The details on playing dress-up in Warhammer Online's upcoming patch

If there's one overriding impulse that goes into nearly every MMO, it's the urge to look good. You spend so much time staring at your character that you want to look appropriate -- ominous, or dignified, or just plain cool. That's the motive behind Warhammer Online's new appearance system in patch 1.3.6, and it's a significant upgrade to the game's setup. Designer Sean Bosshardt has penned a developer diary explaining how the new appearance system works in practice, which essentially gives your equipment its own set of equipment.

The short version is that when looking at your character's equipment, you can flip over to their appearance slots, and then each eligible item can have another item placed within the appearance slot. However, the new appearance doesn't consume or use the item which granted the new look, and it stays with that piece of armor -- so you can change the look of a pair of shoulders, and that look stays with them until you change it again. It's an interesting system with several nuances, so Warhammer Online players are encouraged to read the full diary to see just how nice they'll be looking when the new patch hits.

Reader Comments (28)

Awesome. An appearance slot is exactly what this game needed - even if a little late. EverQuest 2 already has this feature. Why don't other MMOs get with the times? :)

It's a pretty lame feature in my opinion, just opening the game up for microtransactions by being able to purchase armor designs in the future. Also, I liked the fact I could identify players level and renown level based on their appearance, which will no longer happen. The idea of armor being a status thing always is something I find interesting, and I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing to be honest.

Gotta agree 100% This is a mechanic a LONG TIME COMING to MMORPGS, and I'm ecstatic WAR is getting with EQ2 on this--hopefully this signals a trend.

Lord of the Rings Online has had this feature for a long time, maybe even from launch, though I'm 100% sure about that.

LotR introduced the feature first, but it wasn't till a later patch that it was implemented. It's a great feature and I'm surprised more games don't add a similar feature, especially a game like WoW where every class practically looks the same once they get their end game Dungeon gear.

honestly...this is last feature that i would wish to see coming to WAR, there is plenty to be done in other areas...

Excellent! Just got back into War and having a great time. This is awesome news!

I like LotRO's system, that they are all 'implementing' now. You can have a cool look or style and still be able to wear your latest mix matched raiding gear

I have no issue with MMO's copying each other or seeing a great idea and re-working it for their games. I do object however to Alganon style complete ripoffs.

So if I pick this game back up I can intentionally make my armor look very low class to fool the man at the draft board?

Not sure about WAR, but in other PvP MMO's I've played, the really competitive players object to cosmetic systems for exactly that reason.

It allows players to disguise what kind of equipment they're wearing.

Of course, and I agree it is a bad idea. I think the solution is to just................ have the developer make gear that isn't hideous.

Very good point. Maybe they could get around this issue by disabling the appearance items if 1) the character is flagged for pvp and 2) the level difference between equipped and appearance items or more than say 2.

Well there isn't a draft board in War, but if your thinking about fooling the opposing realm then think again because your appearance changes are only visible to your own realm.

In a future patch Mythic may allow players the option of viewing the opposing realm's appearance armor, but if they do it will always be the player's choice to see those changes.

Why is looking low ranking a bad thing? Might give some of the more opportunistic gankers the scare of their lives - which can only be a good thing.

The modified appearance will only be visible to you and your realmmates. If you're wearing Tyrant, the other realm will see it.

Well with all the positive War vibe recently, I took the plunge and resubbed.

On Karak Norn at least, the advice channel is completely overrun with gold sellers, to the point that the channel is useless for actual players. You can't even put them on ignore, as they're deleting their characters and recreating them with the same name a few minutes later.

It gives an absolutely terrible first impression for new palyers - any genuine questions are instantly lost amid the competing gold spam, and reporting them seems to have no effect. Even Aion wasn't as bad when it launched, which is saying something.

You've already got a profanity filter, how hard can it be to add a few common urls to that? It's the same two or three all the time.

But no, we're getting a cosmetic armour slot. ******* pathetic.

Agreed, I resubbed for Norn a few days ago as well, was hit by a dreadful lag spike and then got back to normal only to try in vain to kill a DoK despite having 2 others beating on him. The gear and level differences in WAR really undermine its PvP levelling, to the point where you spend 4+ levels just hitting people and waiting for someone to one shot you.

Needless to say, I uninstalled.

there's a little Free Add-On called SpamMeNot available on the Forums UI section which makes all Gold Sellers Spam dissapear instantly, maybe if you had researched a bit before whining you would have seen it.

Because a new player would go out of their way to find a third party fix to a problem the developers should be tackling?

Thinking through your ideas is helpful.

I find it hard to believe the problem is as bad as your making it seem. I re-subed last week. I'm in t1 and I have to ignore a gold spammer maybe every 20 - 30 minutes. It's 5 seconds to right click and ignore.

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The details on playing dress-up in Warhammer Online's upcoming patch

Reader Comments (28)

Posted: Aug 14th 2010 8:13PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 14th 2010 8:32PM Dandmcd said

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Posted: Aug 14th 2010 9:44PM JediPagan said

Posted: Aug 14th 2010 11:01PM Dread said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 12:10AM Anticrawl said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 12:30AM Jim Cricket said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 12:42AM Anticrawl said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 1:59AM Zensun said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 2:31PM tythimo said

Posted: Aug 16th 2010 1:23AM Dread said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 3:05AM Taawa said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 5:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 5:40AM Dril said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 7:08AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 7:54AM Dril said

Posted: Aug 15th 2010 8:45AM nosedive51 said

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