Thrall, Not Wearing Lvl 40 Greens

Posted by theepicraiders on January 2, 2010 at 4:03 PM

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"Lolz Thralls only wearing level 40 greenz. Noobxors!!!111!!1!11!!"

But on a more serious note some people have voiced their marked distaste about Thrall, the leader of the Horde, and his lack of a visual update.

I have two theories as to why he's wearing a bunch of gear you might be able to pick up along the way in vanilla WoW. The first takes a logical look at the situation using established game practices and the second uses lore and a recently implemented feature to explain the use of old world models on Thrall (who consequently will always use that character's facial model and haircut, as that is just what Thrall looks like.)

Theory 1: He's wearing endgame gear for the expansion he stopped seriously raiding.
So Thrall belongs to this great guild, The Horde. He's doing the pinnacle of endgame raiding and now he pretty well geared. But then his guild goes through some hard times and Thrall becomes guild master of the Horde. Suddenly he can't raid anywhere near as much between leading one of the biggest guilds in and while Lortemar may do the paperwork, Thrall does all the dirty work, so raiding with the rest of the guild gets difficult.

Why is his gear end game? Well lets look at how the past two expansions have affected the gaming world. Wrath of the Lich King and the Burning Crusade each added 10 levels to the gaming experience, so let's say that each Warcraft expansion added 10 levels to the level cap. So lets count backwards; Wrath 80-70, BC 70-60, WoW classic 60-50 (note many of the major lore character in Classic wow are in this bracket, withholding faction bosses), WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne 50-40, WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos 40-30. This is the place where Thrall had to give up raiding to become guild master. See how he'd only be able to wear level 30-40 gear? (For those of you who are curious this line of thinking does work out. WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal 30-20, WarCraft II: Tides of War 20-10, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans 10-0.)

So there is a pretty solid theory. Of course you may ask why is some of his gear green if he was a hardcore raider? He should be wearing dungeon blues. So it would appear there is at least one flaw in this theory. So on we go to Theory two.

Theory 2: Those aren't greens they are actually heirlooms.
Ah, now doesn't that make sense? Why upgrade your gear when it automatically upgrades as you level? The lore is also there to support the function as heirlooms. The gear he wears and the Doomhammer itself were passed on to Thrall by Orgrim Doomhammer and if a new Warchief is crowned I would expect Thrall to part with some or all of the gear to the new Warchief. While the concept of heirlooms as we know them are pretty new, we've been passing down items to our alts and succesors since vanilla WoW. The WarCraft three gear was also not bind on equip so you could pass your +14 attack claw on to the lower level hero you just acquired.

So what does this mean for the character model for Thrall in the future? It could bode well once Cataclysm hits and Garrosh becomes the Warchief. Garrosh would abandon the Wrath gear you can't see through his tabard anyway so he could wear the black plate of Doomhammer, though Garrosh would proabably still dual wield axes. This leaves The opportunity to get a graphical gear upgrade, something along the lines of his Escape from Durnholde gear but snazzier and more along the lines of a new Guardian of Trisfal.