More Customization Options (really need to happen)

[cuafpr]

Adding customization, as Blizzard have done many times in WoW's history is profitable, that's why they keep doing it. It increases players retention and sometimes even brings people back to the game. There have been several examples in BfA alone. Not sure why you're acting as if this fairly routine thing is and outlandish and insane request.

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They won't happen unless WoW is rebuilt from the ground up, at least in terms of character models and animations. That could happen, but please note that we still don't even have modern models for all race quite yet, so we're likely looking at 5 years or more before it even might.

WoW will probably be less profitable by then, unless Classic has massive sustained impacts, so it is unlikely that it will ever happen. Sorry. Its a fine idea, just a huge effort to implement in a game not designed for it.

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Very true. DAoC and EQ2 and arguably FFXI made it look retro back in 2004 in a number of ways.

But whatever we think about that, WoW's continual success despite the character models has proved that they are of limited importance. One complicating factor is animation. Most other games have gone for generic animations used by all characters of one gender, regardless of race, others one set of animation for all. They make up for it with good models and more class specific animations.

But WoW has race specific animations, and I think we acn argue that maybe people find those more important than good face and body customization, based on the evidence. You certainly notice them more when zoomed out and armoured up.

while likely true... i know its wanted by the dev teams and the new skeleton structure supports it per a few devs i talked to back at the benefit dinner

[Zyrinx]

I'd just LOVE for them to fix headbucketing (aka 90% of helms make you bald/beardless).

The new Crown shows it's possible, as does the Santa hat'd gnome from the snowglobe.

[DeicideUH]

Im still hoping for the Chinese undead models to be a customization option for undead.
For those like me who cant stand the exposed bone at the joints / ugly as hell armor rips.
I mean there is no material that rips in the way that the armor rips at the joins of the undead player models.
Example of the undead model on the chinese client.

I'm all in favor of this. SHould have been done already, the models exist, it's minimal work for Blizzard.

[Lionwoman]

More everything, but specially more. Tauren. Faces. And. Hairstyles.
Female has only 4. Shame.

[Eurhetemec]

TBF, right now they're shifting to class- and weapon-specific animations, so newer animations are shared by all races. There's some leftover race-specific stuff, but it's getting phased out.

The vast majority of animations are still race specific, for every class except Monk. And there's no sign of anything "being phased out" (is there even a single racial-specific animation that is no longer used at all?). They added a bunch of new animations which differentiated spells from each other - and a lot of them are shared, which makes it an interesting hybrid system. "Some leftover" is just deeply misleading though - easily 95% of the animations a character (including running, dancing, emotes, auto-attacks, etc.) can make are race-specific (shared with races that have the same skeleton only).

while likely true... i know its wanted by the dev teams and the new skeleton structure supports it per a few devs i talked to back at the benefit dinner

I'm not saying you're wrong about the new skeletons supporting it, but if they do, then it's interesting that Blizzard haven't chosen to use it at all, not even for NPCs. I suppose the moment that they do recognisably use it, people will go berserk for it, so maybe they're holding off.

Re: colour-sliders though, that's currently just not how WoW works, in terms of how it's textures are designed and manipulated. Again, it could be, under the hood, it's possible to do it, but there's absolutely no sign that it is. All the current textures have their colours "baked in", AFAIK.

[cuafpr]

The vast majority of animations are still race specific, for every class except Monk. And there's no sign of anything "being phased out" (is there even a single racial-specific animation that is no longer used at all?). They added a bunch of new animations which differentiated spells from each other - and a lot of them are shared, which makes it an interesting hybrid system. "Some leftover" is just deeply misleading though - easily 95% of the animations a character (including running, dancing, emotes, auto-attacks, etc.) can make are race-specific (shared with races that have the same skeleton only).



I'm not saying you're wrong about the new skeletons supporting it, but if they do, then it's interesting that Blizzard haven't chosen to use it at all, not even for NPCs. I suppose the moment that they do recognisably use it, people will go berserk for it, so maybe they're holding off.

Re: colour-sliders though, that's currently just not how WoW works, in terms of how it's textures are designed and manipulated. Again, it could be, under the hood, it's possible to do it, but there's absolutely no sign that it is. All the current textures have their colours "baked in", AFAIK.

yeah you make a lot of good points that i agree with.. IF it ever happens i suspect it will be a major expansion feature. i can see color wheels before body slides for thinks like hair / skin tint. those i think would be simplish. till then i'll cross my fingers!

[Eurhetemec]

yeah you make a lot of good points that i agree with.. IF it ever happens i suspect it will be a major expansion feature. i can see color wheels before body slides for thinks like hair / skin tint. those i think would be simplish. till then i'll cross my fingers!

Yes body/hair is most likely because there are a restricted number of potential textures, which they can test thoroughly, and which are typically mostly one tone anyway. It's with armour (which people always want) where it would be a big problem.