This sentence highlights the entire flawed premise of these threads. People are calling to make those exact druid forms available again and claiming they are unique, but their uniqueness comes from their rarity.
The werebear model has already been used several times, as for the cat, it is a reimagining of the fire kitty from firelands in different colors. There have been several new forms that are of the same if not higher standards, but people care only about bringing back those exact ones.
IMO we should have more druid forms that use similar or other models/colors/remakes (imagine the werecat from WoD), so that druids have more choices, but I do not think returning those exact same forms would be good.
As I said in the 459th thread on this topic as well, killing content is the worst aspect of WoW. The game is a graveyard, more dead than alive, and people actually defend this? Because of a reward that should still be hard to get?
May FOMO die in a ditch. This issue extends far beyond the mage tower, and its one of the most tragic pieces of game design I’m aware of.
Totally fair to want more love for Shamans — just maybe not by pretending druids are living in form heaven, because trust me, half of us are still waiting for a werebear that doesn’t look like a special effects test.
Well, Druids don’t actually get “wild” new forms every expansion. The last “wild” new one was literally a walking tree branch that doesn’t even come in different colours. That’s not variety; that’s a stick with legs. Most of us would kill for a simple werebear without all the fire and particle chaos.
And I love people like you for that. You get me and you I appreciate that thought process because it all truly just leads to exclusion after such a long time.
Any claims of prestige in the context of Mage Tower are beyond ridiculous. In the last patch you could do them with your eyes closed. I pretty much did.
The “prestige” argument falls off very quickly the moment you realize that all those babies crying to daddy Bliz to not bring them back are also using older transmogs that they didn’t get at the time, but way after.
So you can go to Molten Core and 1 shot Ragnaros to get a weapon transmog from 2004 but I can’t get sparklekitty after having completed the Mage Tower return during Shadowlands? Who’s the spoiled brat here?
I get where you’re coming from about “uniqueness through rarity,” but that logic doesn’t really hold up when we’re talking about a matter of variety, not cosmetic/transmog trophies. Locking those models away forever doesn’t preserve uniqueness, it just punishes players who weren’t around or were too young to earn them back then.
Sure the werebear model has been reused, like the fel werebear and the runebear but is it too much to ask for less unnatural werebears and more natural ones, like the MT werebears like you said.
Like colours that haven’t been used yet — ash, blue grey, fawn, sand, dark truffle, cinnamon - do I need to go on?
Werebears are probably most guardian Druids favourite once, and Blizz most definitely knows about it yet instead of giving us natural werebears with unused colours to make a gap between the OG MT once to keep it’s rarity, they work their arses around it and hand out things nobody really asked for. That’s the issue.
When you preserve uniqueness, you are also punishing players that were not able to get that model then, it is 2 sides of the same coin.
And I 100% agree with that, with the rest of the community. No one will say to not use those models and introduce some like that.
Problem is that when the discussion is “bring back the old rewards” vs “do not bring the old rewards” feedback is conflicting and it is hard to take action on that. If the discussion was about “make more forms and use unavailable models” then all the players would ask the same thing, but I guess forums cannot go without drama.
An example of my point from riot:
They had created a skin for Riven for a championship they had in the very beggining. It was pretty well received and was pretty rare.
When riot had feedback from players that wanted it to return, they made a simple change:
They introduced a championship riven 2016 skin, which was the same as the original but with different name
They added a “crown” in the original skin, and gave the players that had it originally a new loading screen for the skin.
I think similar solution can be used for those skins, where the original can be kept for those that got it, and a slight variation return for those that want the customization as you said.
THey should make it customizeable, like the fel werebear, you can get other basecolors for it, and change the tatto color, to f.example White base form with blue tattoos, change eyecolors, add some scars on it, change the color of the arm bandage, and so on.
edit: same treatment as they gave boomkin form, now you can change a lot on that one