Project Lore

Can't I Be A Snappy AND Functional Dresser? If there is one buzzword I noticed at this year's E3 it was "style."  Motion controllers aside, I heard everyone from EA to Disney Interactive Studios drop the word as a descriptor for at least one of the company's titles.  Style is nice and all, but I never thought it would become the word of E3.  The idea of digital fashion was littered throughout the trio of "new" racing games, Blur, Need for Speed: Shift and Split/Second, but it came up in unsuspecting places like Muramasa, The Invincible Tiger, Sin + Punishment 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and even My Baby 2 (seriously! I think Southpeak caught onto the word's new-found popularity and just tossed it in there).  The five letter word was spoken in every fashion possible, adjective, noun, verb.  You name it, it was applied, by someone, somewhere, at the show. Although the PR people lead us to believe the term was coined this year, style has been around far longer than any of us.  Believe it or not, it has even been applied to games before aught-9!  Case in point, our favorite MMORPG World of Warcraft.  With each new tier or raid dungeon release the issue rears its ugly head again and with good reason.  Once you begin collecting items from a particular dungeon, that being Ulduar in the present day, the gear differences become incredibly small.  Sure, the min-maxers out there have a point, the percentage increases do matter, but I follow my old rogue officers opinion on that matter; "Whatever looks the coolest is the best." I'm not one to fret over my outfit too much, but I am a bit dumbfounded at our lack of a customizing (dieing, painting, etc) system in World of Warcraft.  I entirely support the artist's overall design of gear, except the druid shoulders, with each class having its own distinct style, but why can't we make small modifications to color schemes?  Heck, I am not hard to please in this respect.  Give me the ability to change the color accents of non-Tiered gear to match our in-the-works sets and I'd be happy as a disease-free non-Egyptian pig in slop. If E3 taught me anything this year, it is that all we gamers care about is style, whether it be our own, the game we are playing or some combination thereof. I can't possibly be the only one who despises running around with three shades of red, a mix of blue and some colors I can't distinguish.  Doing so in a single-player RPG is one thing, but when I am spending 10+ hours a week on a single character for years, I expect some ongoing customization outside of simply obtaining new threads.  The change can easily be placed inside the various armor crafting professions, or added as some sort of secondary profession.  Perhaps one with repairing abilities?! How much does a piece's look matter to you?  Will you take it over something with more functionality due to its visual prowess, or are stats the numbers the main one aspect for your decision?  It's no secret that I am a big critic of daggers in WoW, but to date, I have never raided with anything but them.  I've also never broken a set bonus purely for the looks of a non-set piece, but I have used non-set items between the reward zones for that reason. Everyone loves a spoonful of QQ to start off the week, right?

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