About trial accounts

A few posts down in my blog I have a so called "trial transmog". I thought I'd tell you a little about what it's like playing on a trial account. Trial accounts are, most importantly in my case, free. I currently can't afford paying the monthly fee for playing WoW, and I simply don't have time to raid since I study. When I miss WoW too much I just simply log in to my trial account and do some low level dungeons instead.

Trial accounts have the following benefits:

• They are free
  
• You can keep them for an unlimited time
  
• If you have the trial account connected to an already existing battle.net account, you get access to the same mounts, heirlooms and titles
  
  

However, there are several restrictions as well, such as the following:

• Maximum level 20, then you stop gaining experience
  
• It is not possible to lock your experience gain. You will reach 20 if you keep playing
  
• You can't trade or use the AH
• You can't use addons
  
• You can't use in game mail / postal service
  
• You can't invite people to a group (although you can accept party requests)
  
• You can only gain 10 gold, maximum
  
• You can only have 100 in the primary professions and you can't learn archaeology
  
• You can't visit Pandaria
  
• The only battlegrounds available are Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin - and also Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm as of patch 6.0.2
  
• The only dungeons available are the Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps and Stormwind Stockade
  
• You can only use /say, /party and /instance chats by default. You can only /whisper to people who whispered you first or if you both are on each other's friend list

Because of these specific restrictions you can't get the best gear and enchants and you can only compete in the 20-29 PvP bracket. It is therefore necessary to try to get the best gear possible from quests and drops - some of it you have to craft yourself with your 100 profession skills, and you have to enchant and enhance everything yourself. I've spent alot of time on wowhead figuring out which gear is the best I can wear, and on MogIt trying to put together transmogs with the scarce material available.

It is possible to get heirlooms (which I have on my priest Mysfox, and my boyfriend has them on his trial shaman Ohej), but getting them is very time consuming if you are a new player. If you already have an account with high level characters you can access your old heirlooms from that account. If you're NOT using a trial account connected to a real account, you have to earn them from scratch. During Darkmoon Faire (starts first Sunday every month) you can collect Darkmoon Prize Tickets, and for about 110 of them you can get an Heirloom item. That means you might need 1-2 Darkmoon Faire weeks (2 months). You can also buy PvP Heirlooms for justice points.

This might sound like a whole lot of work for just a level 20 character, but it's part of the charm. All of my enchants and leatherworking enhancement kits are crafted by me and it's actually quite fun to know you're slowly going towards a set goal, unlike the "real" game in which new expansions are released and limits are pushed further. I enjoy not having to worry about getting full gear before the next expansion comes, when it will be worthless. It's enough for me at least :)

Other inspirational sources

I have seen alot of people transmogging their characters into entire sets, for example a tier set. That is always nice of course if you want to reminisce about the good old TBC or Vanilla times. I, however, prefer mixing tier gear with PvP gear or even greens and blues to achieve a more unique look. But it's hard to find matching sets without the right tools, so I thought I would make a compilation of websites that would be helpful in the search of the perfect transmog.

Addons are perfect for browsing gear in game, but if you want to check out some gear without launching the game client, there are alot of useful websites as well.

Addons:

• MogIt - An AMAZING addon that I just recently downloaded. You can preview an extensive range of items and put together sets with this addon, and alot of the screenshots I upload to my blog are previewed with this addon.
• AtlasLoot - The addon I've primarily been using while creating my transmog sets. It is a very useful addon, but a bit flawed when it comes to creating outfits since it doesn't include alot of greens or blues.

Websites:

• World of Wardrobes - A great website where you can browse gear in different categories, based on armor type or colour.
• WoW Roleplay Gear - Lists alot of sets available for the different armor types.
• MogMyGear - A very clearly structured website where you can preview different green, blue, epic and heirloom sets depending on which class or race you pick.
• Icy Veins - Allows you to browse items, categorized either by armor type or item model.
• Disenchanting Azeroth - A blog full of reviews on weapons and weapon designs.
• WoW Tabards - Not everyone uses tabards, but they can do wonders for some transmogs. This site shows all the tabards available in game and where you get them.

Forget all about Landslide

I recently found out that some weapons hide the enchants and only show the glow that comes with the weapon. Transmogging to these weapons will hide the enchants as well. This means that you don't have to watch your weapon drip mud due to the [Landslide]-enchant anymore!

I stumbled upon a thread on the WoW-forums, where a rogue called Töki has created an excellent list of weapons that hide enchants. Töki has categorized them by colour, which is perfect for those looking for a good transmog replacement. The list can be found in the European forums, right here.