The barbershop was introduced, and I was thrilled. If you pay attention to the flow of the game, your toon at 80 is an appreciable number of years older than they were at 1. They have been put through great hardships. What was cute on my little level one shaman (those dangly wrapped braid things) no longer seemed to suit my older and wiser veteran. The dangly braids went away, a move shadowed in just about every immersion player I talked to. We all decided that our toons should change and mature. It is a reflection of reality, a nod to mortality. I dream of a perfect Damaris, as I see her in my mind’s eye… a mix of Oblivion’s amazing character creation and Fable’s utterly fascinating in game character morphing based on in game decisions, but I am willing to let that go, willing to overlook my rather childish avatar.

Then I was hit by a change that even my happy-go-lucky refusal to let Blizzard’s patch notes , buffs and nerfs get me down could not swallow. Paid character changes, beyond the barber shop, beyond scars and tattoos, basic, fundamental changes to an existing toon without any rationalisation. I am not against the idea, per se, but it needs some sort of in game reason. A deranged, morph happy mage with an intense chain quest at his disposal, anything IN game to explain this. Not merely, here’s my money, change my toon. But, at least they weren’t going to allow faction changes, the great them versus us which has powered so much of this game was going to remain inviolate. Our factional identity, sacred still.

Oh. Yes, that. It seems to me like everything that required a certain amount of commitment and focus has fallen prey to a “Let’s give the players everything they ask for!” mentality. While, on the surface, this looks good… I mean, who doesn’t want to get what they ask for in a game that they pay for, how easy is it supposed to get? How fickle and indecisive is Blizzard going to let us be? I’ve always defended WoW as a great game for teenagers on the grounds that it does require focus and commitment to succeed. A great deal of that argument , making decisions and sticking with them, or having to do more work again, now can be solved by the quick application of yet another fee on Mum and Dad’s credit card. I can hear the whine already….

Yes, I see the other side of the argument, in fact, I live with it. My husband’s reaction to the news, instead of my incredulity, was all positive. He looked up at me, the unyieldingly Horde wife, grinned, and said “Great, now we can play together. The Horde races for priests are what, again?” Unlike myself, who views such an action as a betrayal, he’s more than willing to do so. I seem to mourn the passing of his aged, balding human priest more than he does. It may be reborn as…uh….a blood elf?!? But it will not be the same. It’s like losing a friend. We even had online Christmas cards, screenshots from Winter Veil on Shattrath… his priest in his winter clothes, my shaman in hers… our Winter Veil pets at our feet.

Although I do not play on a roleplaying server, that has never stopped the fact that the RP in MMORPG is ‘roleplaying’. The facet of this game which is supposed to make it more than just a movie, that act of identification with your online self, makes this a difficult idea for me to swallow. It’s like telling a friend, a loved one you’ve had for years, that they’re simply not good enough anymore. If you aren’t invested in a toon enough to look at this idea warily, then you’re missing out on a lot of the wonder in this game.

Lok’tar ogar!

You can join in the discussion and find out more about the planned upcoming faction change feature at Worldofwar.net.

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