EQ2 however has so many different tweaks you can use to make your character truly unique. It starts from character creation. You just have to look at the huge amount of options you get for personalising your toon and the different aspects of it. One of the things that’s a nice touch is the way that you can alter race specific attributes, like Fae and Arasai wings, Troll face adornments, Barbarian tattoos. Once your toon is created the personalisation can continue. At level 20 you get use of your ‘appearance slots’ so you can choose what clothing / armour your toon is to wear for looks, but still wear your main attribute armour. To be fair quite a few MMOs do this. Also one little things I enjoy about EQ2 is the ability to set your toons ‘mood’, and they actually take on that demeanour. Good stuff.
Then there are the many many titles you can obtain to further add to your creation. Titles can either be a prefix title (before your name), or a suffix title (after your name) [Do you think we’re idiots? We know what prefix and suffix mean. /sigh. – Ed]. There are many ways to get one. You can get them from quests, achievements, Legends of Norrath, GM events, Tradeskilling, to name but a few. Check out the chart ‘here’ to see what titles are available in EQ2 and ‘here’ for Lotro.
One title I have on Adurj was great fun to get. A GM was running an event in Butcherblock Mountains that I stumbled across. After roleplaying with the GM a bit I got given a quest by him whereby I had to run all over the place for this annoying Dorf collecting axes. When I had finished I got a small reward of a nice axe recipe for some great appearance slot axes and an in game title of ‘the Axe Master’. Now I am not sure if the GM gave that to everyone, but I have not seen it before and certainly others who did the quest (but didn’t really roleplay or interact with the GM aside from picking up the quest) did not have it displayed by their name after. Anyhow, like I say I haven’t seen it before and have never seen the title attached to any toon but my own, Adurj. It has to be pretty rare because nearly every group Adurj gets, at least one person will mention it. Strange also that every ‘Zerker I have grouped with seems quite jealous of it, hehe.
The title system is used of course in other MMOs. Lotro does it quite nicely and with aplomb too. The titles you get there are good fun. One of my favourites ‘Pie-Runner’, is one won in the Shire for completing a quest line. Lotro I think has more titles than EQ2 (I haven't actually counted them), but as far as I am aware are not so personal as in EQ2. For example, I don’t think you can get class specific titles. Not 100% sure though.
I guess at the end of the day you make your toon as personal as you like if you are into that kind of stuff (and I am). It’s an important thing for me in an MMO. Who would want to be a clone of all the other folks running around? I’m sure it wouldn’t bother some, but I know for sure everyone I play with would not enjoy that aspect of the game so much if it wasn’t as customisable as it is. For me, it’s one of those things that can stop you playing an MMO. As an example, that’s why I don’t play WAR anymore and only dabbled at the start. The toons just looked all too samey. Don’t know if they have changed that now, but back when it first came out it is what made me stop playing after a week. Yup, for me character customisation is an MMO essential.
Until next time,
Be well.
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