Most of us have heard by now that the next expansion will bring the ability to change your appearance somewhat, and some people out there may be thinking "What was I thinking when I created my character, Uglybub? Finally, with Wrath of the Lich King, I will at last be able to get rid of this electrfied hair and frowny face! Then I'll change his name to PrettySmoochCakeLove too!" As much as we might love to dream, it's not yet clear how much of your character's appearance you'll be able to change. Should Blizzard enable you to change everything about your character's appearance any time you might wish to?According to Blizzard's current thinking, you will be able to go to the local barbershop and have your hairstyle changed -- probably facial hair and earrings too. You will be able to go to the local dance studio -- yes that's right, a Dance Studio in the World of Warcraft -- and learn new dances. But the devs believe that plastic surgeons just haven't caught on in Azeroth or Outland yet. "Plastic surgeons?" You cry out, "Who said anything about plastic surgeons? I just want to be able to change my facial expression! What's the big deal?" And yes, of course you are right, but your facial expression is tied to eyecolor, nose shape, and everything else about your face. Those things shouldn't be changeable ... or should they?
Is Blizzard right or wrong on this issue? Now that we've got name changes and we're getting hairstyle changes, it's got me wondering, where do you draw the line? Redoing your hair, or turning that frown upside down is one thing, but going from dark skin and brown eyes to pale skin and blue eyes (with lots of wrinkles) makes your character look like someone else altogether. Is infinite customizability something we really want? Does a certain degree of consistency offer any other advantages?
Second Life is a game with no such permanent choices that I am aware of. The last time I tried it out, there was no character creation screen -- You just got a standard character template when you entered the game for the first time, and as you wandered around the introductory area, you could read signs telling you how to change any facet of your appearance: Hair, eyes, cheek size, and even your sex.
I played around with the customization interface for what seems like hours in my memory, although I'm sure it wasn't that long. I was just frustrated that I could never get my avatar to look good. It was always too skinny or too fat, and the hair would sometimes just disappear to expose parts of the bald head underneath.
I looked around Second Life's appearance modification giveaway stores, selling things like hairstyles, clothing, and so on, to find out how I could make my character look good. I found that it was so complex that you had to either hire someone to do it for you, or else pay real money for some pre-made feature, such as eyes or mouth or any part of your avatar's body. That was the last straw for me, and I gave up.
Now of course just because Linden Labs made an unwieldy customization system doesn't mean Blizzard would. But seriously, imagine the depth of the complexity involved in making each and every aspect of character appearance customizable as Linden tried to do, versus basically mix-n-matching a few different pre-designed variables as we have in World of Warcraft. It seems obvious that with the fewer variables, the designers can make sure that these different variables usually look good together, but with more variables it would be extremely difficult to make them all fit together nicely.
Take the seemingly simple example of armor dyes. Some other games have had this option to apply different colors to players' armor, but Blizzard has opted not to take this path, because it would be too hard to implement well. The art of the game is mostly geared around letting players mix-and-match from numerous predetermined sets, and it works well that way. To suddenly alter it into a system where any piece of armor's color can be changed with some dye would result in numerous ugly applications -- armor pieces that look alright as they are today, but absolutely hideous when shifted to a different set of hues. The game's artists would be limited in their creativity, and the end result would probably be worse (imagine players hopping about in hot-pink neon versions of Tier 6 raiding gear.)
Suffice it to say that Blizzard has done the right thing in not going overboard with the customization. With things the way they are in the software I've seen, the more customization options you give people, the fewer appearances actually look good. Also, the more you can just replace your character's appearance on a whim, the less that appearance actually means. Blizzard representatives have said that they "love giving players choices and the ability to customize," but I, for one, am glad they want to restrain the customization to more surface-level choices, to make it real but not excessive. Some things need to be changeable, it's true, but some things need to be consistent too.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-16-2007 @ 4:21PM
Epiny said...
When EQ released Luclin they alowed you to change your face/hair at will.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:23PM
niko said...
Srsly, Uglybub is indeed ugly.
I think I laughed so much in the first paragraph after looking at Uglybub, I couldn't focus on the rest of the post.
Sure, Blizz could do a lot better in customization, but it's working okay right now. Improvements will be welcomed, however. Can't wait to see how WotLK changes things.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:24PM
Erika said...
I like my rogues hair but the dance needs alot of work. The undead female dance ftl.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:25PM
mrderekt said...
One of the reasons it took me so long to leave City of Heroes for WoW was because of the lack of character appearance customization. It's one of this games largest holes that has yet (or never will!) be fixed unfortunatly.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:29PM
BillDoor said...
I wonder if Druids will be able to go to the Zoo to get new form models.
I want to change Bear Form into Rhino Form.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:36PM
outforprophets said...
I agree with Blizzard on this one - I don't think faces should be allowed to be changed. But, I do think that certain hairstyles would probably change the way your face looks - what is exposed or what is accentuated, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue.
As for armor dyes, I like the idea but it also limits Blizzard's artists a bit. Yes we would see hot pink armor sets but we already see hot pink tabards that people wear for the same reasons. So I don't think it would be too much of a stretch.
And seriously, UD female dance FTL.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:36PM
h8rain said...
@5 I say that all the time..... I am tired of staring at a bear butt.
And the Michael Jackson dance has gotten very tired. I am excited about new dances :)
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11-16-2007 @ 4:42PM
Saphia said...
CoH had a wonderful character creation screen. And if you could make your character the way you wanted them to look, the first time, you wouldn't be so desperate to keep changing the looks over and over. I haven't played CoH since I started on WoW and that was right when it first sold. But my desktop background has followed me through three computers since then and - guess what - it's still my CoH avatar that I have a pic of. Because I made her look the way I wanted.
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11-16-2007 @ 4:46PM
Fadmin said...
For those who rolled an Undead with no jaw, the chance to have one affixed in some manner might be nice.
However, too much allowable change and it'll be like rolling alts in Maplestory. >.>
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11-16-2007 @ 4:51PM
Luciferasi said...
Coh/CoV have the best character customisation system. Guess what, going around you see other players and 8 characters out of 10 are UGLY AS HELL, as your average player isn't a comic artist or character designer.
Customisation is cool but, frankly, people have overally very bad taste.
Just look at Uglybub... :-P
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11-16-2007 @ 4:55PM
neuromancer said...
CoH lets you change your toon all you want, at an in-game price. Charging a few gold or such to give your character an overhaul wouldn't be all too bad.
I would love to see more character customization though, one of WoW's weak points.
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11-16-2007 @ 5:14PM
Michel said...
blizzard is right.
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11-16-2007 @ 5:26PM
Chris said...
I would like to see an option where, if you started out your character with a normal hair color (lets say black) and a younger looking face, you would be able to make get a pop-up at 50 asking "Change your age?" and with a preview button, bliz could show you your same hairstyle with a tint of gray and your face would have a few wrinkles. At 70, you would be able to age your character again but look like you're 60 years old (gray hair with a lot of wrinkles).
When I made my human Paladin, I made him with long gray hair and a face that looks really old! Now that I am almost to 64, he really looks like an old war vet and he truly looks like his level is his age (And I am on a RP server which also makes things fun :D).
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11-16-2007 @ 6:01PM
foxkreig said...
i admit to wanting to change the look of my toons simply because i'm bored and would like to see something different from the back of their heads.
or it'd be funny to be able to change the mood on the face to fit a funny screenshot.
i feel that people simply worry too much about it. developers and players alike. just enable alterations at will and ignore it.
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11-16-2007 @ 6:06PM
Brian said...
Well changing the face only makes so much sense. The same with facial hair. While it makes sense with races with 'hair' it would be odd for a Draenei to change it's tentacles or a Troll to change it's tusks. I have also read that they are going to try to add tattoos, not that you'd see them easily. I also think they should have made the male Draenei's head 'plate' separate form the hair style because now if the Draenei change their hair their forehead will need to change too. They should have made it like the female Draenei who have independent horns form their hair.
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11-16-2007 @ 6:31PM
rinks said...
Lord of the Rings has a "mood" emote that changes your facial expression based on /mood_happy etc. I've always been a little bit bothered at how anti-personalization Blizzard seems when it comes to toons. I can't even dye my armor. The closest are tailored shirts, which you can't even see on most toons. It seems like there are three looks: crap gear, good gear, epic gear, and everyone in one class in any of those groups looks identical.
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11-16-2007 @ 6:35PM
Shinesse Madison said...
You can't compare Second Life to WoW. They have two extremely different purposes. The whole point of SL is to build your own world and that goes right down to your avatar. It's a totally social environment where the extreme end of avatar customization took on a life of its own. Three years ago when I started playing SL no avatar looked the way they do now.
WoW on the other hand is not based around this. It's about the "epic battle" or what have you. While it is a concern to look good your primary concern is the stats of your gear. They give you a little to work with cause let's face it most of the time are you looking at the fight. If you are going "oh my face looks ugly" then you don't need to be playing this game.
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11-16-2007 @ 6:53PM
Fletch said...
I think they should have goblin plastic surgeons. 75% of the time, everything will turn out fine. 25% of the time it'll change your character's gender.
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11-16-2007 @ 7:03PM
Arnold said...
quite frankly, most of the time I'm wearing a bloody stupid helmet anyways, I can't see much of my face...
Also, I'm usually so zoomed out to have more overview that I can't see much of other's faces either...
The only time I ever see my dude's face is when I disable my "helmet view" and see myself in the log-in screen...
Just my two cents.
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11-16-2007 @ 8:22PM
Stoneblade said...
As long as the "beardless" option for gnomes will someday include a set of eyebrows, I'll be happy.
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