Badge Gear Again

Can you provide some examples, because I'm not seeing any similarities, unless I'm not understanding what pieces you're referring to correctly.

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The new druid tanking legs look exactly like a level 65 blue quest reward. Got any explanations for that one?

Well I don't know, you've provided such clear and concise examples for me to reference that I'm pretty much stumped.

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New badge reward mail healing chest

New badge reward mail healing legs

the examples were listed in the op

Yeah, I got that, but they don't look like the items from ZA so I assume I misunderstood him.

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http://wowhead.com/?item=33533
http://wowhead.com/?item=34934

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http://wowhead.com/?item=34931 and http://wowhead.com/?item=33530

Ah, ok, thanks. The chests ARE different though, right? Or am I looking at the wrong items.

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The healing chest piece, looks like the one from Mount Hyjal, not from ZA. I was mistaken on that item, but i do know that the legs are identical. Maybe you could put a word in for us to your boss, and get them changed >.>

Heh, very doubtful at this point.

Contrary to popular belief (?) designing a new item set does take a while. We usually use color shifts on the same designs to save time, the exception to that would be the arena sets where we want the items to specifically match the PvE counterparts. The choice to color shift is usually when an item isn't something that would benefit from having a unique model, usually a leveling item. In the case of the badge rewards I can see the reasoning to use color shifts for the level of investment taken to acquire them. Is buying an item with badges the same as clearing Black Temple? No, no not really. So, it isn't so horrible if a shift is used.

What I find odd is that in this particular case we seem to have gone against what would normally be shifted, which is the matching dungeon items, and instead shifted from a previous dungeon's/quest items. My only guess is that those shifts were already done, or the artists preferred them to the new design.

Now that the entirety of the art department's is focused completely on Lich King I don't find it surprising that their time spent invested on the badge items were color shifts. The level of quality of the environments, items, textures, models, etc. in the next expansion are far and above better than anything in the game thus far, so I definitely understand the desire to focus as much time of their time on them as possible.