Back When Purple Used To Mean Something...

[Thandorr]

If you were to read MMO or Official forums, there is a voice among the playerbase that wishes that the color still meant something. Now, I did not play in Vanilla or TBC so I cannot speak from first hand experience, unfortunately. But the overwhelming majority of my WoW friends have been playing since launch and they have all shared these sentiments: Purple used to mean something spectacular.

I've heard stories of players in full T2 from BWL standing in Stormwind getting tells from players in awe of their epic raid gear. They were overwhelmed with excitement, envy and a love for the game when they saw another players accomplishment that took months to obtain. There was a seemingly insurmountable power curve to the raids in Vanilla that REQUIRED completion of ALL raid content before proceeding to the next tier of raiding. Raiding content was so difficult that new tiers of content was released prior to a world first kill from the previous tier.

These things, when compared with the current iteration of WoW are difficult to believe! I am in no way saying that in order for WoW to be a great success (it is) it has to regress into a previous state of the game. Only proposing that if some of the heroism and grandeur that was present in the game so long ago were to be re-introduced in some fashion, the game as a whole would benefit.

Prior to badge gear, valor gear, timeless gear, apexis gear, and Garrison mission cache's the only way one obtained epic quality gear was through raiding. My proposal is to return to that model. Retain those mediums of obtaining gear, but make them less lucrative in the grander view of the game. Really and truly provide incentives to progressing through raid content. Restore that overwhelming elation and sense of awe to being in FULL epics again and make it really matter. Because in the current stasis that the game is in, it is void of REAL accomplishment, merely repeating the same content again and again through 4 difficulties. If you're going to keep the multiple tiers of difficulty, at least make the gear you acquire TRULY epic.

[femur68]

It's the Item level that matters now, not the item quality. Back before Item levels were shown on gear, epic gear physically had more stats on it than an equivalent blue piece. That is not the case anymore, as Blizzard has changed that since. As soon as it would be for the color of the gear name to matter like it used to, there's just no point. If anything they should make a cool little emblem on the piece of gear's tooltip that has its Ilvl on it to distinguish its quality nowadays.

[Deleted]

..and what about those people that can't raid for whatever reason? That's all these tales are, sentiment. The game has changed, especially since Wrath. Either you change with it or you play and complain or you unsubscribe.

[Jaspias]

i second this. nothing really has to change other than the color of the name item and it would make an impact, but i would take it a step further and make anything not dropped in a normal raid or higher not only blue, but really really bland looking

[Sliske]

I've heard stories of players in full T2 from BWL standing in Stormwind getting tells from players in awe of their epic raid gear. They were overwhelmed with excitement, envy and a love for the game when they saw another players accomplishment that took months to obtain

You don't automatically love a game or become excited when a guy runs past you with max gear. Yeah, it was sick seeing people on invincible with full ICC Heroic. It was sick seeing people in Naxx gear, it is sick seeing people in full BRF mythic on the mount. But the difference between now and then is there was actually content to do. Nothing will change right now if you make flex gear blue or LFR gear blue. All that will do is alienate people and piss them off.

Want to make the game good? Make content, fire celestalon, revert almost everything WoD has done and look to succesful expansions like WoTLK for ideas

[Deleted]

I used to love the the awe i would get when turning up to a scholo run in t2 to get the badges for the silly resistance enchant. The game was very different back in those days, i never expierenced the rudeness and childishness that is prevalent nowadays because there was a level of respect between players as a bad name on the server really mattered. I still enjoy the challenge of the game but it really is a case of log into get free gold/mythic caches and raid, there literally is nothing else to do as all the stuff has been removed. Even rep dailies for some really cool enchant would be fun, no matter if it became a gate to raiding with some guilds e.g. the AD and ZG enchants in vanilla.

[Dasani]

While it's true purples (and certainly legendaries) were a lot harder to obtain back in vanilla, the item colors never really meant a whole lot.

You have Grey -> White -> Green -> Blue -> Purple -> Orange

Even in vanilla grey and white was purely vendor trash, not used for literally anything past the first 10 levels or so when you obtained greens in each slot. So those two colors were always meaningless.

Greens were the most commonly worn color, littered with a few sprinkles of blue from dungeon drops or the odd quest that gave a blue instead of a green. Blues were dungeon gear, purples were raid gear. Orange was for badasses.

Fast forward a few years...

Greys and whites are still meaningless. Greens are used primarily as leveling items as most quests and drops are green. Blues are still dungeon drops, and occasional quests. Only difference is purples are now the "standard" for level cap. Everyone gets them freely and easily just for being max level. And of course oranges are given out left and right and lost all meaning.

For purples I don't think it's really that big of a deal because raiding was very inaccessible back in vanilla. Even though most people literally COULD NOT do it, those that did still had varying levels of power from each tier. You had Nax, ZG, both AQs, MC, BWL and all of the gear in them were different levels of power and strength just like the different tiers today vary in power and strength. So purple still didn't mean anything amongst raiders, the item level was still the only thing that mattered as far as raiders were concerned. The only difference was most people couldnt raid so most people didnt have any purples at all. Now that literally everyone can raid and you can get epic gear by standing around afk for 30 minutes, we're back to that same situation. Course back then we had gear score, which evolved to item level and been integrated into the game without need for other addons.

So it's really no change, only difference being anyone can raid now so everyone gets raid gear.

The big difference is the oranges, not the purples. Oranges were what really meant something special, even amongst the raiders themselves. Having an orange used to be a status symbol and meant something, nowadays NOT having an orange just means you are a piece of garbage.

Blues were more rare back then as well since you had to form your own groups manually. A lot of pugs didn't know anything about the dungeons you were going into because everyone tended to only run with guildies because they wanted folks with experience with em. So if you did pug, you got people who were clueless and bad a lot of times unless they just didnt have any guildies on and wanted a shot at something. Having all blues was somewhat of a feat then too.

But actually getting the blues hasn't gotten any easier, it's just easier and more common due to group finder being instant and all people in that group being replaceable cog-people you can swap in and out at will and none of them mean anything.

[Thandorr]

For those of you that are still playing do you feel any sense of accomplishment when you get a gear upgrade anymore? Every 2 weeks you collect a piece of raid gear just for playing the facebook garrison game and with BoE epics and crafted gear there is a saturation of purples that make acquiring them meaningless in the long run. If they were to remove the items entirely and we would receive a +15 to stats when we killed a new boss, that would basically accomplish the same purpose and the gear paradigm in current WoW. Why not restore the sense of heroism and epicness that makes you actually want to raid?

[Dasani]

For those of you that are still playing do you feel any sense of accomplishment when you get a gear upgrade anymore? Every 2 weeks you collect a piece of raid gear just for playing the facebook garrison game and with BoE epics and crafted gear there is a saturation of purples that make acquiring them meaningless in the long run. If they were to remove the items entirely and we would receive a +15 to stats when we killed a new boss, that would basically accomplish the same purpose and the gear paradigm in current WoW. Why not restore the sense of heroism and epicness that makes you actually want to raid?

Those of us still raiding don't get upgrades form the facebook garrison game. We get it by killing bosses that drop that loot before 2 weeks have passed. In all my time raiding this expansion, i've only gotten one upgrade from mythic caches, the rest of the gear was shit I either didn't want or already had.

Killing the bosses it he first goal. Doing bigger numbers on farm is the second goal. The color of the gear doesn't matter at all. It's just like when you're doing challenge mode runs a lot of people swap their all purple raid gear out for some blues and in some cases even greens because there are a few green trinkets that perform better than 630 ones. The color is an illusion and means nothing. Only performance matters. My mismatch of best in slot blues and purples will let me outperform fully purple people every day of the week in challenge mode.

I wonder if people would be happy if they just changed all the colors. Have Grey be leveling gear, White be dungeon gear, Green be first tier raid, Blue be second tier raid, and Purple be third tier raid? That way the colors clearly show a rise in power. It's all just in your head either way you slice it though. And LFR pieces would be one color behind current tier since the item level is more akin to normal of the previous tier. So even during third tier, raiders got purples, LFR people got blues. That would make the most sense I think, but none of it really matters.

[bryroo]

The mindset of 'i need validation and worship for my accomplishments in a video game from strangers' isn't one I have any respect for.

Epics used to be epic...and then we werent 15 anymore on our first MMO, grew up and realised it's just a game.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

For those of you that are still playing do you feel any sense of accomplishment when you get a gear upgrade anymore? Every 2 weeks you collect a piece of raid gear just for playing the facebook garrison game and with BoE epics and crafted gear there is a saturation of purples that make acquiring them meaningless in the long run. If they were to remove the items entirely and we would receive a +15 to stats when we killed a new boss, that would basically accomplish the same purpose and the gear paradigm in current WoW. Why not restore the sense of heroism and epicness that makes you actually want to raid?

I raid to kill bosses not for random purples. I like downing a hard boss and don't even complete most tier set most tier sets lol.

[Deleted]

i second this. nothing really has to change other than the color of the name item and it would make an impact, but i would take it a step further and make anything not dropped in a normal raid or higher not only blue, but really really bland looking

You're in luck then - they've already done this. LFR does not drop the tier sets, and most of its items are pretty generic looking, certainly not the same models as Normal and beyond.

As for the colour... if you really care about the colour of the text on your item when you mouse over it, then perhaps you should think a little about what you actually find fun about this game ?

Same question goes for the OP and everyone else who is for this btw - What is (or was) fun about this game ? Was it really the epics ? Was it really having purple coloured items while others had blue coloured ones ? Was it the bragging ? Really ? Are you sure ?

I was one of those people that raided Naxxramas in Vanilla, and you know what, despite having nearly full T3 gear (which I still have), I never, ever got a single whisper. Why's that ? Cause I didn't sit around towns for other people to look at me. I raided, hearthstoned out, logged out, rinse, repeat.

And what I found fun was the actual raiding, the actual killing of difficult bosses. Not the items. Did getting items make me feel good ? Sure. It was good to improve my character, I'd spend some time thinking about what I'd save my DKP for to get next, it was an important part of the game.

But guess what, after the initial feeling of winning an item ? It became a tool. A bunch of numbers that increased my performance in some small way and helped in what really mattered - the encounters we'd be wiping on all night.

And that hasn't changed. From Vanilla to WoD, the high end difficulties of raids were challenging, and its where the fun came for pretty much anyone I met, not from being "decked out" in items.

I might be reaching here, but I think a lot of the people pining for the days that "epics meant something" have just become bored with the game and they're looking for reasons they don't enjoy it anymore - all the while avoiding the obvious reason, you've been playing this game regularly for multiple years.

[Rassium]

Purple hasn't "meant" something for a long ass time, and it really shouldn't. In TBC, depending on your spec, there were random greens that were BIS until tier 6 content. Hell, there were level 60 darkmoon trinkets which were BIS for some situations.

[Alvito]

They have been letting people get purple gear from dungeons and other sources since BC. This isn't a new thing as much as people try to act like it is.

[Ballrug]

I've heard stories of players in full T2 from BWL standing in Stormwind getting tells from players in awe of their epic raid gear. They were overwhelmed with excitement, envy and a love for the game when they saw another players accomplishment that took months to obtain.

What you're hearing is just as true and exciting as the stories you've heard about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

[Netherspark]

Purple is just a colour!

[Xandrigity]

http://m.quickmeme.com/img/4f/4f221a...e3e17789d5.jpg


Your in troublz now

Infracted [ML]

[Thandorr]

I might be reaching here, but I think a lot of the people pining for the days that "epics meant something" have just become bored with the game and they're looking for reasons they don't enjoy it anymore - all the while avoiding the obvious reason, you've been playing this game regularly for multiple years.

I think you may actually be getting at the real heart of the matter. That level of epicness in the game is gone for a host of reasons, boredom could be one of them. Incidentally, I still find the game very fun despite playing for several years. That being said, I still pretty much only log on to raid our 4 night schedule then log off to play other games the rest of the week.

What you're hearing is just as true and exciting as the stories you've heard about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

First hand conversations from people who experienced things are far and away different from mythical fariytales, my friend. Perhaps reality needs to make a comeback in your realm?

[Vulgrym]

I've heard stories of players in full T2 from BWL standing in Stormwind getting tells from players in awe of their epic raid gear.

No, not really. I was more likely to be called a no-lifer.

If people like the gear/mount you're sporting now, they pretty much say the same things they said back then. Usually "nice gear".

[Ballrug]

First hand conversations from people who experienced things are far and away different from mythical fariytales, my friend. Perhaps reality needs to make a comeback in your realm?

Perception becomes reality. quod vide.