Well it's vanity all the way for me where Rift is concerned anyway. This game makes me exceptionally vain (on behalf of my characters). But it also means that I really, really adore them. The level of customisation in Rift is really quite extraordinary. Ok, having really good graphics goes a long way, but the level of control you have over your character is quite extraordinary.
Making characters takes me forever. It's also the worst procrastination tool ever. I know I need to write an essay... but I'm feeling stressed so I'll just go and play dress up for a few minutes... And before I know it I've spent half an hour creating a character which I'll probably never play. Dulcie (above) was one of those characters but then I decided that she was so sweet I needed to give her a shot. She's now decked out in the best gear I can purchase with planarite, shards etc at her level (i.e. not gear from instancing) and I decided that I'd go and blow a little bit of gold (ahem) at the dye vendor.
The ability to really customise not just your characters basic appearance (although 'basic' isn't the right word, given how utterly fab the character creation system is) but then to be able to really customise their clothing is one that's pretty special. A trip through Sanctum now takes me even longer than it used to, as people are really putting work into how they look. I don't care if it's shallow, I don't care that it's totally unnecessary to the game mechanics, I don't care that is has no effect how good/bad your DPS/threat gen/heals are. I think it's a really, really nice touch. Even more so on an RP server where actually what your character looks like does matter to a lot of people. You might be wearing the same gear as everyone else of your class (which you are likely to be. There aren't that many different armour models) but you can personalise it and make it feel like your own. Believe me, if I had unlimited gold (actually platinum would probably be required) you'd be reading a really screenshot heavy post whilst I played around with numerous different combinations of colours. Thankfully, I managed to pick two that I liked (nothing complicated just regular purple dye and dark purple dye) and went to work on painting both the primary (i.e. main bits) and secondary (i.e. trimmings) of my chest-piece, leggings, boots and gloves. Then I realised (by happy coincidence) that I'd colour coordinated with my hair. Huzzah! Yes... I'm a girl. So shoot me. I have to say though, that I'm not 100% sure how many girls play male characters in MMOs, but I don't think it's enough to justify quite so many of the male characters being colour coordinated as well though. Boyz play dress up as well, methinks...?
As if thinking Dulcie wasn't just the sweetest thing EVARRRR, she's also crazy fun to play, in the totally opposite way from Irtina, my necromancer. Dulcie is a total healing build, by which I mean she's a cleric who's specced into healing on all three souls. My main soul is Warden which gives masses of water-based HoTs (in the main), with side orders of Sentinel and Purifier. I'm level uhhh... 16 and I have an extraordinary number of heals already. I've got HoTs and insta-cast and slow cast and insta-heal plus HoT and something like earth shield in WoW only it's water orbs and cleanses and resurrect... basically I'm like a resto priest with an earth shield. Which is awesome. For healing. Levelling is painfully slow but I'm ok with that. I'm in no rush after all. And now that Trion have implemented little icons into the group/raid interface, what role everyone has is apparent. Which, ok, is scary when you're in a raid group of 18 and you realise that you are the SOLE healer, but at least you can now tell who the tank(s) are and can therefore prioritise heals accordingly. Oh, and now everyone else knows who the healer is, those pesky trash adds get taunted off me pretty damn fast. I'm nearly brave enough to contemplate venturing into an instance. I reckon that if I can basically solo heal a group of 18 (with minimal but not zero, deaths) a group of five should be reasonably do-able. Watch this space...
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