Tired Of Being A Boy?

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 21 Comments

Well, in WoW, switching teams is now a bit easier than in real life.

Character Re-Customization is a paid service that lets you change an existing character’s gender, face, skin color, and other cosmetic features determined by his or her race and gender combination.

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  • Mercury

    Just keep on with the old “it’s not statted, so it’s not RMT” line, Blizzard.

    Nevermind the effort most players put into all kinds of other things that are not statted.

    Bah. Bah, I say.

  • http://gnomedepot.net Loredena

    It’s cheaper than in real life too!

    So — this is MMO Microtransaction week?

  • Phaltran

    I wonder why Blizzard will not change race? I can understand not allowing a switch from human to orc which would change faction, but why can I not change my human to a gnome?

    That’s the one thing I wanted to change after playing several characters for a year. I didn’t realize how some racial attributes could benefit endgame raiding until then. Plus as I played a variety I grew to like the look and attributes of certain races for certain classes more than others. If I could change it, my human warlock would be a gnome and my human priest would be a dwarf. They’re much too far along and geared to re-roll.

    Only reason that comes to my mind of why Blizzard will not allow this is because humans have diplomacy which earns 10% more reputation. Creating a human, earning faction reputation more quickly and then converting to another race might be too advantageous.

  • Alarik

    Changing a race has gameplay implications; none of the changes they currently allow do.

    It’s possible that they will allow it at some point in the future, as they seem receptive to player requests, but I can understand why they don’t want to.

  • Todd Ogrin

    I just don’t hear a lot of people say in chat “man i wish i’d made a girl/guy instead of this stupid guy/girl.” Maybe if they inherit an account. But otherwise?

  • http://mmomentofzen.blogspot.com/ Lars

    Lineage 2 has had a Gender Change feature for a while.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    If I still played WoW, I have several male characters that I’d be switching to hot ass female characters.

    One of the reasons I quit WoW? I got tired of looking at my character, a male wood elf, in third person. Now, if he was a she…

    This is a good change.

  • Mercury

    Seen the patch notes for 3.0.8 on PTR yet? Check out this gem:

    “Death Knights have access to unique death-knight only facial textures and skin tones. These can be selected at the character creation screen.”

    Brilliant! Release the expansion with a new class, let everyone level up the new class for a month, then add “free” special face/skin features, available to everyone at character creation.

    …and release a new $15 feature to change existing characters.

    If you’re not seeing the Activision influence here, then you’re blind.

  • MearaD

    @mercury: Death Knights have always had access to specialized skins tones and facial textures. They may be adding more features, but at the expansion launch players were able to create a DK with new “skins”. So your statement’s not entirely accurate.

    As for the character recustomization, changing gender isn’t going to affect anything stat-wise about a character, though changing race and class would. So of course they can’t include that.

    At any rate, no complaints on the change here! I have grown dissatisfied with my main’s facial features and would love to change them. Now I can. So works for me!

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Now that’s definitely something they did not plan to offer after City of Heroes.

  • http://weblog.etherized.com Jeremy T

    I have a tendency to create female characters for solo play, which I usually regret as I reach the endgame and socialization becomes mandated. I’m fine gender-bending on my own time, but playing a female character around guildmates does feel a bit awkward.

    I definitely welcome the ability to correct this, and while $20 does seem a bit steep, if I were still playing WoW I’d strongly consider paying it. Now, if only they would open up race switching, I might just come back to the game..

  • Ciarnat

    Since late beta/release, DKs could be created with undead-looking skins (very basic, mostly white/green/grey flat textures + shadows) or with normal-looking textures. They also could be created with normal hair color or unique hair colors (usually a silver-blue or flat grey). Finally, they could choose normal skin tones or undead skin (grey/green/white).

    One thing that people have wanted is the option to have facial skin features like those seen on other death knight NPCs and the Cultists in Scholomance – purple-grey facial tattoos and the like.

    Hopefully this is the option that Blizzard will be offering, and hopefully it will be offered through the barbershop. It would be the same as night elves changing their facial tattoos, which is another barbershop option.

  • Fraeg

    nice that they put it in… the RL $$ is a bit of a slap in the face. How about an Easy repeatable quest? or ingame gold, or put a timer on it?

  • Drey

    @D-One: There are no wood elves in WoW. Perhaps you were thinking of a different game?

  • =j

    It was a Freudian slip. He was already thinking about that female model.

  • yunk

    Actually i would love to change my female priest to a male, in fact maybe i’ll do that. It will stop the weird treatment by other players.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    @Dray: You are correct. I should have said “Night Elf”. It’s been a while.

  • Centuri

    Changing it to an ingame quest would be interesting. Perhaps a daily quest for an Elixir of Hormones that you have to complete daily and failure to drink it will revert the changes… One day and your “female” avatar begins to grow facial hair…2nd day “her” voice for the emotes in the game switches back to the male version.

    OK I am going to go finish my coffee now.

  • http://gnomedepot.net Loredena

    One other thought that occurred to my husband and to me — if Blizzard permits you to change face, gender, and name — that really makes character/account selling easy. Now, when someone sells their account, all trace of the previous ‘life’ of the character can be removed….

  • http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com Rohan

    Except that all in-game lists that contain that character (friends, ignore, etc) get updated.

    Plus, WoW has had paid name changes for a while now.

  • Vetarnias

    Between this and SOE’s Station Cash venture, this makes me fear for the future of MMO’s. That’s called double-dipping. I’m already playing $15 a month to play your friggin’ game, I’m not going to pay through the nose again to get an advantage. That’s fine for free-to-play games, because the entire business model revolves around it, but not for subscription games. Charge me with in-game currency, fine, but when you’re asking me to crack open my wallet *when I already have to subscribe to play*, I’m not only going to refuse to use the new “service”, I might even reconsider my subscription in the first place.

    SOE were already thought of as bottomfeeders since at least the NGE episode, so no surprise there, but I would have expected a company like Blizzard to be aware of that and to display a little more class.