Good morning, AllaK's - 2/6/07Follow

Good morning, happy campers.

Not much went down in the way of EQ2 last night. I went out and bought Super Swing Golf for the Wii and spent most of the evening getting frustrated and all but throwing my Wiimote across the room in anger. Lord that game is fun.

Since I have no play updates for today, I will pose a discussion question for the class: Given what we have seen in modern MMO's from City of Heros to Vanguard, do you feel that EQ2 is lacking in the character customization department? What do you feel is missing to give your toon that uniquely "you" spark? What do you see implemented well in this department in other games that you would like to see added to EQ2 character customization? Do you instead feel that the level of personality and customization available to our toons is actually sufficient and if so why?

How was your evening?

EQ2's customization is fine. In fantasy MMO's you're mainly interested in your character's head, because everything else is going to be covered up by in-game armor, the apprearance of which you can't control. Maybe you want a little body proportion control, but not much. You can do enoug with your head in EQ2 to differentiate yourself.

CoH/CoV had a lot of customization, but it mainly revolved around your costume, which was good because you're stuck with it for the rest of your career (AFAIK).

The Sims 2 has the highest level of character customization I've ever seen. If that could go into an MMO it would be nice but it might be overkill. I definitely don't think they should allow people to make the freakish looking toons that are possible in The Sims. That would kill immersion.

Look at WoW. Almost no customization - what, a half dozen each hairstyles, faces, facial hair, skin tones and body self-mutilations ...sorry... piercings and tatoos...? Yet they rule the Universe.

Got four AA points earlier today, betraying can be quite fruitful at 70! Unfortunately, got to an assassination quest of which there is no information to be found and I cannot find the mob in Zek at all. Ah well, after four hours of playing that just made me decide to actually take a break and try again tomorrow. I should be back in Qeynos by then.

As for character customization, EQ II is fine. Perhaps they should add more liberty with the hair department. Now you chose between set styles, but perhaps it ought to be possible to a lot more flexible about it. (very well possible that I'm just trying to compensate for real life, but I always like a good head of hair. Ironically I play a Froglok but anyway)

I think that no matter what they (any game dev team) come up with, it won't be enough.

Look at it this way... in sheer numbers, any MMO world inhabited by tens of thousands of players is going to show you the same faces over and over again.

They can't possibly draw a completely unique face for each and every player character and offering 50 or 100 or 500 unique faces still won't get the job done.

(Assuming I have the math right), Even with 500 different models running around in a world of 50,000 characters you would still see 100 people who look just like you! And we have no where near 500 different models.

There is also the factor that your eye is drawn to what is already familiar. So your mind is prone to seeking out the same hairstyle, bodytype, racial configuration etc of the character you created. You naturally see and identify toons that look like you.

Kind of like when you buy a silver Nissan and all of a sudden, you notice there are a million silver Nissans on the streets!

Apropos of nothing, I recall hearing somewhere that there are only a few hundred unique faces in the real world, before accounting for variations in age, fat content and scar tissue, etc.