Breakfast Topic: Could transmogrification save archaeology?
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Ah, archaeology -- a secondary profession with so much potential in theory, and the mind-numbing death of many hours of playtime in reality. I was originally really excited about a global scavenger hunt as a downtime activity, but after skilling it up, I lost interest. Piecing together tons of vendor trash in the hopes of my next find's being a rare became just another grind for items.
Now that the Cataclysm expansion is winding down, I've been thinking about where archaeology could grow from here. Certainly there will be more toy-type items and account-bound epic gear to chase after, but what else could this profession bring to the game?
It occurred to me that with the coming of the transmogrification feature, digging around Azeroth could be made interesting again. Instead of adding a number of gray-quality artifacts to sell for pocket money, why not have the common finds be transmoggable art pieces? Think gray-quality versions of gear, good only for costume unlocks. What better way to bring old stuff back to the present than by having us literally dig it up? It could work as an avenue to bring back discontinued tier looks (imagine digging in Eastern Plaguelands for pieces of original Naxxramas raid gear) or even open up items that never were before available to players (like a giant totem skin for two-handed maces, so you can look like a tauren warrior from Warcraft III)!
Where else do you think archaeology could go? What do you think we could be digging up in the next expansion?
