Addon recommendation: MogIt

Many of my guildmates have been looking for tools to make the new transmogrification process easier.  Until now, most of us had been using the 3D view feature at Wowhead or using model viewing applications such as Wow Model Viewer.  While very good utilities, both of these options were a little lacking for people who wished to do this work from inside the game or just make it easier to know what to look for.

Enter MogIt!

3D tooltips!

MogIt is an addon designed to help make choosing items to transmogrify that little bit easier.  One of the first features I noticed (which is optional) is a 3D model of your character wearing the item added to item tooltips.  I would almost have added the addon for this feature alone.  I know that you can ctrl-click to view any item on your character, but my energy is limited and anything I can do to reduce the amount of clicks involved in mundane tasks is a very big help.  Now when looking at items on the auction house, I only need to hold my cursor over the item to see it.

This is only one tiny part of the addon however.  Its main use is to enable you to view all armour and weapon options in game.  You can filter the models by item slot, level, armour type and best of all in my opinion, approximate colour.  One thing to bear in  mind whilst using this addon is that it is calling on many files whilst in use, so it may slow down some slower computers.  I haven’t noticed any extra lag on my own use of this addon, but then I am only using it while stood in town with very little going on.  I have no intention of leaving this addon enabled when raid time comes around.

Filtering by colour

Now, if this sounds to good to be true already then its a good time to mention that the addon also allows you to save a wish list of items and has a note of how to obtain each item making it easy to save a record of outfits that take your fancy.

So, if you have been bitten by the transmogrification bug, go ahead and give it a try!

 

Armour graphics and variation by gender

When I created my post on green quality cloth outfits a little while ago, I mentioned that many outfits change drastically dependent on the race of the character.  Of course, they also vary hugely by the gender of the character too.  Anyone that has posted over a pair of formidably imposing leg plates from their male character only to be dismayed with the resulting hotpants on their female alt will have already been aware of this problem.

A friend of mine has been searching for a plate outfit for his Death Knight alt.  He had put in a lot of time and effort to get the outfit collected/bought and had based it from a picture he had seen on a website.  He felt that this set carried the gravitas and foreboding that he wished to convey, whilst opting for a blood-red colour scheme instead of the black armour collections that many tend to choose for their Death Knights (me included – I have a Goth Dwarf…what more can I say!).

He linked the set pieces over to me to view and give an opinion on.  At the time I did point out that as I was playing a female dwarf, the look could be fairly different to the human male version he was looking at, but he asked me to look anyway.

My friend saw an imposing-looking human male Death Knight clad in armour that perhaps was a slightly lighter shade of red than he had seen in the website picture, but impressive none-the-less.

I saw this:

Those boobs really leap out of the picture at you, don't they?

Now admittedly, I assumed that the male version that my friend was looking at had a little more coverage than the version I could see, but my eyes were instantly drawn to the heart on the belt and the overall impression it gave me wouldn’t be out of place in a Care Bears cartoon.  Pink, hearts and probably highly sought after by every female paladin in Stormwind!

I tried to convey by chat the girly fantasy that the armour pieces were showing as to me but I really couldn’t do it justice.  Did the male version really look sort of pink and have hearts on the belt, I asked?  There was a silent pause (presumably while my friend hurriedly checked the armour again) and then…why yes, the male version also has a heart on the belt and sort of looks a lot less ‘blood red’ and rather more ‘pinkish’, but “honestly I had never noticed that when I collected the set…”

We are now on the search for a more manly set of dark red plate 😉

 

Cloth sets for vertically challenged females

There are many blogs and websites dedicated to displaying the lovely artwork of the rarely worn uncommon quality outfit sets. As you may remember from a previous post, I have been struggling to find an outfit that suited my Dwarf Priest, so I have been looking through many sites to find ideas.  After hours of searching I finally realised the problem.  Most sites dealing with outfit design for World of Warcraft like to display their assembled outfits on Humans or races that share a similar build (Draenei, Trolls, Elves etc.).  There are very few sites that try to show the outfits on smaller races such as Dwarves, Gnomes and Goblins.  There’s a very good reason for this.  When the outfit skins are applied to these races, they are very often greatly distorted.  These races (especially the Dwarves) tend to have a larger bust, which distorts graphics across the chest, and because of the difference in height often the outfit looks entirely different.

To pay homage to these sadly overlooked women, I have decided to use them as my models for the screenshots that will follow.  If you play a shorter character, this will give you a much more realistic idea of the appearance of the outfits rather than spending hours like I did looking at pictures of Blood Elves in skimpy bikinis that seriously need to be given some cake.  Please note, in some sets I have included the matching common quality items for completeness.  Be aware that currently there are no plans for common quality items to be useable for transmogrification.

Some of these sets have a robe option as well as a vest option.  The screenshots will show the vest option so that the pants can also be seen, but the links for each set do include the link for the robe also in case you wish to take a look at it.  Wowhead links have an option to view the item in 3d at the top right corner. Annoyingly, some of the armour graphics were changed for Catacysm so sometimes a “set” will have an item or two that doesn’t match the rest.  I am still including them for reference though.  Clicking on the pictures will take you to a larger version for a closer look.

From left to right: Beaded, Foreman, Journeyman, Ancestral, Disciple and Simple.

Beaded, Foreman, Journeyman, Ancestral, Disciple (there are common quality versions of the 4 Imbued items which share the same model that are named the same minus the “Imbued”) and Simple.

From left to Right: Native, Spellbinder, Barbaric, Willow, Aboriginal and Seer.

Native, Spellbinder, Barbaric, Willow, Aboriginal and Seer.

From left to right: Buccaneer, Mystic, Ritual, Shimmering, Pagan and Bright.

Buccaneer, Mystic, Ritual, Shimmering, Pagan and Bright.

From left to right: Greenweave, Sanguine, Ivycloth, Watcher, Raincaller and Silver-Thread.

Greenweave, Sanguine, Ivycloth, Watcher, Raincaller and Silver-Thread.

From left to right: Sage, Resilient, Durable, Elder, Thistlefur and Nightsky.

Sage, Resilient, Durable, Elder, Thistlefur and Nightsky.

From left to right: Vital, Conjurer, Stonecloth, Twilight, Aurora and Geomancer.

Vital, Conjurer, Stonecloth, Twilight, Aurora and Geomancer.

From left to right: Embersilk, Sorcerer, Silksand, Regal, Darkmist and Mistscape (2 versions).

Embersilk, Sorcerer, Silksand, Regal, Darkmist and Mistscape.  I included two versions of the Mistscape outfit as the robe is a particularly nice one and totally changes the look if exchanged with the armor.

From left to right: Lunar, Royal, Windchaser, Gossamer (x2), Bloodwoven (x2) and Hibernal.

Lunar, Royal, Windchaser (I hate when they update the shoulders and helm so that they don’t match anything else!), Gossamer, Bloodwoven and Hibernal.  Again, I chose to show two versions of the Gossamer and Bloodwoven sets as the helm and shoulders only match the robes.

From left to right: Gaea, Abjurer (x2), Venomshroud, Duskwoven (x2), Imperial Red (x2) and Opulent.

Gaea, Abjurer (identical to Mistscape except for hood), Venomshroud (identical to Hibernal except for Hood), Duskwoven, Imperial Red and Opulent. Alternate version of Abjurer, Imperial Red and Duskwoven added.

From left to right: Arachnidian (x2), Mystical (x2), Councillor (x2), Highborne and Bonecaster.

Arachnidian, Mystical, Councillor, Highborne and Bonecaster.  Alternate version of Arachnidian, Mystical and Councillor added.

This concludes the fashion parade for Azeroth.  If you are interested, I may move on to document Outlands outfits!

 

Does my bum look big in this?

The big news for the new WoW patch 4.3 appears to be the issue of Transmogrification.  Actually there were many other interesting things listed in the patch notes including a severe overhaul of the Darkmoon Faire, but all anyone seems to be focussing on is “mogging” (dear god, I seriously hate that shortened term *shudders*).

Most people would expect me to be hugely excited about this new feature.  I am after all the sort of person that spends hours in the Auction House looking for green quality sets of matching armour to level my character in as I detest the whole clown suit effect that you inevitably end up with whilst levelling.  Most of my characters have carefully matched outfits to wear whenever they aren’t forced by necessity to don horrid mis-matched armour.  My Gnome auctioneer as you may recall from the picture on my millionaire post happily dresses to match her sunflower pet.

So, why am I not singing its praises?

For the time-being at least, there are many restrictions on what will constitute a valid piece of equipment to emulate.  No gimmicky items are currently useable (there goes my dream of wielding a frying pan), items must be green quality or higher and have stats on them.  Until the actual feature is applied to the live servers, we cannot be certain of the validity of any of the items we may wish for.  Then of course, there are definite favourites.  Already the majority of the priest community are rushing of to make sure they have a full set of the tier 6 armour yet once again we will see endless armies of identical looking priests.  Much as in real life, I cannot stand looking the same as everyone else I meet.

What will the Dwarf Wench be wearing?

Summertime and the raiding is easy

In an ideal world, Swanhild would be able to look like this (apologies for the head piece suddenly deciding to be transparent, perhaps I didn’t earn my halo this week):

The colouring looks good on her, the decoration on the armour pieces is not too ostentatious and she doesn’t give the impression that she requires a handy plug socket to power her armour.

The trouble is, several of these items are from the Midsummer Festival set which is white quality and has no stats – unlikely to be allowable.

For those that wish to know these things, the outfit shown on the right is made up of the following:

Head: Crown of the Fire Festival, Shoulder: Mantle of the Fire Festival, Shirt: Brawler’s Harness, Chest: Vestment of Summer, Feet: Sandals of Summer and Hands: Handwraps of the Cleansing Flame.  I have not included pants or bracers as they will not be seen under the gloves and robes.

If I’m forced to make a decision on old Tier sets, I think my favourites when viewed on a female dwarf would have to be either the old and no longer available Tier 3 set or the Tier 5 Avatar set, both shown below.

Tier 3 Vestments of Faith

Tier 5 Avatar Raiment with Staff of Immaculate Recovery

I’m still hoping to find a non-tier cloth set that I actually like on a female dwarf.  Most cloth sets seem to either be too skimpy or just too boring.  Swanhild is a fairly modest dwarf and has no wish to have half her body on display (I swear the black mageweave and bunny ears is just a phase that she goes through each year to help the achievement hunters find her – honest!)