I find it hard to believe that we've never done this, but a search through the archives leads me to conclude that we haven't, so here you go.

Name: Orb of Deception
Type: Rare Trinket
Damage/Speed: N/A
Abilities:

• On use, transforms you into a character of the opposing faction.
• That means you suddenly change your look, from Alliance to Horde or vice versa. Humans to Orcs, Undead to Night Elf, Troll to Dwarf, Tauren to Gnome, and Blood Elf to Draenei (or vice versa).
• Lasts for five minutes, and has unlimited charges on a 30 minutes cooldown.
• It's mostly just a joke, as NPCs will see right through your disguise, and players will still see red text above your head. But it is fun to cause a little commotion when a newbie spots you walking around a big city as the other faction.
• Finally, gender gets a little weird with this, too. Night Elves and undead will change sexes when transformed, and using other shapeshifting buffs, we're told, will make genders change as well. Why is that? Who knows. Probably a bit of coding weirdness that Blizzard isn't interested in fixing.

How to Get It: If "the Orb" (sly Brisco County, Jr. reference there-- anyone with me on that?) was easy to get, everyone would have one, right? Well, it's only kind of easy to get-- it's a world drop, which means that it can drop from almost anywhere in the world. I'm pretty sure it tends to drop in instances, but even that isn't for sure-- lots of people say they've seen it drop out of instances, too.

At any rate, you probably have a better chance just buying it than actually getting it in a drop. Could cost you up to 500 or even 1000g, but given how quickly gold shows up these days, you'll get it faster by just farming gold for it rather than trying to get it to drop for you. Check the AH every day, grab it when you see it pop up, and you're ready for a little bit of deception fun.

Getting rid of it: Sells for 46s 18c to vendors, and disenchants into a Large Brilliant Shard.

Last week we got requests to do a lowbie item, and since everyone will be headed into SM Graveyard soon to get the Headless Horseman, I thought I might let you know about another piece of loot hidden in that not-often-traveled instance.

Name: Blighted Leggings
Type: Rare Cloth Legs
Armor: 45
Abilities:

• +17 Spirit
• Increases damage done by Shadow spells by up to 10.
• The Shadow spell might make you think Warlock, but the Spirit on these pants says they're for Shadow priests (Warlocks would rather have Stamina, as Life Tap can hook them up with mana as long as they have HP left). And for the level, they're very nice for young Shadow priests to grind with.

How to Get It: They drop from Azshir the Sleepless, a rare mob in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard wing. The GY is also where the Headless Horseman will be spawning during the upcoming Hallow's End holiday, so to get these, just camp your young Shadow Priest outside the instance, and then dive in with your level 70 group to get the Horseman. Once that's done, check and see if Azshir has spawned (he usually spawns in front of the Mausoleum), and if so, bring your Priest in, down him, and hope the pants drop-- they've got a 30% chance.

And if they don't drop or he isn't there, worry not. The Horseman is a daily quest, and odds are everyone in your party will want something from him, so put your Priest back outside, come back the next day, and check again. By the time everyone in your party has a broom, you'll hopefully have grabbed these pants as well.

Getting Rid of It: Disenchants into Small Glowing Shard, and sells to vendor for 35s 59c.

Well, after my little rant on the extreme lack of titles for players the other day, Blizzard has... not changed their mind at all. Zer asks, wisely I thought, for titles for PvE players, but Bornakk shuts him down, and then stomps all over the idea completely. Titles are rare, he says, and that's the way they like it.

That boggles the mind. Titles are a form of achievement, and isn't that what this game is all about? As was mentioned in the comments on the last post, titles could be exactly like Xbox Live Achievements-- relatively meaningless badges of honor (or dishonor) that players would wear with pride. This is a super simple, super easy way to extend the game for players who have been playing for a long time. And Blizzard wants to keep these rare?

It's their game, I guess, and obviously if they feel titles should be rare (though I can't for the life of me see why-- keeping content unattainable hasn't been working real well for them lately), then titles will stay rare. But especially at a time when new content is scarce and players are wondering why they should revisit the old content at all, new titles for achievements of any kind seem like an easy (and easily implemented) draw.

Mike over at the Eye on MOGs blog has an interesting idea about how to customize classes even further than talent trees: implement rare and epic ability drops. As you probably know if you've hit 60 and run the higher level instances, there are already ability drops in the game-- I've seen a few Manuals of Evicerate IX drop in UBRS, and my Shaman has already gotten a few Tablets from AQ20. But all of those abilities are just higher ranks of current abilities (and they'll be trainable when the expansion hits anyway). I think what Mike is talking about is abilities that can seperate players even within the same class-- as an example (don't argue about the gameplay aspects of these, I just came up with them on the spot), Warriors could obtain an item that gave them a learnable root ability. Or Druids could find an epic drop or quest reward somewhere that would grant them a strength or agility debuff of some type.

To be fair, these things do already exist in the game-- Warriors can use Really Sticky Glue as a root, or Pallys can use the Boomerang trinket for a ranged attack. Likewise, as we enter into the expansion, there will be lots of different items that drop with strange procs, or items that (via jewels or enchants) will give classes special abilities in some way. Mike is, of course, talking about items that give us learned class abilities, free of some item, but the truth is that almost anything you want to do can be done with an item you find somewhere in the game, so there's not much call at the moment to implement more learned abilities.

And finally, if Mike's goal is to customize the classes, I'm not sure rare or epic drops will do that much anyway. My Shaman has the Totem of Sustaining (a rare drop in Scholomance), which gives an extra boost to my Lesser Healing Wave, but every resto Shammy I've seen around has one, too. The classes aren't any more customized-- we just all decided that was the best Totem for us to have, and grinded away until we got it. Any rare or epic drop in the game, I'd hazard a guess, would end up playing the same role-- if you were expected to have that ability, you or your guild would just work away at it until you got it. But that isn't to say we shouldn't have items floating around that can better define the classes and their different specs. My guess is that in the expansion (and I'm sure feral druids will agree with me), that's exactly what we'll see.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I would really like a Winterspring Frostsaber mount, which has started me thinking about some of Warcraft's biggest time sinks - rare items that few acquire due to the difficulty involved, that make your character stand out in the crowds of players all wearing the same top-tier armor.  The first players on the my server with prized items such as the Ashkahndi, the Staff of the Shadow Flame, and the Claw of Chromaggus had minor celebrity status for a while, but as more and more players have acquired the same drops, the unique factor of them has worn off.  There are even enough players on the server with legendary items such as Sulfuras and Thunderfury that those no longer get a second glance.  However, there are still a few items in-game that remain sufficiently rare as to be status symbols of a sort. 

Rare mounts rank highly among these, such as the Winterspring Frostsaber (which requires a long quest grind), the Swift Razzashi Raptor (a very rare drop from Zul'Gurub), the Swift Zulian Tiger (another very rare drop from Zul'Gurub), and Baron Rivendare's steed (such a rare drop that I have never seen anyone riding one).

Are there any other items that you see as in-game status symbols (for good or bad)?  Or any such rare items you plan to spend the time or effort acquiring for yourself?