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How flexible is too flexible when it comes to gameplay?
Way back in the days of vanilla WoW, your character was something you were stuck with, as well as your talents. If you wanted to unlearn your talents, you were certainly welcome to do so, as long as you didn't mind paying a lot of gold to do so. Once you made a character on that server, it stayed there. Once you chose your gender, hair and facial features, you were stuck with them. If you chose Alliance, that character remained Alliance for good. Over the years, we've had a lot of small things introduced that allowed us a little more flexibility with the characters we love to play. You can change realms, factions, hair, gender, race -- you can completely change who your character is at the drop of a hat. Mists of Pandaria is introducing a host of new features intended to give the game some added flexibility by allowing characters to share achievements, mounts and pets across an entire account. This means that players are no longer limited to what character they play. You can switch between characters and still have the same benefits. There's just one thing that Blizzard has never, ever wavered on, one last point of rigid inflexibility when it comes to the characters we play: class.
Aion's community address for January
Approaching the end of the month means it's time for another Aion community address. It's reliable enough to set your watch by, assuming your watch runs in one-month increments of time. This address promises an increased number of double experience weekends, with one currently running to help players accelerate their leveling. It also promises that character re-customization and gender changing services are on the horizon for players who would like said services, and briefly discusses the need for ongoing improvement in the website. There's a scarcity of hard facts, however, beyond a promise that some of these features should be available in early February. If you were guessing that the community seems a bit... unhappy about this, you'd be guessing right. The comments for this particular entry already stretch into the triple digits, with several players calling for server merges and additional content. It also has no mention about the recent security issues that NCsoft has been contending with, a somewhat sore point for several players. Coupled with the January Eye On Community, the natives seem to be getting a tad restless, especially with no news on the many features previewed in the Visions trailer. We're sure that Aion's team is hard at work, but the fan community seems a bit less docile than before.
EverQuest's Ancient Heroes game update brings a "classic EQ" experience
There are a lot of players and former players of EverQuest that would love to see a server that is locked down to just the first few expansions, or maybe none at all. While the latest game update, Ancient Heroes (which goes live today) doesn't bring a new server, there will be a new "classic EQ" experience introduced to the game. An NPC in the Plane of Knowledge will transform your character into a level 50 (the level cap once upon a time) decked out in launch-era equipment, and send you off to fight the Kobolds in Nagafen's Lair or the Frogloks of Guk -- or even to raid the old dragons, Lady Vox (pictured above) and Lord Nagafen. There will be new rewards waiting for those that choose to take up arms in old-school fashion.This character morphing is the primary focus of the Ancient Heroes update, but in fact, there is more character morphing to be had with some new Marketplace items. A Potion of Amnesia will allow you to change your character's name, and a Potion of Disgenderment will flip their gender -- both changes are permanent, though you should just be able to buy another potion if need be. The Witness Protection Pack combines the two new potions, for those situations where you've really driven your reputation into the ground and need to start afresh.
The Five Rs of Character Revitalization
So I've talked recently about life as an RPer, and how we seem to interact with our characters just a bit differently. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, a certain character and their back story just grab hold and won't let go, and we find ourselves coming back again and again, just to see where the story leads. Of course, sometimes the character goes just the opposite way, and no matter what you do, your stories fall flat and you don't feel enthusiastic about logging on. It may be because you can't stand the character's personality anymore, it may be because your normal group of friends has hit an RP rut or even taken a break for a while themselves, it may be a variety of other things. Recently, Anna of Too Many Annas wrote a pretty awesome article about how to refresh a flagging RP character using 5 Rs: Relax and Rest, Reintegrate, Refresh the Character, Retcon, and Reroll/Reskin.What's sort of cool about this list is that you can even apply a lot of the principles to characters in general, even if you're a non-RPer. Anna's covered the RP angle pretty well, so I'll mostly focus on this other angle.
Forum post of the day: You stay classy
It seems Blizzard has been listening to the complaints and concerns of players. I've been taken aback by the implementation of paid name changes, PvE to PvP transfers and gender changes. For years, I've read clamoring for race, faction and class changes.Zarhym weighed in Wolfbite of Chromaggus' thread in the general forums requesting class changes. Name and appearance changes are purely cosmetic, while allowing class changes would affect the overall dynamics of the game. Later in the thread Zarhym stated that this is partially to avoid creating a "flavor of the month" class, and would prefer to address player concerns. Rerolling was the most common prescription amongst posters to solve the original poster's issue.
Character Re-Customization available for a small fee [UPDATED]
The WoW launcher was updated this morning, and just now what was behind that curtain was revealed: Character Re-Customization. What does that mean? In short, for a fee of $15, you can rebuild your character, with some restrictions. You can change your gender, face, skin, hair, and name, but not your race or class. You can do hair in-game already via the barbershop, so I imagine the ability to do those via this service is just for convenience. The real draw is the gender and face options.Don't want to play your Female Undead Warlock anymore because they move funny? It's okay, turn them into a way awesome Male Undead Warlock. Sick of looking at your Male Draenei? Try out something more... pleasing to the eyes. This is a feature people have been asking for since WoW launched, so I'm surprised it took so long for it to happen. If you're taking full advantage of the feature, it's really not a bad deal considering a paid name change is $10. For an extra $15, you can more or less have a new character. Well, sort of.
Gender reassignment and race reroll coming to Azeroth?
In what might be the most welcome -- or disturbing, depends on how you want to look at it -- news to World of Warcraft players looking forward to more character customization, Blizzard dropped hints at possible gender and race changes as a paid service feature. About a month back, some folks dug up a paid character customization button hidden away in the Wrath of the Lich King files, hinting at the possibility of a new service. Lead Producer J. Allan Brack explained that it was in the plans for the future but Blizzard hadn't set a price or extent of the customization at the time. WoW Insider's resident RP maestro David Bowers was thrilled at the possibility of more character customization than just hairstyles, but it seems that there might even be more than that. Eurogamer's interview with Blizzard's Paul Sams and Lee Sparks revealed that the technology to do such changes is taking some time and energy to put into place. They point out that the monetary barrier is merely in place to prevent players from abusively changing their characters' features constantly. Sams said that Blizzard "think(s) that it's important to have some consistency in the game, we don't want people changing their look and feel every day."If this feature pushes through, it will add to an extensive menu of character customization options, from paid name changes to in-game barbershops, as well as realm transfers (even the once-unthinkable PvE-to-PvP transfers). The feature would allow players to undo some decisions they later grew to regret. According to Sams, "when you create your character, often times you wish you'd done things differently. You wish you were on a different realm, you wish you'd had a different name or you wish you'd chosen a different look and feel to your character." This hints at the possibility of race and even gender changes, which should pretty much open up every available customization option for players.Via Massively
Lineage II free expansion, The Chaotic Throne: The Kamael, and new gender-bending service
A new official website has launched to show off the features of upcoming Lineage II expansion, The Chaotic Throne: The Kamael. It is to be a free major content update, featuring the titular Kamael, a soldier race with a single angel wing. Let's hope they aren't trying to fly anywhere with half a wingspan and heavy armor. They will have a new class tree, with a few of the final class choices being available exclusively to one gender. Males get the melee-centric Berserker class, and females can be the ranged-attacking Abalester. On the subject of gender, the expansion will also see a few new services introduced to Lineage II. Two of them are fairly mundane, but useful, a character transfer service and name change service. However, the third ought to raise a few eyebrows (and has already been commented on at Warcry's Razorwire), as players can organise to change their avatar's sex. Razorwire speculates that this may be to do with a ban in China of cross-gender MMO play, but this was only in one game, King of the World, and they confusingly only prohibited men from playing female characters -- women can still play whatever they want, provided they prove their gender by webcam. Riiiight. Moving on.The Kamael also contains some new areas to explore. Isle of Souls is a low level zone for the Kamaels to start in, and there will be new high level and raid content elsewhere. Additionally, Fortress Battles will be introduced to allow sieging to happen at any time, instead of needing to wait for a castle siege to occur. Follow the link below to check out the preview site for yourself.
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Breakfast Topic: Should gender change be allowed in-game?
Players have called for the ability to switch races, switch factions and even switch back to a pre-expansion classic server, but it's the first time I've heard this request. Cryogenics of the Azjol-Nerub server would like to switch the gender of his toon.Other posters supporting his request listed a few reasons for wanting this: they don't like the animations of their toon; they created the character as the opposite sex of themselves and the novelty has worn off; they want to be the opposite sex in the game for some perceived advantage.Since this is a change that doesn't affect game mechanics, should Blizzard implement this ability? Isn't it no different than changing the outfit or hairstyle of your toon? Or does tinkering with a cornerstone of human identity make this a bad idea? Tell us what you think. And leave out any derogatory or insulting remarks. Those will get immediately deleted.
