Important Note:

The WoW Factor project is no longer operational and there will not be any future competitions, but we have decided to leave the information below in place, for the sake of posterity.

For further details, see: End of the WoW Factor Announcement.

Overview:

The WoW Factor is a travelling transmogrification event, moving from realm to realm each weekend, offering prizes and shining the spotlight on the very best outfits. We’ve had cross-realm PvP, dungeons, raids and soon zones… this is cross-realm transmogging!

We’ve named the project ‘The WoW Factor’, as that’s precisely what we’re looking for at the events, cleverly assembled sets which really stand out in the crowd.

The WoW Factor is currently on hiatus until enough adequate sponsorship opportunities have arisen for us to kick-start the second season of the project, but you are still welcome to contact Noelani with regards to scheduling future events.


Contents

– 1 – Background
– 2 – Event Overview
– 3 – Participant Rules
– 4 – Participant FAQ
– 5 – Judging Criteria
– 6 – Sponsoring An Event
– 7 – Schedule
– 8 – Contact & Information

 

Background

The WoW Factor was first conceived in Feburary 2012 as a collaboration between Keelhaul of Disenchanting Azeroth, and Ironyca and Noelani, the two creators of WoW Roleplay Gear. Keelhaul had already made a name for himself as the man who gave away 1,000,000 Gold at various transmogrification competitions. After Keelhaul had invited WoW Roleplay Gear to attend one of the events as guests, the two websites decided to officially team up to form a panel of judges ready to bring gold prizes, item giveaways and transmogrification expertise to realms worldwide.

After the first couple of shows under the WoW Factor banner, a forth member was added to the team. Elvine, a gold maker focused on transmogrification items, was brought in to provide high quality video coverage of the events via his TwitchTV live stream, as well as extra judging value.

Keelhaul has since left the team to focus on real life endeavours, but The WoW Factor marches on with guest judges and special appearances each week.


Event Overview

Events last approximately 2½ hours and are organised into a competition structure comprising of several stages, with judges discussing outfits and awarding gold prizes through several rounds. The top prizes are awarded those who are deemed to have the very best transmogrification outfits at the event. We operate a live stream for those who wish to follow our audio commentary or are unable to attend the gatherings in-character. All are welcome to attend, be it to spectate or participate.

Prize gold was initially provided by WoW Factor judges, namely Keelhaul, although these days most of the gold comes from generous sponsors who opt to fund the prizes for events on their home servers. We have also received donations of pets and mounts from the Blizzard store for us to give away.

We feature an article for every event detailing locations, dates, times and prizes. Follow-up articles are also added once an event has finished, including screenshots and names of the winners in each round of competition. These posts can be found through the WoW Factor Events button on our sidebar, and further screenshots are added on Facebook.

 

Participant Rules

If you’d like to take part in an event, all you have to do is show up at the designated time and location as listed in our Events articles – there’s no registration required. There are however a few guidelines worth taking note of:

  • The majority of your outfit should be transmogrified.
  • An outfit should have no missing armor pieces (but you are not required to show helm or cloak, or
    wear a shirt and tabard).
  • Participants may switch character between rounds, but not during. We may wish to return to award
    gold to a character at any time.
  • Characters from multiple accounts are accepted.
  • As you can change character between rounds, you may also change outfit, but do so at your own
    risk (we might prefer your first!).
  • We don’t award prizes to outfits with a mix of armor types.


Participant FAQ

Q. Can I win multiple prizes?
A. Yes, participants may win a prize in each of the rounds of competition.

Q. Do I have to attend the whole event to be eligible for a prize?
A. No, players may come and go as they please, and are not required to have won in a previous round to be eligible for later rounds. We recognise that players have other commitments, so we do our best to be flexible.

Q. Can we enter as a guild/partnership?
A. Whilst we love to see groups of themed characters, we sadly have to judge on an individual basis. It’s simply too difficult to judge groups in comparison to individuals.

Q. Are roleplay outfits accepted?
A. We fully encourage participants to show off their roleplay outfits during the course of our events, but unfortunately we cannot judge them on the same basis as other transmogrification sets unless they fulfil all of the criteria set out in the rules above. For example, allowing the mixing of armor types can potentially give a great advantage to plate wearers, who may wear almost any armor pieces to form a roleplay set.

Q. Why do you hate dwarves and love blood elves etc?
A. The reason that certain races are over-represented among winners is quite simply because the relative population of that race is higher. We’ve attended Horde events where 50 out of 100 are Blood Elves and 2 are Goblins, of course there will be more Elves winning in such circumstances.

Q. You always talk about ‘Recipe’ sets. What does that mean, exactly?
A. We use the term ‘recipe’ to refer to any outfit which was designed by Blizzard with the intention of those items matching one another. For example, tier sets, pvp sets and uncommon BoE sets such as the Commander’s Set.


Judging Criteria

When judging transmogrification events, we take a number of factors in to consideration. Fulfilling one or more of the criteria does not automatically make a character a winner, but these are the areas we focus on when discussing outfits:

  • Uniqueness – Players who have used their creativity to create an outfit we’ve not seen before will
    really stand out.
  • Colour-coordination – Items which blend together in a colour theme.
  • Accessorising – Matching cloaks/weapons/pets with armor sets. Particularly valuable with armor sets
    that are intended to go together (‘Recipes’).
  • Theme – Outfits relating to a certain location/faction, for example, a frozen Northrend set.
  • Personality – An outfit which embodies a character as a personality, for example, an engineer.
  • Completeness – Outfits which appear to be at their final stage with no more work to be done.
    The player has completed their intended set.
  • Effort/Rarity


Sponsoring An Event

Perhaps you’d like to be one of the sponsors helping to bring our team to your realm. As it takes a considerable amount of time and effort for us to earn the prize money on a particular realm, the assistance of sponsors enables us to set up an event much faster than if we did it all alone, and broadens the range of realms we visit. Sponsors will be featured in our articles regarding their specific event, attributing the donation to them and linking to their websites/twitter where possible.

If you’re interested in donating for an event, contact Noelani to discuss the organisation, prize fund and potential dates. Contact details can be found at the bottom of this page.

We have a few general guidelines for the sponsorship process, as follows:

  • We recommend a total prize fund of 100k+ gold, in order to provide worthwhile prizes to a multitude
    of individuals.
  • Whilst we don’t mind setting a portion of the prize gold aside for individual sponsors to reward their
    favourite set(s), we currently don’t allow them to act as full judges.
  • At least half of the sponsored gold should be traded to the judges a week in advance of the event,
    to ensure that we don’t end up running a show with no prizes.
  • Sponsors may remain anonymous if they so desire.
  • Sponsors are welcome to participate themselves, but will do so equal to all other participants.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries about sponsoring a WoW Factor Event.


Schedule

We’ve listed our forthcoming and past WoW Factor events on our WoW Factor Queue page, as well as a list of all prizes the event has awarded to date.


Contact/Information

If you would like more information or have any questions about The WoW Factor project, you can find us on the following links:

Twitter: @WoWRoleplayGear and @Elvinelol
Twitter Hashtag: #WoWFactorShow
Email: noelani (at) wowroleplaygear.com
Calendar: WoW Factor Queue
Live Stream: Elvinemod @ TwitchTV
Archive: WoW Factor Events
Facebook: WoWFactorShow
Forum: WoW Roleplay Gear Forum
Judges (Twitter links): Ironyca, Noelani, Elvine, Keelhaul (retired)

We look forward to seeing you at a future event!