character-customization
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World of Warcraft launches paid character re-customization
About two months ago we discussed the discovery of a 'character customization' button in the user interface for World of Warcraft. Somehow unsurprisingly in a week full of microtransaction announcements, Blizzard has quietly rolled out paid character customization options to the WoW live service. The account management component of the official site has full details on the offering. According to the customization page, for the price of $15 players can change: Gender Character Name Face Hair Style Skin Color Any other "cosmetic features determined by your race and gender combination." What you can't change, though, is your race or your class. Just as with server transfers, players are only allowed to re-customize a given character once in 30 days, and all pre-existing naming restrictions exist on the service. Re-customization cannot be reversed on a character once it's in place ... unless you shell out another $15 and wait the 30 day restriction period. Head over to the official account management page to try it out for yourself, or dig into the re-customization FAQ to have all your questions answered.[Via WoW Insider]
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
Daedalus Project updated
Nick Yee's excellent MMORPG survey and data site, the Daedalus Project, has been updated with new survey results on the following topics: Guild demographics: What influences players to choose certain guilds, how attached they become, the likelihood of their knowing guildies in real life, and how long they stay. What I find fascinating here is the graph displayed above -- 26% of surveyed players have been with their guild 2 years or more. Alex Ziebart mentioned the other day that his guild has been together so long across multiple games that guild chat's gone from talk of teenage dates to coaching expectant parents through morning sickness. I get the feeling that this is only going to become more common in long-haul games like Second Life and WoW. Character creation: How players choose characters, the elements of character selection they consider most important, and whether classes and races tend to be researched extensively before they're picked, or chosen based on impulse. Character class seems to matter to the most people; starting area the least.
New Aion videos give aerial tour of environments and classes in action
Flight in MMOs is often focused on having mounts that let you take to the skies. NCsoft's latest twist on this idea is to give players their own pair of wings in Aion: The Tower of Eternity, which Massively recently got to see at PAX. So far we've seen a video showing off the character customization in Aion and a bit about the game's lore as well. NCsoft is steadily releasing more video footage of the new title though, most of which shows off some gorgeous graphics. Our friends over at BigDownload are offering up two new Aion videos. One gives a soaring aerial tour of the game's environment an the other is a breakdown of the available classes, showing each of them in action. Check out the footage of both videos below the cut, as well as the links for BigDownload's HD versions.
Ask A Beta Tester: Death Knights, bears, and buckets
Welcome back to another edition of Ask A Beta Tester! I've stolen the reins from Elizabeth and Alex for a day, so let's get into last week's comments and get some questions answered. Death Knights: Multiple people had lots of questions about Death Knights, so I'm just going to list a bunch of them and then delve into what's going on: How Customizable are Death Knights? Do they get unique skintones, or unique racials? As to Death Knight Customization, the big difference they have right now are glowing blue eyes for every race. You can see that in action in our Death Knight racial gallery. Unfortunately, I think the Blue Eyes look sort of pasted on for most races, so I'm hoping they keep tweaking that to make them look more natural. We've also been promised different sounding emotes -- every Death Knight will have a deeper, sepulchral voice.
Ask a Beta Tester: More Titan's Grip
We're back again with today's round of Ask a Beta Tester questions. I tried to answer as many as I could, but time is a fickle mistress and I was going to write some sort of metaphor here but I can't think of one, so if you would all be so kind, come up with one for me. If I didn't get to your question today, don't worry, we'll be doing these for as long as there are questions left to answer. Just post it in the comments section below, and we'll try to get to it as soon as we can. Jamesisgreat asked: How much gold are you getting rewarded per quest on average? I mean is it worth us saving up our gold for Wrath or are quests going to reward 100g a pop or something? Most quests throughout the starter zones give around 5g each, though group quests offer more. On top of that there are the green rewards you don't use that you can vendor, so you don't need to save a lot of money. I advise saving up a little bit though, because questing to 80 is not going to get you the (roughly) 8,000g you'll want to buy the ring that ports you to Dalaran. You won't be totally broke at 80 if you don't save money now, but you won't be able to run around and buy whatever you want either. Northrend is a big place, so that ring will be nice even if you only use it for the portal. You can be free to set your hearth elsewhere.
Barbershops live in Wrath Beta
The latest beta build has implemented the Barbershops many of us have been waiting so eagerly to see. They're fun for sure, but not complete at all. Regardless, we've put together a gallery for you to see a little bit about how the process works. You can check that out down below.It's a quirky design and it makes me wonder why only Goblins know how to cut hair throughout all of Azeroth. It was fun to tinker around with, but I became bored pretty fast. The new hairstyles aren't in, so right now it's almost like staring at the character creation screen but a little bigger and there's gold involved. It will be much more fun on the live realms I'm sure, because I am a roleplayer and doing this kind of thing once in awhile should be pretty fun. There's just very little reason to play with it for a long time on the beta realms, I don't much care what my character's hair is like there. For all I care, it could be made of snakes. Hmm, that would be pretty awesome, actually...Well, I did experiment a little. I decided my Human Priest grew her hair longer since I rolled her in the first days of WoW's launch, so I picked a longer hairstyle, purchased it, then decided I was bored and wandered off. Until I came back to take screenshots for you all, of course. All in all... yeah, boring until the new hairstyles are in or I'm in a spot to care. Bummer.%Gallery-28670%
Breakfast Topic: If you could change one thing
Being a roleplayer, I spend a lot of time thinking about my characters in the context of the world, rather than just pumping their stats. Sometimes I regret making certain characters a certain class. Sometimes I wish I had picked a different race for them. Other times, I wish I could just display things on the character that we currently can't. For example, I would probably give my Paladin a more 'angry' expression if I could go back and change it, rather than the more neutral, aloof expression they have now. I would change my Priest's hair to make it longer, since she's kind of grown out of the cutesy short hairstyle. It doesn't go very well with Absolution. One of my friends wishes their Human Mage was a Draenei instead.The dance studio and barber shop in Wrath will help some of this, but there's still quite a bit of character customization that we don't have. And sometimes, you just plain feel like you made a mistake 30+ levels after you rolled your character, and you feel like it's too late to turn back. Have you ever felt this way? If you were given an opportunity to change one thing about your character, anything at all, what would it be?
WoTLK to bring new emotes
I know I've complained a bit about Warcraft's lack of character customization, but I must say that it seems like they've been slowly but surely taking steps to make things better on that front. There's the dance studio and the barber shop incoming, of course, but here's another leak that's popped up from the Alpha: New emotes! I know it sounds silly, but having pre-made emotes can really add to the fun factor of playing your character. Add them in macros (but don't spam them, that's just annoying) or use them to register your enjoyment, surprise, shock, or disgust at the situation. There's some really good ones in here that I've been wanting for a while -- although, word to wise, Blizzard: Facepalming is generally done with one palm, not two. I know you've seen the facepalm ASCII on the General Forums, too. Also, I would like to thank you for allowing me to finally act as my hero, Phoenix Wright, through the magic of emotes. I know it's just a minor thing, but still, I'm looking forward to having a bit more variety in playing with my character in the social part of the game. Now if we could only get outfits and player housing too... [Via Deathknight.info]
He Said She Said: Hypermasculinty
He Said , She Said is a new feature at WoW Insider, which looks at the game from masculine and feminine points of view. This week we discuss the difference between bearing among male and female characters. David: What's the big idea with all the macho attitude in male characters? I wrote an article about this problem some time ago, and I'd like to see what you think about it. Many people don't even realize it's an issue though; they just assume: "This game is about killing things, therefore, as a male, I should look as violent and intimidating as possible." For those people that think this this way, that's fine; those people should have that option. But let's look at all the male avatars that are available to us in WoW and find out how many options there are for those of us who don't want to look like a football player on steroids. The answer is... one! Other than Gnomes, every single male avatar in the game is pumped full of that "I'm gonna kill you if you get in my way" attitude that I just don't want to play. Where's the old wizard who spends all his time reading books rather than pumping iron? Where's the skinny rogue who kills things by knowing when and where to put his dagger rather than slashing it around with arms the size of some tree trunks? Where's the option for a male to actually look wise and eloquent instead of brutish and arrogant?
Roleplay tidbits to be revealed in the next Blizzcast
Here's yet another reason for me and all my roleplaying kin to tune in to the next Blizzcast: They will be discussing roleplaying in WoW, says Vaneras. It won't be a major topic, but there is some discussion about plans to continue development of "things that are for roleplaying." So, I am certainly excited. I can't help but speculate where this could go. What could they have planned, development-wise? Will we see more reporting tools for RP server violations? Or will we simply see more character customization options to allow us to submerge ourselves more fully into the Worlds of Azeroth and Outland? I think my big problem is going to be holding back my expectations. They're running so wild, that I can't help but that think I'll be disappointed in what's actually said. That said, Between this information and whatever we learn about the Ashbringer, this Blizzcast should be a great listen for all RP and lore buffs. There doesn't seem to be any word yet about when it will be released, but Vaneras' post makes me think it must be close. Stay tuned here and to the official Blizzcast page.
Blizzard needs to steal character customization Ideas from other MMORPGs
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough. The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing." Now to be honest, I'm still a bigger fan of WoW, but that's a subject for a different article. One thing I will say for EQ2 is that I was very impressed with the wider range of options to customize your character and show off your character's accomplishments. There's a few ideas related to character customization from EQ2 and other games that I'd really like Blizzard to continue emulating in future patches and in the WoTLK expansion that I believe would deepen the game experience for me and my friends, and for many other players as well.
GDC08: All Points Bulletin info and eye candy
What word is perhaps most synonymous with the current MMO playing field? Grind. Realtime Worlds' Dave Jones (no relation?) is setting out to change that with the studio's first massively multiplayer title All Points Bulletin we've been following eagerly. He's hoping the formula Crackdown + MMO = crack will be proven true with variables like infinite, professional-looking character and vehicle customization, contemporary setting, integration with last.fm and dynamic, variable team-sized missions hidden in the equation. Hit up our symbiotic other selves at Joystiq for the complete overview of APB.%Gallery-16668%
TR's hybrid high jinks prove hollow on the whole
When the Destination Games crew announced that they would be putting alien hybrids into Tabula Rasa's patch 1.4, I think it took a lot of people by surprise. Since the game launched in early November, the devs have shown a reluctance to acknowledge many of the complaints players have had with the game. One of the more persistent complaints was that there was a lack of depth in the character creation and customization options. Most character models are indistinguishable from each other to begin with, and there is no variety within a specific armor set of a certain level. My level 50 graviton is going to look just like your level 50 graviton, which lends an air of homogeneity to the whole affair. So it really came as a surprise when all of a sudden, they fulfilled part of our wish and gave us the option of making clones with hybrid DNA – taking on the physical features and stats of one of Tabula Rasa's three most prominent alien races. After having given my new Forean clone a good deal of play time, I've found myself dissatisfied. It's pretty cool being green (and getting the huge bonus to Mind!), but there are so many different things I wish they had done. %Gallery-9822%
