World of Warcraft

I’ll be honest, before I read this quote from a recent interview with Blizzard employee Tom Chilton, I didn’t even know what a legacy item meant. After doing a little bit of research however, it turns out that legacy items are awarded to players depending on how long they’ve been playing. In the past Blizzard stated that they wanted everyone to have an opportunity to get items, and awarding players simply because they’ve been here the longest would disadvantage newer players who are trying to get into the groove of the game themselves. It appears they may have reversed their position on this, as the quote below demonstrates:

“Legacy Items; we haven’t really talked about those in the past. We are planning to do certain types of items that essentially bind to your account, so they’re deliberately created as twink items. So you might be able to find one of these items when you’re doing an endgame instance, or a raid, or something like that, and you might get an item that binds to your account and then hand that off to your other characters, but it does have to stay within your account. So you can be deliberately overpowered for a low level character to help level up or whatever.”

On one hand I tend to go against the grain on this sorta thing. I remember Ultima Online had item rewards for players who had been playing the longest, but by and large these were simply cosmetic awards. A “purposely” overpowered weapon for a low level character does have serious implications for those participating in the battlegrounds at that level. However there is something to be said for the ability to level faster thanks to a legacy item. Let’s face it, leveling a brand new character from 1-80 is going to be a long..daunting..potentially boring process. If legacy items could help cut down the amount of time required to bring up a new toon…should we really be opposed to it? I think Blizzard’s best bet here is to let them serve their intended purpose: to help you level faster. Don’t allow players to participate in low-level Battlegrounds with these. It’s bad enough as-is.