Allow me to start by saying that I don't normally post on the forums. And I'm relatively certain that 'someone' has come up with this idea already, but my glancing through General Discussion didn't turn up anything, so I decided to go ahead and go through with this post. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way....
I'm getting the impression that Blizzard is going with the idea for Transmogrification that you have to actually own the gear that you want to copy the look of. Now, while I agree this is a good way to cut down on what could otherwise be a difficult user interface, there's a couple major issues I (and I assume a lot of other people) have with this system.
1 – I tend to hoard old gear sets anyway, but even I've been forced to make some deletion of gear I'd rather keep due to space constraints. The new void storage system is great...but can do absolutely nothing about gear that has already been deleted by those without precognitive abilities. The easy answer to this is to simply go and farm up that gear again, but having to repeat the painstaking grind for certain pieces of gear is, to me at least, abhorrent.
2 – Quest gear. There's so much gear in the game that we got from quests that looked so great, or that would have gone with some otherwise obsolete set so very well...that we have deleted and have no way of getting back. The helms from that quest in Shadowmoon Valley come to mind, including the one that uses the model of Bloodfang except in pure black. The Stealther's Helm of Second Sight, I do believe.
Now then, with that said, I'm hardly going to make a post griping about what is, regardless, an awesome new feature without offering up at least a few potential solutions to what, for some, will be an incredibly frustrating issue.
1 – (This is my favorite of the potential solutions.) Make transmogrification work by value of item level. This being...say you have a pair of cloth shoulders with an ilevel of 359. Allow these to be transmogrified into any other cloth shoulders of equal or lesser ilevel. This approach accomplishes a few different things. It keeps lowbies from looking absolutely ridiculous and decked out in tier gear. It keeps top tier raid and pvp gear still relevant. Unless you're actually getting out there and doing the content, you can't look like you're decked out in the newest and greatest epic gear. If anything, it gives people even more of an incentive to actually approach this content for the options it would open up. Lastly, it prevents the frustration that many would feel at having deleted old armor or sets to make space. (Perhaps in the interface, you could make the gear you actually 'own' be the first viewed, or add an additional fee for gear you don't possess.)
2 – Link potential gear to achievements. While doing little to assuage the problem of quest gear, this would make certain people actually went back and experienced the content where their tier sets and the like dropped. Not a perfect solution, and quite possibly hard to do from a technical standpoint, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
3 – If you are indeed set on making us actually possess the gear, then I think many would at least like the ability to redo quests they've since completed and deleted the gear obtained from. Link this to the daily quest limit, if you'd like. This still does nothing, however, to ease the frustration of those who deleted gear that is no longer available. (The sets from the Scourge Invasion event at the end of Vanilla come to mind, here. While I've kept mine, I know many others have not, and it's a beautiful looking set.)
In closing, I can certainly understand the reasons behind going with the route of having to actually possess the gear for the ability to transmogrify something to look like it. I simply don't think it's the ideal solution (not from a technical perspective, but from a player happiness perspective). I'd also like to express my gratitude that Blizzard is actually implementing this feature, regardless of how they end up doing it.
Old content will continue to be run even if one doesn't have to farm for old gear any longer. There are engaging reasons to do so. Achievements. Pets. Mounts. And simply to see the content itself. <-- Yes, this was an afterthought added in before posting.
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