If there’s one thing GW deserves credit for, though, it’s the lovely armor designs! The game itself seemed a bit hollow to me, but I won’t deny that I was excited when I finished my first gear set and picked the approriate dyes to make my character look like the mysterious mesmer of the night that she was! Hehe… I need to get back into that game some time and make a ranger so I get all the cool hippie clothes.

Anyway yeah. Merekat is the best character designer ever. Period.

Oblivion isn’t an MMO, but I think I spent 20-30 minutes just trying to make a character NOT ugly, and I swear that should have been an xbl achievement. I don’t like to spend that long on a character. Maybe 5 minutes, tops, while enjoying it. Dark Age of Camelot was one of the first games to implement clothing dye. You could dye your hat purple, and your pants blue if you so wished, which players really enjoyed.

World of Warcraft seems to have a happy medium so far with its character customization. I never spend too long picking our a hairstyle, but then I also notice that when I’m done picking out everything, most other people don’t have the same combination that I do. Plus, unusual armor always helps too.

I’m looking forward to Hellgate: London. I spent a lot of time on Diablo 2 (not as much as some). There was always something about finding that cool armor, or item. If we could have made custom characters back then, and had more then a resolution of 800×600, I’d probably still be playing it.

That’s not saying they didn’t contribute anything, I’m sure they opened a few eyes on what’s marketable in new games, but it was just fraught with extreme ugly. In essence, not what we want.

Customization gets people interested, once they figure out the game play is what they desire, it keeps them interested and excited (yeah, I get all giddy over dying my Warrior’s entire armor set neon pink), and it’s also a nice way to stroke that e-peen if one finds this necessary.

Of course some games do take customization a bit too far… like Neverwinter Nights 2. It took me 2 hours to create my character for that game - and I already had prior NWN experience so I knew what I was doing too (for the most part).

As for 15k armor in Guild Wars. They’re far from hard to get and don’t require weeks and months of farming or grinding, like WoW armors do. In general you’ll have plenty of money and materials for a full 15k set after completing one of the campaigns with one character.

are you in HgL beta?

You can’t even change much after you start (like some games with armor and such) but if you start with a good design it’s easy to really like your character. I made a backstory and everything for my guy, and just have a lot of fun in general with that game. Customization made me stick with a game that I might have otherwise left.

Thanks,
GM T