Blizzard panic-slashes World of Warcraft Midnight's fashion prices in half, but it's time to go further

With the World of Warcraft Midnight pre-patch now live, we're all starting to adapt to Blizzard's new era - but the MMORPG expansion's exposure to a wider audience has brought some changes into the light. The war against combat addons is certainly the most dramatic, but fashion prices are following close behind, and despite making some concessions to concerns during the alpha phase, Blizzard has quickly leapt to implement another significant reduction in costs to make sure your toons look the part.

The concept behind World of Warcraft's new transmog system makes sense, and there are certainly use cases where it'll feel better. Rather than equipping individual gear pieces, you now apply your fashion items to the slot, meaning that any new items you pop on will inherit the look of the thing they're replacing. You're also able to unlock numerous outfit slots, which you can switch between for free, similar to FF14's glamour plates. So far, so good.

The problem is that saving an outfit was priced at upwards of 2,000 gold if you had something equipped in every slot. On top of that, the switch to the new system removed existing transmogs, something community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan confirmed was intentional, but which forced players to shell out just to re-up their existing pre-Midnight looks. The cost is a problem alpha testers have been pointing out for quite some time, but the pre-patch has thrown it into full view, and now Blizzard has responded to the complaints with a double-dose of adjustments.

The first change is that all player-characters will be getting one free transmog, applied to their first outfit created. That's enough to return to your old look of choice, but it doesn't really encourage you to use the new system to its full potential. Enter fellow community manager Bethany 'Linxy' Hudson, who confirms that not only will this freebie be applied "as soon as we can" rather than waiting for patch 12.0.1, but that prices are being cut in half.

"We're going to lower the cost of outfit creation prices by 50% to bring them more in line with what the prices were prior to the transmog update," Hudson writes. It's an improvement, for sure, but I still can't help feeling like it shouldn't have to be this way. The investment, whether time, gold, or resources, should be in unlocking the outfit slots and obtaining the fashion pieces you want, not applying them.

The problem isn't that it's unfeasible to earn what you need, but that higher prices discourage experimentation. Few things pull players into the world of an MMO quite like matching your fashion to the moment, and I wish Blizzard would embrace that. WoW's biggest rival, Final Fantasy 14, does use a specific currency for its cosmetics (Glamour Prisms), but they're so remarkably easy to get that you're more likely to find yourself with too many to fit in your bags, rather than not enough.

Hudson also addresses how the new system works for the Trial of Style, WoW's occasional fashion event spectacular. "When Trial of Style is available, players receive a special transmog outfit slot that can be worn both inside and outside the competition. All transmog updates made to this slot are free. While in the competition, this is the outfit players are judged on. Once the Trial of Style event ends, the outfit slot is removed."

The capability to make fashion free is certainly there, then, though I'm sure not all will agree with my call to let us tweak and adjust our outfits any time we please. In its current incarnation, with a limited number of slots to work with, I'm suspecting many will lock in their preferred designs and feel reluctant to change them. Blizzard's already taking the fight to FF14 in the housing market, and it has the chance to do so on the catwalk too.