Transmog changes coming in Midnight, explained — and no, it’s not free (sorry)

After some early confusion, we finally got an official explanation on the upcoming changes to WoW’s transmog system, though there are still some questions to be answered. Along with making changing your gear’s appearances more affordable — though not unequivocally free as originally reported — the new system will allow easy switching between outfits based on your activity, and you won’t have to go re-transmog each time you update your gear.

Currently, if you save an outfit in the transmog system, you need to pay to switch back to your carefully curated outfit with each piece of new gear you equip. As the price of transmog scales with item level, this can lead to players paying out 100 gold to transmog a single piece, to whole outfits costing 700-1000 gold to transmog. This new system will allow you to pay for the outfit you want to wear, and it will be free to change to it with every piece of gear you receive. This is achieved by transmogging the slot on your character, not the actual items — so, rather than transmogging your Fancy Pauldrons of The Falcon and then have to re-transmog when you finally upgrade to Very Fancy Pauldrons of The Gorilla, you just transmog your shoulder slot and the appearance is retained when you upgrade. Goodbye, leveling clown suit.

While it appears the cost of the initial outfit is still expensive as it can be now (Blizzard has made no official comment on transmog cost), this is a one-time cost instead of one you need to keep paying with each piece of gear you receive — and looking completely ridiculous until you can get to a transmog NPC. Fashion crimes are the worst crimes of all.

Another new transmog feature coming in Midnight is contextual transmog, in which you’ll be able to select which outfit you have designed to appear based on your current activity. You can have a different equipment appearance between how you look raiding, delving, or walking around the city — among other situations. This means you can spend the day fighting the void with HD Judgment set with your flaming Ashbringer, and return to your Player Housing in fuzzy murloc pajamas.

Also shown during the Gamescom Midnight panel, but not demonstrated, is that your preferred form appears to be a contextual change as well. We’re assuming Dracthyr and Worgen will able to choose which form they want to be when their transmog changes with their activity. Profession sets are also listed — hopefully this means that the profession items we put on when doing activities now will allow a more permanent form, allowing an herbalist to wear their finest flower picking outfit while tending to their house’s garden.

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas stated that this is the start of an ongoing process of changing the transmog system, so we may expect to see more changes over the course of Midnight or at the start of The Last Titan, but any further info would be speculation. For now we’re seeing the most welcome change to transmog since the ability to collect appearances on any character. Hopefully we do see a reduction in the gold cost with the upcoming stat squish, but paying out once for an outfit is still much nicer than the constant flow of gold to The Consortium with every gear — or aesthetic — swap.

Originally published August 25, 2025; updated September 11, 2025