Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsCharacter Re-Customization available for a small fee [UPDATED]
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 10th 2008 at 11:00PM
The WoW launcher was updated this morning, and just now what was behind that curtain was revealed: Character Re-Customization. What does that mean? In short, for a fee of $15, you can rebuild your character, with some restrictions. You can change your gender, face, skin, hair, and name, but not your race or class. You can do hair in-game already via the barbershop, so I imagine the ability to do those via this service is just for convenience. The real draw is the gender and face options.Don't want to play your Female Undead Warlock anymore because they move funny? It's okay, turn them into a way awesome Male Undead Warlock. Sick of looking at your Male Draenei? Try out something more... pleasing to the eyes. This is a feature people have been asking for since WoW launched, so I'm surprised it took so long for it to happen. If you're taking full advantage of the feature, it's really not a bad deal considering a paid name change is $10. For an extra $15, you can more or less have a new character. Well, sort of.
The first questions that I saw come up about this is the griefability, and the FAQ handled it pretty well. What if a Ninja steals your lewts, then goes and changes their identity? Well, as long as they're on your ignore list (or friends list) they can't really escape. When their name changes, those lists will be updated as well.
The odd restriction I see is Race, because I think that's one of the biggest things people wanted from this anyway. I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that, though. Your race would be the new Flavor of the Month deal. Why? Racials. You would have raiders going Draenei for the Hit aura, or PvPers respeccing their race to whatever the best PvP racial is that arena season. My fellow RPers, let's be honest. How many people on your server would be swapping to Draenei for a few months for some bizarre demon posession and/or impregnation storyline, then going back to Human or Night Elf whatever later. It would be a lot of people.
This would very quickly change from something fun to something you'd feel like you're forced to spend good money on regularly. I don't think they want that. I don't really see a problem with this service at all, I think they took a pretty classy approach to it all.
Update: It seems they're still trying to get a few bits and pieces of this working right, so I'd wait awhile before trying it out.
[Thank you to all that sent us tips about this!]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 8)
blackmagefury Dec 12th 2008 1:17AM
Your old name will be locked for 90 days? OMFG
I could understand 24 hours or one week/month but 90 days?
Doesn't Blizz think that people, like myself, would want to maybe reuse a feminine name after trading it for a masculine one or vice-versa if we changed our sex? (Female pally to male pally, then make female shaman with my old name) That's a long time to wait for my (awesome) name...
Side note, it could be weird to suddenly have a male draenei as my main anyway. Guess I'll keep my pally female but get her a new face and skin color :)
arkhell Dec 11th 2008 1:55AM
To get the difforent skin with dk just click face till you change it's a special texture with face that turn the collour drasticly and gives you some necrotic patches and stuf. you can still change your skin collour and it will change a bid but it's still darker/greyer then normal and necrotic ftw ^^
Shiro Dec 11th 2008 6:38AM
I'm totally in for impregnations.
Spiff Dec 11th 2008 2:04AM
Its obscene that people will pay for this. They already let us change our hair in game for free (as in £ not G), yet they somehow think this is a justifiable charge on the user. Why not just put a 6 month restriction on it and make it free?
Absolutely ridiculous, taking advantage of people who they already know are stupid enough to actually pay it.
Trevor Halcomb Dec 11th 2008 2:09AM
I curently am using a character with an alt key in its name, if I were to do this character customization but not choose to change my name will it allow me to change my character and keep my name now that alt keys are not allowed or would it refuse my name and i'm screwed?
Hoggersbud Dec 11th 2008 10:56AM
But Alt keys are now allowed, at least in reasonable amounts. It used to be not allowed, but that was changed.
Jyotai Dec 11th 2008 2:16AM
Its actually regrettable that you stay on their friends list with a name change.
The first thing I thought of when looking at this announcement was that it would be a great way to escape a cyber stalker. Having had to deal with an online stalker from 1996 to 2003 (when I only managed to stop him by 'outing' him on his employer's website)... I guess that's just something always on the back of my mind.
I know I have toons I dread logging into, not because of who's ignored me or put me on their bad list, but rather the opposite - who's chosen to "friend" me without my approval...
(one nice thing about City of Heroes - anytime anyone wants to friend you over there, you have to grant them permission to be able to)
Before reading the details two of my toons immediately popped to mind as toons to do this for... until I noticed that it wouldn't remove me from friend lists...
zappo Dec 11th 2008 9:06AM
If this is an honest problem, I think you might be able to take this up with Blizzard. They may be able to change your player ID. Similar to transferring to another server and transferring back without the added cost or lockout period.
20XX Dec 11th 2008 2:16AM
The day they allow Maple Story's "buy yourself lvls" system Im gonna laugh. Although that recruit a friend kinda works...
Tenchan Dec 11th 2008 3:00AM
Now if only they would add a goddamn zoom in option to the character creation so people can properly see the face they pick right away.
I know, of the top of my head, three people in my guild alone who will probably pay this just because they couldn't make out the face at creation and picked one wholly unfitting to their character.
Tori Dec 11th 2008 3:02AM
THIS.
Also, I wish they would add something so you would know for sure which skin colour you were choosing. Even something as simple as numbers, so when you're clicking through the arrows to scan skin colours, each would have a number. There's been countless times my eyes play tricks on me, and I can't seem to tell if one colour was the one I wanted, or if it was a slightly darker/lighter tone.
Maybe it's not a big deal, but I remember on one character I wanted her to be as pale as possible, and I thought I'd chosen the palest skin colour but I hadn't. xD
Jahbulon Dec 11th 2008 3:13AM
Fukn lame.
I'm a male Tauren- why on earth would I want to change to a female one? What 'cool' face/skin changes can I make? The most significant change is through the barber and we obviously can already do that.
The only way this would have been worthwhile hearing would have been if race changes were allowed.
Wow customization is absolutely awful. We're all the same weight, body shapes, height, posture and we all run/walk the bloody same.
Fukn lame.
Tori Dec 11th 2008 3:48AM
Yeah, it kinda sucks that everyone looks the same. I remember I liked the customization options in Phantasy Star Online. You could stretch out your character horizontally and vertically, basically make them as tall/short and as slim/wide as you wanted. It didn't seem like a very difficult feature to implement in that game, I don't see why we can't have a bit more of a customization degree.
Even for druids, I always thought you should be able to customize your animal forms. Even if it's only the fur colour. So not every bear would look the same, you know?
Chump Dec 11th 2008 3:41AM
Speaking of race change, I wish I could change from a tauren to a night elf druid BUT! still be horde. I mean, in a "world of war"craft their has to be night elf sympathizers ...right?
VSUReaper Dec 11th 2008 3:56AM
I skimmed the article and got all excited for a few min - I might just be able to get my hunter off of that dead server! Then I reread and got all sad: no race changes.
I really wish they would allow us to do a faction/race change. I would be perfectly happy if they even implemented a penalty, such as a lvl penalty (you loose 5-10 levels) or you can only take whats in your bags (not whats in your bank).
My NE Hunter is on a server thats about 90%horde, 10% alliance. Its impossible to get groups unless you are in one of the 2 or 3 big guilds because everyone has left the server and rerolled.
I would honestly pay the $30 to get my hunter on the same server as my tank and healer.
SarahTheGnome Dec 11th 2008 4:08AM
This sucks, badly. I am really getting sick of Blizzard and there everchanging policy. Hey, wonder how many days it will take them to change the sticky on the Suggestions forum this time where they say they have no intentions of implementing this.
Really, this is lovely, I can not wait to see people explaining themselves on RP servers. Anything for another dollar right?
I do know, very well, that they are a corporation that needs to make a profit. But really? Some consistency would be nice. OW WAIT! they are consistent in their inconsistency, that's something I guess.
forste Dec 11th 2008 4:21AM
gief RACE change plz!
Charlie Dec 11th 2008 4:33AM
OH THANK GOD!
I've wanted to change my gnome's face FOREVER. I hate the old mean guy look so much.
Jahbulon Dec 11th 2008 4:36AM
I can understand not allowing faction and class swapping.
What slaps hard with this is that it says 'Yeah, we are aware of customization needs' but at the same time screams 'This is the uber lame options we came up with and oh yeah, $15 please'.
You haven't implemented any changes on your end for this, none at all, these are all options we had before- big deal if we can re-adjust them!
Get your thumb out of your asses and make some real customization options! How can Blizzard not be aware how much of an awesome feature that would be? People would probably kill babies to customize their toons exactly how they'd like -_-
GoldenPaladin Dec 11th 2008 10:43PM
When are they going to come out with Faction/Race changes? I'd pay a lot of wow gold for that rofl.
I feel that $15 is too expensive, though. It's just the same as the name change with a sex change operation.