Woo, queues have significantly reduced over the weekend. It seems that opening a couple more servers and raising population caps slowly have helped. Also, the change made to the private stores, where they can't be afk selling for more than 30 minutes, has helped too.
As I mentioned before, Sideshow and I rolled Asmodian on Lumiel. It has been a popular server – which makes it busy. During the headstart, queues for Lumiel were easily 2 hours. After the live launch, the queues were commonly 1.5hrs. But Friday night, it was only 20 minutes! Then on Saturday, there was no queue in the afternoon, and a short one (15ish minutes) in the evening.
See, I think things will be ok.
Character Creation
So, yes, I have an Asmodian on Lumiel by the name of Syrana.
I also have an Elyos on Siel by the name of Xarra.
This time, I played around more with the character creation than I did in beta, since I get to keep these characters! Actually, Sideshow created Syrana for me when he helped out during pre-select to get my name saved. I must say, he did a damn fine job of creating her the way I would have.
Note the sliders available. There are also a lot of preset heads and such than you can look through. There is also plenty of room for playing with height and colors (for hair, eyes, skin, and lips). Also, see those 3 buttons underneath Xarra? Yeah, you can see how she looks with no gear (pictured), starter gear, and high end gear.
Yup! If you are concerned that your character may look stupid when they get epic'd out, you can make sure they will fill it out nicely before you are stuck with them. Although, there is a plastic surgeon in the capital city who'd be happy to take your kinah (currency) to adjust your looks.
You can also select between a few different voices (tough, sexy, young were the ones I remember when making Xarra).
Ascending and Cinematics
One of the things I LOVED about Wrath of the Lich King was the Wrathgate questline, particularly the cinematic that accompanied it. I don't know, I found that to be really cool and enjoyable. Aion's quests have different little cutscenes here and there. The ones I enjoy the most (thus far, anyway) are related to my ascension to daevahood.
First of all, the cinematics look great. Second of all, they aren't all just generic, the ascension ones show MY character in whatever gear she is wearing at the time. And yes, I managed to screenshot bits of the cinematics!
Now that Syrana has ascended and is specializing as a spirit master, do you think the power is going to her head?
She’s pretty, the sliders really remind me of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Have you played that? The world is massive but from a single player perspective. Anyway, I fell in love with the Redguards and spent a lot of time creating a toon to my liking. Interestingly, she looked a lot like the ‘real me’.
I always wish I could have created a dark skinned Orc, like the ones I unearthed the Mag’har in Hellfire, and reconnecting with them in Nagrand at Gardar. Garadar was my second home for all my Horde toons (regardless of race) yeah even my Ally toons wanted to go there too. 😉
Eventually, I do hope Blizzard allows players more charactercustomization. I really like having a unique look instead of looking like everyone else. Outside of my BE Priest (She would have been a Female Orc if Orcs could be priests) I know that is one reason I gravitate towards races/sex that aren’t played as much.
What’s up with the half naked females in Aion, dare I say they might be worse than WOW when it comes to this? 😉
@Moondancer – No, I haven’t played Oblivion, but I’ve heard good things about it. (Maybe I’ll have to check it out. Come to think of it, I think Sideshow might have it…)
I’d love to have more customization in WoW as well. And I love the Mag’har too! I understand if they don’t want to get into all the sliders and such, but more options would be greatly appreciated.
As for the half-nakedness… well, it definitely seems to be the case of cloth wearers (sorcerers and spirit masters). The creation screen of Xarra where she is half naked is just because I was playing around with seeing how she looked with different amounts of armor on. That’s supposedly the “no armor” look (which seems more covered than the bikinis in WoW lol). Her full armor set is actually quite covering!