A discussion on MMORPG – what works – what doesn’t work – and suggestions for better. A look at who you are in the game – the creation of your avatar.
You and your Avatar
An Avatar or toon is the physical appearance of your character within the game. It is how you appear to the other players. Though most games allow for some individualism in the settings – from sexy to scary – some are more limiting than others.
DragonNest is an example of very limited avatar development. In this game all the clerics and fighters are male only and all the mages and archers are female only.
Now I know that a good 90% of the female toons out there have a male player behind them. Men seem very comfortable playing female toons. But the reverse is not always true. I tried running a male cleric recently. It just felt creepy. I deleted him and began again. So I find this limitation annoying.
Also within DragonNest you have 4 choices of hair styles, 4 choices of set faces, 4 skin tones and 4 eyes colors to combine from.
In comparison
In comparison and at the other extreme consider Aion. Aion features an advanced avatar selection you can literally spend hours in if you care to.
Meet Teshen, my assassin in Aion. This is her before her recent makeover.
And this is Teshen after the makeover. The freedom and options within Aion to create means it’s extremely unlikely any two toons will be exactly alike. My only complaint is with the recent update 2.6 they made it easier to create the more cartoonish types, but more difficult to get the more natural tones for eyes, lips and hair. Some of the toons you see within the game are true works of art and some fit in the category of “WHAT the hell were they thinking ! ”
A second example from Aion shows the range of changes you can make to the facial features.
Trava before makeover.
And Trava after her makeover.
Name that toon
The last task and sometimes the hardest part of creating an avatar is naming the new toon. Coming up with a unique name the server will except can be a challenge. Lately, I keep running into servers that seem to think “Spice” is a dirty word. Huh???
Anyways, there seems to be five traditions in naming toons.
1. the name is a name such as “Teshen” or “Trava”.
2. the name is a title such as “LordOfDeath” or “LadyMagic”.
3. the name is a message such as “IkillU” or “URDead”.
4. the name is a nick such as “DeadShot” for an archer or gunner.
5. the name is a jumble of nonsense such as “ghjsnd”. This, 9 out 10 chances, is a bot or a gold seller.
One trick is to slightly misspell a name if it won’t work or is already in use. Spice can become Sppice. ;) And it will work.
If I built the world…
If I built the world you can pretty much guess I would keep the Aion system for avatar development. Whatever you are in the real world, tall, short, fat or skinny doesn’t matter. Weather you are male or female doesn’t matter. A youngster or an oldster doesn’t matter. I’ve played with a 7 year old who could tank with the best of them. In the game you can become whatever you wish and look however you want. What makes the MMORPG unique is the community of players from all around the world. I have met and played with people from places I can only dream of and made friends I could only have met within the game. So remember, your avatar is your face within the community that is the game and personally, I enjoy not looking like everyone else.
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