Green, Blue, Purple and Orange

[ro9ue]

This isn't scientific by any means, just my anecdotal experience, but I'm curious how everyone else feels about this. World of Warcraft and Diablo - basically Blizzard - has for so long conditioned me to look at those colors in growing power, respectively in that order.

When I play a game that uses those colors "out of order", it no longer feels right to me. However, it seems like games that use it as Blizzard has, like with Rift or Destiny, I fall into that system a lot easier. It seems like a TON of mobile games choose to replicate that color structure Blizzard has made instead of going against it.

So I ask, did Blizzard have such an impact on so many gamers that their color ladder left a deep psychological imprint on us - essentially creating a standard of expectation for the entire games industry on the value of colors? Just me personally speaking, games that adhere to this color system seem to have a more familiar appeal while if I see a color structure that doesn't adhere to those standards I feel a bit disconnected.

Thoughts? Am I just insane?

[Jazzhands]

I grew up in EQ, where there was no item color quality, so this isn't really an issue for me. I can see how it could effect people though.

[Deleted]

It shouldn't be surprising that I'm more used to a scheme in a game I've played thousands of hours on than one I just picked up. But I do get used to the others eventually.

[ro9ue]

I grew up in EQ, where there was no item color quality, so this isn't really an issue for me. I can see how it could effect people though.

EQ was my first MMO as well, but I have way more hours into D2+WoW and in general Blizzard games.

[Dhrizzle]

Diablo doesn't use that colour progression, it goes blue, yellow, orange, green.

[I Push Buttons]

Well those games were the most popular... WoW had 11 million concurrent subscribers at one time, but has probably had tens of millions of different players over the years, Diablo 3 sold like 25 million copies or whatever... Whether they established that model, I don't know, but they certainly have to be the most popular developers to use it.

Popularity establishes precedents in any industry... They are businesses, they go with the flow and do what works.

Why potentially confuse your customers by coming up with a system that is entirely different for no other reason than the sake of being different?

If your game is going to have the same type of common, rare, legendary item scheme... Why change the colors for no reason when tens of millions of people are already familiar with the "Blizzard" model.

[Fencers]

I enjoy Diablo quite a bit but was not overly into World of Warcraft. As such I have no strong affinity for the colored quality ranking of Blizzard's games. I don't actually know what comes after blue in WoW, but Diablo had a different color ladder.

Personally, I think of color quality ranking in the following order from least to greatest: white, blue, yellow, orange/red. Partly from a lot of Radiant Arcana and Path of Exile play; both used a similar hierarchy.

[Nirawen]

I was used to it in other games by the time WoW came out so it didn't influence me much personally but I'm glad it helped to cement a standard system, there were a lot of bad alternatives.

[Keile]

Diablo doesn't use that colour progression, it goes blue, yellow, orange, green.

Originally Diablo was:

White, Blue, Gold.

Then it became:

Grey, White, Yellow, Gold, Green, Orange (rare crafted items via Horadric Cube) in D2.

Then D3 made it:

White, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Green.

I miss the old Gold for Uniques....

[Tidezen]

The thing that kind of irritates me with the WoW standard is how they started off in the middle of the color spectrum, and worked their way up, which made sense, but then when they went past "epic" purple, had to start throwing in colors from the lower end of the spectrum. They should have just started off at red for the lowest "magic" quality and worked their way up the ol' ROYGBV, with violet being the absolute highest, for stuff like legendaries. Or go in the opposite direction, since purple-blue-green are seen as the "cooler" colors, while yellow-orange-red are "hotter".

Diablo's just a nonsensical clusterfuck, always has been.

[Deleted]

https://sites.google.com/a/share.bre.../color-meaning

This surely influenced them in their decision to color items-rarity differently.
And I agree with Wow, D2/D3 the most even though they are not the same... D3 is somewhat out of touch but that's due to how much the game has changed since release and that it wanted to have a similiar progression system to D2.

[Coldkil]

Color coding stuff is a great way to make things understandable easily by people - just looking at the color of an item's name you can immediately say if it's more powerful or not of the one you have already.

The fact these colors were chose, it's more like history - Blizzard games have always been tied to each other, so it's natural that the colo codes are brought form one game to another with some slight changes.

[May90]

I've always disliked these color schemes. I'd like every weapon to be somewhat unique, and these generalized properties ("Common", "Rare", etc.) make it a bit too... binary to my taste. I like finding a new weapon and having the thrill of comparing its various stats and properties to mine and deciding whether it is better weapon or not. In Blizzard games, however, that thrill is absent: "Let's see... Oh, it is a green-colored weapon? Muh, mine is purple-colored, I won't even look at the stats. Let's see... DPS lower than for my weapon without any special properties? No, selling it". Dragon Age: Origins, for example, handled it much better, in my opinion, and there you actually sometimes had to think on which weapon is better for you, it not always being that clear-cut. Same with Neverwinter Nights series, KotoR, Mass Effect - all Bioware series past Baldur's Gate, really.

[ro9ue]

I actually just noticed it in Clash Royale as well. Green < Blue < Purple.