This is part three of a six-part interview with WoW Game Director Ion Hazzikostas.
Laptop Mag had the opportunity to sit down with Game Director of World of Warcraft Ion Hazzikostas and pose questions about the MMO titan’s upcoming expansion. After the reveal of WoW 10.0 last week, officially titled Dragonflight, we’re incredibly excited to dive deep into what we can expect out of its massive updates.
Hazzikostas and I discussed time-gated questlines, the Dracthyr Evoker’s abilities, the evolution of leveling through Chromie Time, the revival of talent trees (and whether Covenant abilities will find their place within them), and how old raids (particularly BfA) will be impacted by the player’s massive increase in power. This article covers Hazzikostas’ comments on a big change coming to transmogrification.
- More: World of Warcraft Dragonflight's in-depth talent tree revival is a feature I've waited 10 years for
- Dragonflight's cinematic trailer boasts good vibes for a positive future
- Dragonflight's Dracthyr Evoker will finally let me play an adorable dragon
What is transmogrification?
Transmogrification is a mechanic that lets the player apply the cosmetic appearance of a piece of equipment onto another. If I’m wearing the most powerful armor available, but it looks like trash, I can go to a transmog vendor and have its appearance changed to any one of the armor sets I’ve acquired. Players don’t need to keep armor with low stats just to utilize its aesthetic, though. If the equipment is their classification (whether that be plate, mail, leather or cloth) and is soulbound, they’ll have the appearance permanently stashed within a menu.
This system does require the player to pay up in gold, though. Transmogrifying a full set of armor on my max level character (with gear from Zereth Mortis) cost a total of 488 gold. This isn’t necessarily a steep cost, but for someone who wants to experiment with transmogrification, and uses it frequently, it will add up eventually.
What changes are coming to transmogrification in Dragonflight?
Transmogrification has been around since 2011, and although it received some major updates during Legion, the community sought other improvements to the system. A couple of these include the ability to hide a character’s helmet without needing to transmogrify it and lower gold costs for editing armor appearance. Getting lost in the fashion of any RPG is one of my favorite pastimes, so I asked Hazzikostas if the transmog system would see any changes during Dragonflight. He said WoW players should expect “ongoing expansion and customization.”
“Something we are looking to do, certainly by Dragonflight, possibly before then, is rolling a lot of our current white and gray quality items into the transmog system, the common and poor items, into the transmog system. So that you can choose from a lot of simpler, humbler, civilian attire type looks. We want to just keep adding more options for customization and self-expression,” Hazzikostas said.
The community has been requesting this feature for years, as it puts fewer barriers on what players can modify with their characters visually. Who says we shouldn’t be allowed to run into The Jailer’s arena with a tuxedo on? It’s common to get tired of World of Warcraft’s overly epic and intricate endgame tier sets, so this system promises to greatly expand a player’s options. Final Fantasy XIV has had players running around with “humbler” looks for a long while, so it’s about time WoW caught up.
