Coloured Text On Loot?

[Shadowraven7]

I was looking for an orb on the AH and I noticed the Madstone Orb and another one, both had multiple level versions with coloured text.

Normal or Epic Normal (light blue), Hard or Epic Hard (orange), and Elite or Epic Elite (red).

Now I get that the type/level is from the difficulty the item dropped in, but does the colour have any other significance?

The reason I ask, is I am high enough to equip the Madstone Orb ELITE version, but the (Elite) text is in red, and red is usually a signifier that you are unable to use item due to some other requirement, so was wondering if the coloured text meant anything related to that?

[changelingamuck]

The text color on those items doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they can be equipped. It was just a stylistic choice they made to differentiate some named items during a particular era of the game.

[Drwaz99]

The color only denotes the quest level in which the item dropped. This is from when Normal (Blue)/Hard(Orange)/Elite(Red) had slightly better item qualities on named items as the quest difficulty increased (this way of dropping loot as been abandoned but still exists in come content). As long as you meet the items level requirement (barring any racial/alignment/other restriction), you can equip the item.