Barbie Online

No, not a new game I beta tested, "Barbie Online" is just an expression we had on the old Grimwell.com discussion boards for the part of every MMORPG where you dress up your character. Friday in BRD I got a Chief Architect's Monocle, and had to decide between it and a Gemburst Circlet. Basically the monocle has 10 more intelligence, while the circlet has 15 more spirit.

Now I got a guild mate who is good in WoW stats math, and he explained me that 8 spirit on a priest is equivalent to 1 mana per second regeneration, starting 5 seconds after your last casting, or 120 mana in 120 seconds. 8 intelligence on a priest gives him 120 mana more. So unless you get 2 minutes in a fight where you don't cast, the intelligence is much better than the spirit. Soloing fights usually last less than a minute, and in a group you rarely get even 1 minute of rest, so the int from the monocle is preferable to the spirit of the circlet.

But what influenced me as much as the math was the looks. Kyroc is undead, with a pale skin tone, a bald head, and I choose one of the few undead face options where the jaw isn't missing. So Kyroc doesn't look much like a zombie, I cover my rotting flesh in long robes, but more like a creepy human. The monocle, while not highly visible from a distance, fits *perfectly* to that look, while the circlet looks rather dumb.

In a similar decision I tailored myself a Mooncloth Robe rather than a Mooncloth Vest. That increased the cost by 40 gold for 2 golden pearls, for 5 more int and 7 less spirit. But more importantly the robe completely covers my legs, while with the vest you see my pants. And all pants on undead characters are shown as shorts, with rotting legs showing under frayed tissue, which just doesn't look stylish enough for me. I don't mind Warchief Rend in UBRS shouting "Kill the one in the dress!". :)

For Raslebol I never found a good looking head dress, but fortunately there is a possibility in the interface options to turn the helmet invisible. On Raslebol I have an orange irokese haircut, and trolls don't exactly stand straight. A plate helmet looks horrible, and makes it difficult to tell my troll from somebody elses troll. Plate armor looks a lot better on humans, on Raslebol you need to look twice before you even see that he is wearing plate.

So while I was thinking of the different clothing items and looks, I realized that there is a big deficiency in the WoW crafting system. There is no choice of looks! For both loot items and for crafted items, if you choose an item by its level requirements and its stats, you are stuck with its look. A better system would allow the crafter to do the same chest piece either as vest or as robe, or the same head item either as headband or felt hat. In WoW you can't even have the same item in different colors.

In fact the WoW crafting system is not designed as an alternative occupation for the more casual players, but just as an additional thing to do for the standard and hardcore gamer. All the good recipes either drop in high-level dungeons, or need many hours of grinding reputation. With Kyroc I learned tailoring and enchanting, and got all the recipes from the trainer, and the affordable ones from the auction house. But then I found that for these not-so-rare enchantments there is basically no market. People below level 60 don't want to spend anything on enchantments, as their equipment changes too fast. And people at 60 only want the really high-level enchantments, like crusader. A crusader recipe costs several hundred gold pieces on the AH, and as the ingredients are hard to get, you just don't get enough clients to ever recover the cost. Tailoring isn't profitable either: loot from dungeons is generally better than tailored stuff. And the market in bags is dead, due to lots of people farming, and the price of looted traveler bags being half the cost of tailoring a mooncloth bag. I think when the expansion comes out a lot of people will drop tailoring in favor of jewel crafting, including me.