Paid character customization on the horizon
by David Bowers 
Oct 14th 2008 at 8:30AM
I was one of those people who got really excited about the idea of changeable hairstyles way back when they were first announced. Ever since then I've been daydreaming about how I would get to modify my character's appearance, albeit in a limited way: Blizzard seemed to think that faces and skin colors should be unchangeable -- otherwise the Barber Shop would feel too much like a Plastic Surgeon.But now, it looks like one day there will be nothing we can't change about our characters except their race and class (and gender). In a small BlizzCon '08 press conference about WoW and Diablo 3, Production Director J. Allen Brack (whom we interviewed recently), mentioned that one day even the skin and face of your characters would be customizable through some sort of paid change, akin to changing your character's name, perhaps. They haven't worked out any details yet, but it certainly does look promising.
I have no idea why they'd charge real money for it, or how much it would cost, but as long as it's not too expensive (around $5 dollars maybe?) I think it's something I'd go for. I'd like to change my draenei hunter's skin color and facial expression, even though what I have now is already nice enough. Sometimes it's just nice to have a change every now and then. What about you? Is it the sort of thing you'd pay real money for? How much would be too much?
[via G4TV, and reader Anthony with the tip]
Filed under: Odds and ends, News items, Expansions, BlizzCon, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Kiukiu Oct 14th 2008 8:35AM
Opens up the possibility for other paid changes...like I would definitely cough up $5 for a longer /ignore list to deal with trolls and retarded beggars.
William Oct 14th 2008 9:15AM
amen.
peagle Oct 14th 2008 9:35AM
@Simon
I don't know that I agree such a move would be pure greed. Much like name changes, I think putting an actual dollar sum behind major character changes such as names and faces regulates a sense of consistency in the game. If every time you logged in people had different names and faces it would be/feel somewhat chaotic imho.
peagle Oct 14th 2008 9:36AM
@peagle
Damnit, my reply is regards the post below. How about a $5 fee for an edit post button WoW Insider? D:
NeSuKuN Oct 14th 2008 9:41AM
that's why god invented addons
PeeWee Oct 14th 2008 10:00AM
Peagle:
The comments system on Wow Insider sucks beyond all, and they refuse to recognise it. I still have to manually add my email for every post, even though I've had "Remember me" marked. It worked in the older system, which was still a bag of shite. And this is way worse.
Even from my limited experience with the :free: blog software Wordpres, its commenting system is :far: superior to this.
joggoms Oct 14th 2008 10:46AM
I'm waiting for paid race changes myself. I have too many Taurens.
Spoonman Oct 14th 2008 11:09AM
Haha, I know that feeling Joggoms. I have a NE Priest and I am willing to pay up for a race change for him, re-rolling takes way too long.
Robin Fensom Oct 14th 2008 8:37AM
I dunno, it feels like the start of a slippery slope to me.
If they do this and they see it's lucrative, then they'll probably extend the service to other things.
Who knows how long before we can buy Heirloom items with our credit cards?
I guess as long as they can restrict themselves to things that are purely cosmetic, in the same way that achievements and TCG loot currently does, it wouldn't be so bad.
But please, Blizzard, don't see dollar signs in your eyes and end up offering gear...
Caustik Oct 14th 2008 8:50AM
They are indeed on the slippery slope.
I can't blame them for wanting to make cash, but it seems we are slowly but surely going away from the good ol' Blizzard policy.
Just have a look at the so called Starcraft 2 (campaign) Trilogy :/
Simon Oct 14th 2008 8:54AM
Agree - where will it end?
I think that if Blizzard have taken the step of offering visitiing the barber for free i.e. just in-game gold then it seems to be bad faith in making people pay for other cosmetic changes.
I.e. why can't the barbers have gnome/goblin plastic surgery technology?
I know that as a business some nice new incremental revenue streams is hard to resist, but this just seems greedy.
Hairdressing is free already, technically I'm sure it's much the same thing to change the face etc. if you can change your hair so I think that Goblin/Gbnomish plastic surgeons should hit a capital city near you soon rather than Blizzard expecting us to hit our pockets for our credit cards.
It would just be a really really greedy move by Blizzard.
Tech Oct 14th 2008 9:38AM
I think they are going to add a small fee ($5 or so) just so that people will not be changing there characters all of the time.
karp Oct 14th 2008 8:39AM
Boy Blizzard will try to make money off of anything that would be a convenience for the player, I'm surprised they are not selling gold yet.
ThorinII Oct 14th 2008 9:59AM
Who says they haven't? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Blizz was selling gold. One more reason to stop gold farming, kill off the competition. Heck, they wouldn't even have to farm it.
Axolotl Oct 14th 2008 8:48AM
Kiukiu, I agree with you, my ignore-list is full of goldsellers, beggars, powerleveling-service-morons, spammers and players I generally dislike (yes, if you steal a mining-node I'm fighting that mob for, you end up on my ignore-list just so I'd never help you later when I've forgotten why I put you on there and If you're alliance, I hope to run into you again at an inconvenient time >:-) )
Maybe a nice feature would be to add a dropdown list of why you put someone on the ignore-list, or a remark-box we can fill in ourselves)
Keven Oct 14th 2008 8:50AM
Hmm... I can do this in City of Heroes for free....
karl Oct 14th 2008 8:55AM
I hope blizzard doesnt charge for this
EQ2 has done this for free since 2006
players have access to the character designer when they visit Barber
Gareth Oct 14th 2008 10:47AM
I'm not liking this downward spiral here of extra costs, but it cannot be free since people would chop and change daily...
Another idea of say charging something insane like 10k gold to change your appearance would just put money in the pockets of gold sellers.
So how about option 3 - just let people do it for free but have a 6 month cool down on it, I would have no
problems with that myself.
Kay Oct 14th 2008 2:02PM
"I totally agree. I don't want everyone to look completely different everytime I log on. If it's not broken, don't fix it! If you want a change that bad, it's not going to kill you to reroll. If you made the wrong choice when you rolled, well, tough. Shoulda thought harder. That's life."
...really?
...-really-?
That's the direction you're going to go with this argument? "Life's tough?" Well, yes, life is tough. Life. As in, real life. This is a game. This is about fun, not life. I mean, if we're going to go that route, let's have death be permanent, battle injuries leave permanent scars, require that our characters have 8 hours of sleep per day in real time...well, I mean sure, having your character look like 8 miles of bad road if they -do- manage to survive...and, well, if you happen to only have playtime at night, too bad, you're character's sleeping...but hey, that's life. Too bad.
As for "thinking harder". ...we play this game a long time. Years, even. Ever get a new outfit IRL that you thought was awesome at the time, but a few months or even a year or two later go "Wow...what the hell was I thinking." Or a haircut, or...well, you get the picture. When you're making a character, facial features / color etc. is just another choice you're making.
As for the "It's not going to kill you to reroll", this sounds amazingly like someone who has never done any progression raiding. Want to change your character's face? No problem, just drop out of your raid group, level like mad, once you get to 70 hope you've got decent luck on gear drops and grind like a fiend to get back to the raid level you were at...oh, crap, you were beyond the first tier? Well, you'll need to find a new raid at the ground floor that wont' mind that you plan on abandoning them the moment you're geared enough to go back to your normal raid, and hope like hell the person who's taken your place in your absence will be gracious enough to bow out and let you back in...so, yeah. Welcome back bob. How's that new face going that cost us our usual healer for a few months? Spiff.
Just as you don't care for it when people try to tell you how to play WoW (butting in and intruding on RP, etc.), think about it the other way around as well. Asking that such options remain absent for the sake of the purism of your RP value is just silly. RP takes at least two. If those people change their face every other day with no IC reason to...well, then fix your rp experience by not playing with them. For the rest of us, it's just silly to tell us we shouldn't have the option for that reason when it really in the end falls under a "don't like it, don't use it" category. Who cares if Johnnyzul over there that you never talk to, never interact with, and rarely ever even see changes his face like underwear. He's background to your RP, if that, and never anything more, no more central to your RP experience than the potted plant or Extra #3 in the fifth scene of Terminator 2.
I really, really fail to see how the changes of people you don't roleplay with destroy your RP experience. It smells of over-the-top "SLAP IN THE FACE" drama-llama-ing.
SarahTheGnome Oct 14th 2008 8:52AM
I dislike this so much. They should do something about the customisation when you roll your char, not when you have already levelled it all the way. Yet another thing that will make RP in WoW lose even more credit. I don't mind other people getting new features when they roll a new char while I am still stuck with the same old gnome. Because... I actually thought about my char WHILE I was making it, not after... duh.
I am just hoping that this will be the end of it. If they start introducing gender/race/faction changes, I am binning my WoW account. I play this game mostly for RP, and that would ruin it completely, not that it is a concern of Blizzard, but it is one of mine.
Once upon a time, I was really sure they would never cross the gender/race/faction line, and then they allowed PvP to PvE transfers, and I finally realised that Blizz soothes and promises, until they see an extra dollar can be made. I understand they are a multinational corporation and profit is their goal, but I wonder if they ever consider the integrity of the game when introducing changes left and right.