I'd totally just stunlock him first. |
Gamers have been customizing their avatars for years, decades even. The first customization was very, very basic, picking a name. Over time developers have added all sorts of customizable options, down to
Star Trek Online's promise of allowing us to create our own alien species. As if that universe doesn't have enough aliens in it already. Blizzard's character customization allows us to pick faces, hairstyles, skin tones and all that hubbub, but it never struck me as an incredibly deep system. Numerous RPGs and other MMOGs have offered a more granular approach, straight down to the color set of your gear and a wide variety of (useless) accessories. Yet, something has always been missing recently.
As far as the industry has come, I can't recall a single title by name that allows me to be left or right-handed. I know I have played a game that let me do this, perhaps one in the
Quake series, but I can't remember specifically. My collection of gamer friends struggled to come up with anything other than vague memories (
SiN, some older RPGs). It seems clear to me that a handful of older FPS and RPG titles allowed this, although many likely glossed over the option, or I simply did not care at the time. But, I care now.
FPS are fleeting titles, nothing sticks to the characters. In multiplayer you die constantly, and while series like Call of Duty and Battlefield allow you to rank-up and such, you aren't attached to your toon. In an RPG, one is more attached to the avatar. With a third-person RPG, one is constantly viewing the toon, seeing everything he/she does. You become attached, possibly even obsessed over the looks. Entire mods have been created to allow gamers to tweak appearances. This obsession is only multiplied in MMOGs, and for obvious reasons.
As deep and lengthy as an RPG can be, no title can stand up to the amount of time that we invest in our MMO characters. Along with the dedication, comes the intense social aspect that makes MMOGs so attractive. If I am going to be sinking days of time into my creation, shouldn't I be able to swing it like a southpaw?
I know this is an incredibly minute aspect of WoW, but a guy can dream, right? A fleeting aspiration at best. I don't even expect Blizzard to implement this aesthetic pleasure so late in the game, but they have done other things I did not foresee, such as the
Paid Character Re-Customization service. Has anyone else ever wondered about this? Heck, can you name some other titles that have this choice? There has to be some relatively new titles that allows us to do this.
As for the other MMOG developers out there, you have yet another feature request.
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