Inspired by these discussions regarding meaningful loot.
Remember long ago these items “of the wolf”, “of the whale”, etc ?
These were green items with very predictable stats. In fact here is the table:
| Animal suffix | Strength | Agility | Stamina | Intellect | Spirit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Of the Tiger | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Bear | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Gorilla | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Boar | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Monkey | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Falcon | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Wolf | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Eagle | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Whale | √ | √ | |||
| Of the Owl | √ | √ |
To me, these old green items are very similar to most of the items we get nowadays, in retail. You know almost all retail items are like this:
- +X strength, agi or intellect
- +Y stamina
- +A 1st secondary stat
- +B 2nd secondary stat
So, they are very similar to green items “of the [animal]”.
Back in the days:
-
rare items were different from these green items of the [animal].
Rare items had something special. For example, an unusual and high amount of armor on a ring. Or an item that unusually increased all stats. Things like that. - epic items usually dropped in raids, and most of them (at least armor pieces) were part of a set that granted set bonuses, and that’s why these were epic.
-
legendary items they were very few. In fact, for a long time, legendary items were only available to few classes. And, tbh, they were badly designed. They just were OP, but they did not change a lot about your character beside that.
However… There were unique items. Unique because no other item in the game provided the effect these items gave you. For example Wolfshead Helm. These items should have been legendaries.
All of this just to say that, all these discussions around the current loot scarcity and its (absence) of meaning may be the result of this: devs maybe forgot what made loot common, uncommon, rare, epic or legendary. Maybe they were “forced” by players who asked to be showered with purple epic loot, yet meaningless, because noone can design that many different set bonus, gameplay altering effects, etc and keep it balanced.
So, here we are today: we have purple colored green items.