Breakfast Topic: What's your item set design preference?
by Zach Yonzon 
Jun 29th 2009 at 8:00AM
The reason most of us didn't notice was because this wasn't so apparent back then... the Alliance only had one mail-wearing class and the Horde only had one plate-wearing class. With Shamans and Paladins no longer restricted to one faction and with the introduction of Death Knights in Wrath of the Lich King, more classes appear to share the same item models -- there are three plate and two mail classes on both factions now. This has the downside of homogenizing appearance across classes but the upside of having the near-certainty of putting together a visually cohesive set as well as looking different from the enemy faction's counterparts.
So today's question is simple: what design philosophy do you think works best for World of Warcraft? Every path has its obvious benefits, of course. What appears to be the most appealing is something we still haven't seen... faction- and class-specific gear where each class has a completely unique model according to faction. It sounds great on paper but it's more work for the art team and an itemization nightmare -- imagine having to organize those drops in a dungeon! It might be easier to go the Sunwell Plateau route and be done with it! Or heck, do everything Emperor's New Clothes-style, where everyone goes commando! Good idea? No? So, uh, that was just me? Drat.
Filed under: Items, Blizzard, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Zoe Jun 29th 2009 8:11AM
I have to say I defnitly prefer that each class has a seperate look to them. You'll walk around a city and you can tell from right away if someone is class X. It's not a problem or anything, but in fantasy games being able to tell the type of character from their outfits is common. I also believe this came by in the Team Fortress 2 developers blog, being able to tell a character from their outline helps a lot in making players recognisable and make the play field diverse.
On a side note: To be honest I'm not a big fan of the gear in Ulduar, the weird Titan faces everywhere and just the general stone-like look of the gear. I understand it's part of the Titan theme, it's just a personal preference.
Xzeth Jun 29th 2009 10:24AM
i think players need to stop being quite so selfish.
take a step back and consider it from blizzard's pov for a moment. how are they supposed to find the time to count all their billions of they're designing armor sets non-stop.
SixTwoSixFour Jun 29th 2009 2:45PM
Xzeth, I'm gonna have to disagree from the bottom of my heart. When players complain about Blizzard not balancing the classes right, sure, I'm sympathetic toward Blizzard- that's a hard job. But blatant armor homogenizing and reversing previous design decisions is nothing but lazy design, pure and simple. Having separate armor models for each class was a very, very important feature of Tier sets. Why? Because it gave your class an IDENTITY. Because you could glance at a Tier 8 paladin and know IMMEDIATELY that they were a paladin, just through the armor they wore.
There's a reason that has been how Tier gear was done since the beginning, and there's a reason people liked it. Not only does it help you quickly identify classes in the wild, as it were, but it adds to the classes personality. Tier gear is designed for your class in particular. Tier gear says, "THIS is what Warriors/Priests/Whatever should strive for, this is the ideal gear for us, this is the ideal look for us." In a time where there is concern that Blizzard is trying to homogenize the classes into their respective roles, of COURSE we find this move disturbing.
EmOtaku Jun 29th 2009 2:54PM
Think you missed the sarcasm there SixTwo...
Kylenne Jun 29th 2009 8:21AM
The problem is ALL the gear in Wrath looks the same, this has been a problem from day one. Everything looks like the same tired plate with spikes on it, including the freakin' cloth. I don't really get why suddenly people are having an issue with the tier gear. None of my characters have looked distinguishable from each other since they got off the zepp in NR and started replacing BC gear.
The gear design has really been the worst part about this expansion to me, really the only big negative point, and I hope they manage to find a happy medium between this nonsense and the "clown" stuff everyone cried about in BC for the next one.
sephirah Jun 29th 2009 8:29AM
You're forgetting that in TBC people QQed a lot cause raid and arena set looked the same...
Jacksparrow Jun 29th 2009 8:24AM
I think blizz is running out of kool armor ideas. The latest 2 tiers have been dull to me, well 3 if you count remade naxx gear. I like the Naxx stuff though for the most part.
Kidneystones Jun 29th 2009 5:04PM
Yes and cool with a k is very 'kool'. Maybe next time add a z or two to the end of some words.
It will be super kool and awesomezz!!!!!!1
themightysven Jun 29th 2009 8:23AM
meh, at least there are different textures. It makes sense though, if the whole argent tournement is designed to create an army to smash into ICC then armies should be geared similarly.
then they'll save the nice designs for what you get inside.
joerendous Jun 29th 2009 9:25AM
i share you're uniformity way of thinking. i think that's why i rather like the fact that the color schemes in WotLK are very earthy and similar - there's slight hints to differentiate but we're part of a larger force.
Cyanea Jun 29th 2009 2:56PM
That was my thought too. It goes back to that Zarhym post about the 7000-year old Dragon Nipples.
The Crusade is gearing us up for war. We're soldiers. What army do you know of that has different uniforms for different classes (medics, infantry, logistics, etc).
THAT BEING SAID, this is a game, so while I can see the design philosophy behind t9, I do wish they'd go back to distinct appearances for each class.
sephirah Jun 29th 2009 8:30AM
It's hard to judge the new models since on human males everything looks like crap!
Passerby Jun 29th 2009 9:01AM
See: Onslaught Armor/Battlegear
Nick S Jun 29th 2009 9:37AM
This is actually fairly true. I thought the T8 Hunter set looked like garbage (based on having seen it on the Human model) until I saw it on my Troll. Totally different effect.
Mark Jun 29th 2009 8:34AM
Blizzard will never be able to keep everyone happy. I think what they've done with the PVP gear this expansion is amazing -- each step gets better, and it looks like something that the crafters could make.
As far as the tier gear, and class-specific versus faction-armor-specific, I think mixing it up a little is a great solution. Realistically, we can only expect them to design so many sets with each major patch -- so they can either design 9 new sets, one for each class; or they can design 8 new sets, one for each armor, but different for Alliance and Horde. We can wish they that would decide 18 new sets, one for each class, and different for Alliance and Horde, but that's just not going to happen.
Jay Jun 29th 2009 10:14AM
Forget this junk. I really love the the tier 9 solo players set.
Tridus Jun 29th 2009 8:45AM
What I really want to see is a feature like LotRO and some other games have where you can have a cosmetic set equipped. I haven't liked much of anything in Wrath as far as looks go, I'd be happier wearing far, far older gear for looks again. Obviously you can't raid in that, though.
It'd also solve the problem of everybody looking the same, which is what we have right now. You'd see a far wider diversity of looks if people could cosmetically equip anything from the older content that they managed to get.
atomicstrawberry Jun 29th 2009 2:18PM
Cosmetic sets would be awesome. I'd absolutely love to be able to go back to the awesome old T2 set on my paladin, it looks better than everything blizzard have done since.
ToyChristopher Jun 29th 2009 3:16PM
"We embrace some level of player visual customization in World of Warcraft, but it’s just not in the design vision to give players as many controls over how their character looks as some players would probably desire. One of the distinctive visual qualities of cloth is that it often looks like long, flowing robes, which is pretty consistent with the iconic fantasy wizard. No doubt some players would prefer to change the look of their weapon or weapon enchant if they could without having a game play effect, so this is just a slippery slope for us. We will keep the feedback in mind though."
From the Mage Q&A. Apparently character customization is a "slippery slope" for blizzard, which would result in people running around with weapon enchants they didn't really have!!
Kolyarut Jun 29th 2009 8:53AM
Seriously, look at the hat on the one on the bottom left. Have Blizz realised that nobody plays with helm graphics switched on any more so they've just given up?