Today I met my Twin

ou've all heard the phrase; everyone has a twin somewhere in the world. Someone that looks just like you. Some would say it's your evil twin. I prefer to think that I'm the evil one, but that's another story. When it comes to MMORPGs where you're allowed to create your own individual character based on your preferences, the same holds true. Even more so because of the inherent limitations game character creation processes have.

Maybe this is why so many players are so eager to blow through the lower levels. So they can get new 'uber' gear and gain some individuality for their character. Too bad all the armor looks the same too. Personally, I like to take my time and smell the mageroyal while I'm playing the game and recently I created a new character on a PvP server so I could see what real PvP would be like. Since I'm best with a rogue I knew that would be my class, and I happen to be a fan of the gnomes (I'm a girl, I can't help it), so I went with a female gnome rogue. As I was creating her I thought of all the female gnomes I've seen in game and figured I'd try to move away from the norm for a little individuality.

Since most players seem to like their character to stand out, I went for all the more 'normal' features:

• Shoulder length brown hair. Check!
• Richer skin tone. Check!
• Simple yet different oriental face. Check!
• Couple earrings in each ear. Check!

I had it. No pink pony-tails, no pasty-white skin, no cupie-doll face. I'd never seen this basic configuration before so I was pretty confident I'd be quite the individual. Let the adventures begin!

I'm pretty sure you know where this is going.

As I was skinning my way around Brewnall Village in Dun Morogh, I found myself skinning the leftovers of another female gnome named Silentkilr. I remarked to her that she had nice hair because I noticed it was the same style and color as mine. When she turned around it was evident that we had a lot more in common. She had the same skin tone, and same earrings, and a very similar face as well! What makes this all even more fascinating is that we were about two levels apart. Oh, and did I mention that she was a rogue too? Imagine, two completely different people from different parts of the country or even world creating virtual twins on the same server at the same general time. Mathematical probabilities fascinate me and this was no exception.


I'm the cute one on the right.

But then I started thinking about it. How likely is it really? For this we go back to character generation limitations. World of Warcraft is probably one of the more limited. Sure you have eight races and nine classes to start with, each having their own look. And then you can change faces, hairstyles, skin & hair color, and more. But compared to games like Everquest II and Star Wars Galaxies where those choices also exist but in a greater capacity plus you can alter the physical dynamics of your character, WoW is found wanting indeed. Perhaps the best character creator present today is in City of Heroes. There are so many options there that the best part of the game, for me anyways, was creating my character then running around and looking at other players' creations. It would be almost impossible to find your twin in Paragon City.

But how important is character individuality after all? Isn't the idea to gain levels, prestige, gold, phat lewt, & uber gear? Well, not for everyone. I've been playing my main since day one of release and as of this writing I'm only level 50 (knocking on 51 though thank you very much). I don't do instances, I don't even know what most of that phat lewt or uber gear is. And I couldn't care less. Bottom line is that whether you like it or not, MMORPGs are different things to different people.

But yet more than anything else, MMORPGs offer us something very few other venues do. For a little while every week, we get to be someone else. We get to be the hero or the villain. The sneaky assassin or the brave warrior. We get to declare war or even peace with people all over the world. Instead of being all alone amidst a sea of computer controlled sprites, we find ourselves surrounded by characters with real people behind them. People who have at least one interest in common with us.

When you take all that into consideration then individuality really is important. Everyone wants a way to distinguish themselves from other players. Because now there are other people to laugh at your witty name, or run scared from your fierce image, or wink at your cupie-doll face. Since, as we've already established, everyone gets the same looking armor as you progress through the World of Warcraft, I feel a change really is needed.

With the upcoming expansion there are hints at new races and an increase in the level cap. I think along with that they should consider revamping the character creation process at least a bit. Blizzard's awesome artist Samwise could easily come up with a few more facial choices and skin tones. We're not talking about being as intricate as the other games mentioned earlier in this article where you can choose every facial feature. That would require an entirely new coded character generator. But some more choices are definitely warranted. When you have over 4 million players worldwide, why would you limit them to a few hundred combination options?

So while it was definitely humorous to meet my twin in-game, and the thought of grouping has definitely crossed our minds (we've added each other to friends) the whole point of my character creation this time around was to try to get something unique. It was obvious painfully quickly that that wasn't possible. WoW is by far one of the most fun MMORPGs to date. But that doesn't make it perfect. Blizzard should take a look at those areas of the game that are found wanting and implement some changes. Especially if they're simple changes like adding a few new faces. Who knows, if they add a few new faces, maybe there will be a few new faces on the other side of the screen creating characters.