Nostalgia

Patch 4.3 is due to hit soon, and it's got me thinking more and more about gear. Up until now I don't think I've really given a thought to the overall appearance of my character because it was largely out of my control. The only elements of my character's appearance I had any say over was the shirt, tabard, and hair color. And I always did my best to make sure they coordinated my outfit. But as for the rest of my character, stats > appearances. I wore whatever had the best stats.

Well, with the new transmog feature becoming available, there is just no excuse for anyone to be strutting about Orgrimmar in some sort of weirdly put-together clown suit. I predict that once 4.3 is here, you will be considered a scrub if your gear doesn't match.

Anyways, my mind's been on my character appearances a lot lately (so shallow, I know). It got me to thinking, what did I look like prior to...now? You see your character daily and you kind of tend to forget that they actually look like in their raiding outfit. Sure, you know your gear inside and out, but what do you look like?

For that matter, I have an extremely hard time remembering what I was wearing mere months ago. I recall tier11 being pretty damn ugly, and I know it had hideous shoulders and a pretty decent looking helmet. But what weapons was I using? What tabard? What about everything else?

So in a fit of nostalgia, I dug up as many old screenshots as I could of my character. And I think I've put together a pretty accurate representation of how my character looked in the past 2 years. Oh, it all brings back so many memories...

Let's go back in time to mid-wrath...

This is right around when I hit 80. I believe ToC had already been released and people were still working their way through Ulduar. I can't recall what I was wearing the day I dinged 80, but I know that within a couple weeks I had grinded enough badges to buy some of the tier9 pieces. I know that the first thing I bought were shoulderpads, but as for the rest I can't recall. I'm guessing it was more or less a clownsuit. But anyways, this is what I must have looked like when I first began raiding - a mix of dungeon/tier 9 gear.



Not bad, even though I can't recall for the life of me what tabard I was wearing at that point. Later I think I had some Naxx/ulduar gear thrown in as well as my guild was raiding those. I remember when the ICC heroic dungeons came out, trying to grind those for hours in an attempt to replace the last few remaining blue items I had.

Soon after ICC was released, my guild broke up and I moved on as well. ICC definitely had the most fond memories for me because I spent almost a whole year clearing ICC, going through 3 different guilds in the process. It was this repeating cycle where I'd leave one guild for more progression, hit a wall there and move onto another. I'm not proud of the guild-hopping, but hey, it got me to my current guild whom I adore.

So this is what I looked like towards the end of Wrath. My guild had heroic ICC on farm (all except Sindy and Lich king) and I was rocking almost full sanctified shadowblade battlegear. I initially hated the tattered geist look, but it kind of grew on me after a while. The one thing I absolutely hated was the helmet, and I don't think I ever had my helmet displayed throughout all of ICC.



Now fast forward to the release of Cata...

Just as I was getting used to strutting around, showing off my heroic epics, cata hit. BAM - everyone was back to wearing crappy quest greens. It took at least a couple levels before I could replace all the purples with greens, and by the time I reached 85 this is what I looked like:



Not the worst I've seen, although that brown color is about as dull as dishwater. I liked the helmet, which was a nice change from the ICC set. By this point I had grinded dungeons and badges to replace all the greens with blue items at least. I had just switched guilds again and had just started to dip my toes into the tier11 raiding pool. Gear was harder to come by due to EVERYONE needing new gear, so I spent quite a bit of time in this boring starter gear.

And then as we got to the point where most of tier11 was on farm (all except the end bosses), I slowly replaced the blues with epics. I can't remember what the last thing I replaced was, but I think it may have been a trinket? At any rate, it wasn't that remarkable because there was a lot of BoE gear for rogues floating about. I had to replace my offhand, thrown, chest, belt, and helmet all through BoEs. Sure, they're nice, but they just don't give the same satisfaction as when you've earned that gear from raiding.



I hated, hated, hated those shoulders. They looked even more ridiculous in-game and the animation was all messed up due to them being so oversized. Paired with the skintight tier legs and feet, they just looked horrendous.

Now, I loved the helm though, actually thought it was the best looking helm I've seen to date. It wasn't the tier piece (which I got later and begrudgingly switched for stat reasons) but it was far better looking than the mummified bandage face look.

And now, this is what I look like at present:



I have to say, this is one of my favorite rogue tiers. The heroic version has a much nicer color, but I like this one too. I would make the shoulders a little less prominent, but the design is beautiful. And I love this helm. While I liked my tier11 helm because it was pretty, this one actually looks like it fits a rogue. I love that sinister raven look it's got going on...

So, in a matter of a few weeks, if not sooner, I will look like one of the following:

1. Golden robot
2. Midnight blue ninja
3. Fuzzy polarbear

I'm personally leaning towards the fuzzy bear...