Posts with tag ugly

Roleplayers, you're off the hook for this morning's Breakfast Topic for obvious reasons, but it's time for everybody else to 'fess up. Be honest here -- no saving face (har, har). Do any of your characters have the ugly face? You know the faces I mean. There's the shopworn gnome shown above (although you have to wonder if she's meant to be homely, old, or perhaps just exposed to too much radiation), and of course there's -- sorry guys, gotta be honest here -- the whole male human race.

I have an ugly banker. She's a human with the ugly/old/mean face, created that way specifically because she feels ugly and mean about being a class I would love to level but don't have time for. Otherwise, my avatars all use the most serious, intent expression available for their races. I think it lends gravitas to what I'm doing in the game. Still, I don't like to be downright ugly. I'd love an older face to match the my dwarf's platinum braids, but only if it didn't look doughy and irradiated like the gnome in the header image.

Are you running around with one of Azeroth's infamous ugly faces? If so, what made you choose that face? Did you regret it once you were in game and had leveled up a bit, and would you change it now if you could? Or you happy to stand apart from the googly-eyed, pillow-lipped doll faces of Azeroth?

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Banana Shoulders has a pretty in-depth look at a graphical update we weren't expecting at all: Blizzard has, in the latest beta build, decided to update the facial textures of some player models, including Gnomes, Human females, and Tauren. And unfortunately, the updates aren't necessarily for the better -- while the models do look a little clearer and more well-defined, they definitely aren't done yet, as the eyes are eerily in the wrong place inside the head, and some of the models are just plain uglier than they used to be.

More realism and detail is always a good thing, and it's important to remember that we're still in beta -- there's no way those Gnome eyes will go live. Blizzard may even be updating the way the heads are put together as well, in order to make sure the new hairstyles all work the way they're meant to. The real challenge, however, will be making sure that the characters come out of this process looking the same way they did before -- if the textures look extremely different, you may end up logging into Wrath with a character you don't recognize.

Update: Don't panic -- Tigole says the facial model texture changes were "a development experiment," and these funny faces will never make the live realms.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

I have a question for all the Horde and warlock players out there -- as well as anyone who plays their character in a so-called "evil" way. But first, let me explain where I'm coming from.

As you know, one of the main differences between the Alliance and the Horde is their sense of style. In fact, the question of what looks and feels good to players of either side may be one of the biggest areas of disagreement that actually exists between them. To a lesser extent, this sort of disagreement exists between classes as well. Warlocks give off a very different feeling from Paladins for example, and different people are attracted to each sort of "aura."

Like many players, my sense of aesthetics and beauty fits in squarely on one side of this aesthetic equation, and the other side can be rather difficult for me to understand. I play in the Alliance, and my favorite races are usually the ones that are "beautiful" and noble-looking in a traditional sense. To me personally, the Horde races are hard to relate to.

I do sometimes start up a Horde character if I have a funny idea for roleplaying him or her, but eventually something about them starts to bother me. Now that the Horde has prettier blood elves to play, I admit this helped me a lot -- I am gradually leveling up a blood elf alt in my free time -- but somehow being a blood elf in the Horde feels rather out of place, as if I'm not really part of the Horde because I'm not hunched over with a ready-to-kill look on my face.

For a long time I couldn't play a warlock either for similar reasons. The class just seemed inherently evil; summoning demons and stealing people's souls seemed wrong somehow. Even though I knew it's just a fantasy game, I still had no desire to mimic in the game something that would be abhorrent to me in real life. I often wondered: what is attractive about the look and feel of these characters to Horde and warlock players?

Annnywaaaay, the topic for today is these scary creatures known as nether rays! Now we can ride them! But... the question is, does anyone want to? I know the nether ray in this picture looks pretty spooky, and I'll admit that there are some screenshots in which they look okay at first. But over all, aren't they really rather ugly, pudgy and too much like a fish with serious dental problems?

I was over there questing in Skettis with a friend of mine today, just earning some money in a few spare minutes I had to play, when we stopped to gawk at the Sha'tari Skyguard dwarf just swooshing along on his nether ray mount, looking as pudgy and as awkward as can be. I realized, this thing doesn't look like it should be a mount at all. Your legs kind of sink through the creature's tendril hood or whatever it is, and some races apparently have their hands hanging out in thin air, holding on to reins that should be there on any normal mount, but not on this one.

Do you agree that this thing is an ugly waste of your reputation grinding time? or am I totally missing the aesthetic genius of this?

As someone who, admittedly, plays a level 60 Gnome (with pink hair and everything), I understand where people are coming from when they talk about the importance of the appearance of your in-game avatar.  But if having a "pretty" avatar is so important, how do you explain all of the Horde  players out there?  Or even the numerous unattractive Alliance options?  Kotaku ponders the question, while the source article on Guardian Gamesblog seems to assume that there are no ugly avatars.  What about you - is your avatar beautiful or hideous, and why?