With all the whining, complaining, and threatening to quit on the official WoW forums, it may be a surprise that the most common request on the suggestion forum is for a ... beauty parlor. There have been six full threads asking for a barber shop, hair salon or beauty parlor, so people can change the looks of their character. Apparently, some people made regrettable decisions about their appearance at character selection -- bad enough to bother them, not bad enough to make them reroll.

Rasza of Elune is the leader of this plastic surgery movement. While some people want to make appearance-changing a profession, Rasza disagrees, saying that it wouldn't fit in with the current profession system. (And what would the gathering profession for a beautician be, anyway? Animal testing?) She suggests having a fee and/or a cooldown that would prevent indecisive people from revamping their looks every other day. Other people chime in with additional customization ideas, including token turn-in tattoos, battle scars, and contacts to display your PVE or PVP accomplishments on your body. And a couple diehards want the option to change race or gender, which goes a bit too far for most posters.

I like this idea, although I'd prefer a very long cooldown or a limited number of uses, to make people really think before spending a week with hideous, eye-searing faces. I'd like to change my troll rogue's hair color, just because I've upgraded computers recently and have found that red looks better than my current orange. Still, it could be worse (see above picture.)

Would you change your character's looks for a fee? What additional customization options would you like for your character -- tattoos, missing limbs, spikes?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, RP