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I've played a few different RPG type games where item rarity was denoted by the same colors: white, green, blue, purple, and orange. Where did this system originate?

EDIT Maybe it's just World of Warcraft and Borderlands that use this exact scheme. I figured it must be older than WoW though.

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3  
don't forget gray for total junk ;) – alexanderpas Oct 21 '10 at 2:04
i.e. vendor stuff – Joe the Person Jan 23 '12 at 18:16

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3 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

The color scheme you refer to is probably most famous due to it being what's used for World of Warcraft, where, in order of increasing rarity:

grey < white < green < blue < purple < orange < red/beige (developer items only).

I'm not sure that that schema is that common though -- Blizzard's own diablo II used grey < white < blue < yellow < purple (I think), and games like Torchlight (grey < white < green < blue < orange < purple) vary slightly.

Actually, both of those are slightly flawed comparisons, because in diablo II, green items were used as "set" items, beige were "unique" (only a single copy could drop per game). Bottom line -- I think the trend is more varied than you think.

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No purple in Diablo 2. Rare was the top of the standard magical at Yellow. – Grace Note♦ Oct 21 '10 at 2:14
The question is where it originated though. Diablo 1 definitely had it, but I'd guess it goes back to some MUD. – bwarner Oct 21 '10 at 2:42
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@Bwarner -- the only rpg I know of that uses that exact order of colors is World of Warcraft. – Raven Dreamer♦ Oct 21 '10 at 2:57
another MMO that uses the exact same colors is one i've been playing recently: dc.gamedp.com - Dragon's Call. They call the red ones 'sacrilege' items – corroded Oct 21 '10 at 3:57
It's interesting to see too that non-RPGs have integrated this coloring scheme where RPG elements exist. Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (a RTS with RPG elements) uses the scheme White < Green < Blue < Purple=Red for item slots. – TheQ Oct 21 '10 at 16:24
up vote 8 down vote

It's most likely Blizzard's idea, or they are at least the ones that made it popular. Diablo first had them and then Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft expanded/modified the idea a bit to the current state of affairs which you described.

Nethack and other roguelikes were originally not using any colour, being made for pure (ASCII) text terminals. Some later added support for colour terminals, but items were coloured by state (i.e. cursed, magical, +1) or simply to differentiate them from each other (as they were only represented by a name and an access key), but not by rarity.

Original Everquest item inspect windows used no colours at all.

Source: Being an old fart gamer.

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up vote 7 down vote

Item Color == Rarity as a concept goes back to at least Diablo 1, where there was White -> Blue -> Gold. I think that was it, just magical, unique, or plain. Diablo 2 added Yellow (rare), but also had Green (sets) and Grey (ethereal or junky).

The Diablo-clone Titan's Quest also used a similar scheme but I think some colors were swapped around.

I would imagine, though I can't confirm, that the concept originates in the roguelikes, probably Nethack or Hack. Diablo got a lot of ideas from those games. Roguelikes often have uniquely named items with special properties, and I know some of them will color-code items for various reasons. Often marking Cursed items in red or Ice-element weapons in blue or whatever other color scheme seems useful.

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