why won't blizzard allow us to mod characters?

[Deathgoose]

If you mean using alternate models, it's because you could do stuff like make your opposite faction models huge or something so they could easily be seen in BG's or something stupid.

Exploits, mainly.

[Planetarism]

The reason is simple and frustrating at times, same as for why they are very opposed to implementing any dynamic, engaging, sandboxy feature in the game - they don't let you customize graphics or anything else because they are afraid. They clutch tightly to their inclusive set of art style & tone, as anything custom-created would quickly get out of that tightly Blizzard-controlled theme, and that terrifies them.

[Ghul]

people already said 1 year after release that wow's engine is showing old age :P

[Schwert]

There's also the notion of the game being based around improving and updating your character's gear and other such goodies;

I can easily change my mount to look like a Gladiator drake with a model changer but they want people to go out and "earn" it.
(And 90% of the people I see using Tmorph to change their mounts are doing it for unobtainable mounts as well. Stupid notion Blizzard.)

When it comes to player models however?
They charge for race changes. That'd explain almost everything.

(Although I would love to use some sort of model changer to change my warrior into the Chinese version of the forsaken. Holes in my pants? Got old kind of fast.)

[Deleted]

It comes down how they find exploits.
When the client is scanning for *things that should not be there*, it can't by itself know if you have just given your main character a higher pixel texture, or if you have made all enemies neon green to be easier to spot. This makes it much harder to scan for exploits because the chance of false-positives would be very high. If they don't allow it at all, then you can't complain when you get banned for doing something innocent, because it is still against the rules.

It's also a matter of where to draw the line. We all know that there are allot of people who would push the limit. "But it's just a small color correction" - that help with a tactic. "But it's just a minor model change" that makes other players easier to see in BG.
It's simply easier to say "You can't do it" instead of saying "You can do XYZ but not ABCDEFGHTI etc etc etc".

Warden is not nearly as effective at catching cheaters as blizzard wants the players to think, if it just did more intense scans of the RAM while the client is running few bots would last more then 15 minutes. The amount of scanning going on for the methods most model editing programs use is also close to zero. Would post a link to a forum were you can learn craploads about how things work but would probably get an infraction as that would be seen as spreading the plague by the mods.

[unholytestament]

To all the people calling Blizzard lazy/protective/whatever for not allowing model or texture edits I have one question...

Is there an MMORPG that does?

Even Trassk's example of TERA doesn't. The decensor mod exists, but using it is against En Masse's rules. They just don't have anything like warden to scan for it.

Edit: En Masse's very clear stance.