With the impending 9.2 update, World of Warcraft is getting class sets once again, giving you the ability to customize your armour according to the class you’re playing. This is the first time such a feature has appeared since Legion, and the Blizzard devs are trying to create a hybrid approach between gear sets based on class identity and recent designs that reflect where you get your armour.
As lead game designer Morgan Day explains to us in a group interview, “players really miss that class fantasy and the fantasy of the class set and how that aesthetic speaks to whatever class you are playing.”. “One of the original mage sets I always loved had the little water globes on their shoulders, like they were making them water.”.
In some ways, the team felt like “we had explored the soulbind space and Chains of Domination update, as well as other updates”, so they “wanted to think about what other cool pieces of power progression could we let players explore and chase after”. It was a natural direction to go in considering how often players ask about class sets.
“Class sets in the Legion (and before) era were laser focused on what that class fantasy was,” Day says, “and they didn’t feel like they had a lot of connection to the content that you earned it from.” So when we moved away from class sets, the armour dropped would reflect the old gods, even if that didn’t reflect the concept behind your class.
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Day explains that the “Progenitors have these geometrical shapes that you’ll see all over the zone, even in their magic. We call it ‘math magic’.” He adds that “you’ll see that shape language in the armour, but you’ll also see the elements of your class fantasy.”
The WoW 9.2 launch date is set for February 22. This link offers more information on MMORPGs.