD
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They really really really really need a package deal for server-transferring multiple characters. When my guild transferred, I only moved my main, since I refused to pay per character to move all my alts. Lucky I did, since they later moved back to our original server again, and I only had one character to move (left behind the death knight I’d levelled on the new server).
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1) I feel absolutely the same way – I quit right around the same time you did (a couple weeks afterwards) after being unhappy for the entire summer. I see all this transmogrification stuff, and it makes me want to come back and pimp out my warrior and make him look all badass in some T6 with a Bulwark of Azzinoth. I haven’t checked my /played hours across my account, mostly because I’m scared to (I know at one point a few years ago, I looked, found out that I’d played something like 180 days and the game had been out for a year and a half, meaning I’d spent 33% of the time since the game came out as being logged in – I was addicted for a while), but the very fact of how much time I’ve put in is what makes it so tempting to go back. You get to work even more on the things you’ve put so much work into. And not only that, but I think when you quit WoW, we all know there’s a decent chance we’ll pick it back up again. Wouldn’t it be nice, if when you came back, your character was all pimped out already via transmogrification?
2) Absolutely agree with you regarding the server/faction xfers, and its something that has led me to quitting before. The only reason I came back the last time was to start fresh with some friends rerolling on Alliance, whereas I’d played Horde exclusively before that. That faction xfer is a separate charge from server xfer is just ridiculous – character transfers of any kind should have a base price, period. That would make it a little easier to swallow. Even still though, some weekend deals or something would be fantastic, and I bet they’d do some serious business. A lot of it would be the “I was never gonna pay 55 bucks to xfer this old alt, but for 20, sure, I’ll do it”, and a lot of that business never would’ve existed without the special, meaning they’re making profit that otherwise would’ve never been realized.
On top of that, I’m really surprised that they don’t offer xfers to lapsed accounts. I know it’s been a barrier to me before – I quit at TBC release, because I got hacked and had issues getting the account restored. My group of friends moved onto another server and raid guild without me, and when they wanted me to come back to the game, I was reluctant, in part because paying for the service was ridiculous, until a friend volunteered to pay for it, just to get me to come back. I’d think that’s another barrier to keeping people from coming back to the game as well.
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Isn’t it funny how prices that seem reasonable while you’re playing (“Hmm… I’d pay $55 for a geared level 85, especially to avoid 100 hours of regrinding everything.”) are so outrageous when you are not? Then again, I guess I was not actually buying any other games while I played WoW.
Still, I paid the equivalent of Bastion, LIMBO, AC: Brotherhood, and Far Cry 2 to bring my original Horde warlock over to low-pop Alliance so I could pimp him out in BoEs and such for PvP.
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I about fell over when I saw the PVP set. I was never much into the ‘dress up’ aspect (unless you count the pink shield from Mag in BC that I demanded to use throughout TotC despite it being a super low level shield) but man – I’m actually STOKED about this one.
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I still like the Wizard 101 server transfer function: a button on a 60 second cooldown. You pick a server, push the button and boom, you’re transferred.
Yeah, WoW has more *stuff* to transfer, but methinketh the price doesn’t really reflect the cost.
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