The Class is always Greener on the other Flame

Green Fire. As my co-host Rho will tell you, it is the ‘Lucy’s football’ to the Charlie Brown warlock class in the game. Warlocks have been wanting green fire for their spells since… well I think since they saw the fel fire of Outlands in Burning Crusade. Truly, the fel fire is something that should have been in the game for a long time, but I am not sure if Blizzard had decided that demonic fire was green until they began developing Burning Crusade, and by then the warlock class and their normal red fire was already in game. Just my guess.

I have seen a few comments here or there, though, that have confused me a little bit. First, the ability to get green fire as a warlock will be a hard thing, requiring a drop in game that then takes you through a chain that even highly skilled and well geared warlocks on the PTR have said is very hard to do. Once you complete the chain, which takes you into the Black Temple, Mr. or Ms. Warlock Hotstuff will be casting any fel fire spells as green. It’s a lot of work for a simple change of color, but I am sure more than a few warlocks out there will be very happy to have the change.

Now here is the rub. One of the more recent questions I have seen was from someone who was wondering if there will be any way to turn off the green fire. Turn it OFF?!? You fought for years to get something, but now before it is even fully available, you want to be able to stop it? At first glance it makes absolutely no sense to fight long and hard to get something, only to beg for a way to make it go away, but Rho has helped me understand a bit better.

When I asked Rho about this, his answer and thinking did make some sense, though I do have a few issues. According to Rho, the point that he might want to disable green fire would be if green fire became ‘ultra-common’, which is to say if practically every warlock in the game had the green fire ability. This concern is offset by the apparent difficulty of doing the quest, added to the rarity of finding the item to start the chain in the world. Between these two it does sound unlikely that green fire will become ultra-common any time soon.

My biggest issue with this is that Blizzard singled out the Warlock class for this change. I cannot change the color of any of my spells, and every Ret Paladin has the exact same spells, the exact same color and animations as I do. Druids cannot change their moonfire pink, nor can Priests change their shadowfiend into a rainbow monstrosity of cheerfulness. I personally don’t think Blizzard should have made green fire a quest or an option; it should have been that all warlocks would be moved over to green fire spells as of a certain patch. This means, to me, that your spell color becoming too common is a bit confusing, because every other class and spec combo in the game has the same. Makes it odd that only warlocks get this ability to change how it looks. At worst the ability should be based on glyph, but it should not be as big of a deal as it seems to be now.

Do you think that warlocks are being too picky in wanting the ability to change the color at all, or to disable this color they have been fighting so hard to get? Do you think other classes should get cool class quests for unique stuff? Let us know in the comments.

Thank you to @Amijadethelock of Warlockery for the screenshot!