Friday, September 12, 2008

There’s no escape from the surgeon knife

This can’t be true! It must be a joke.

That was the first thought that flew through my mind when I read the breaking news from Siha of Banana Shoulders yesterday about the changes Blizzard are planning for the gnome faces in WotLK. She has posted a gallery of faces. I don’t know yet which one of those that will belong to Larísa, but I know one thing: I don’t like them at all.

They’ve managed to make the female gnomes look a lot uglier. In my opinion they’ve got some sort of troll look and they’re definitely less attractive than they used to be. So I’d better say goodbye to the advantage of being cute.

Surgical operation
When I first heard the news I actually thought that those new faces would just be something you could pick if you’re rolling a new gnome. But when I asked Siha in the BA Chat room, she confirmed that my char will change in the expansion, whether I like it or not.

One night when I log in she will have undergone a surgical operation while I was asleep. It’s nothing she has asked for and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.

It isn’t just the new look in her face that upsets me. After all she may not turn out as bad as it seems; Siha assured that the models looked much better alive than on the pictures. But it’s the principle of it, the very idea that the face of your character suddenly can get a new look, that is wrong in my eyes.

Even though I understand and accept that other players will do such things as changing their names or hair cut, I wouldn’t do even such a small thing and changing her face is out of the question. Larísa should stay the way she is; it’s a part of her identity.

The neck is all I see
The only comfort I have in this is that I won’t see much of it. How often do you really see the face of your char? Not that often. Most of the time I play I stare into a pink pigtailed neck, and I reckon I’ll continue doing that in WotLK.

As with any other change I guess I’ll learn to learn to live with it, and since there are no mirrors in the game I won’t be confronted with the new face of Larísa that often.

Or wait… there was this new mirror spell. They must have put it up just to make me face my new face!

There is no escape to see the results from the surgeon knife.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like bad Hollywood faces lifts gone wrong...

Anonymous said...

Larisa I think I got good news for you..

From an update in your sources:
"In this post Tigole says

The character textures are not changing. We tested impact on patch size if we were to patch new character textures. It was a development experiment.

Obviously, we would not change it so gnomes had eyes looking into the back of their heads.

Just relax."

Anonymous said...

@eishen: thanks för the update, but I'm not totally relaxed yet. They have changed the looks of the human females, haven't they? It seems like they wouldn't hesitate to do facial suergery any day without giving us notice. And that's a worrying thought.

Anonymous said...

i was going to cry when i saw the faces! i really love my gnome because she's cute and if her face changes, i don't know if i'll continue to love her or ditch her. i know, i'm superficial... lol!

thank goodness it's just an experiment.

Gevlon said...

I don't think they would change the faces without the player's consent. This could alienate us from our character and I don't think they dare to risk that.

What happens on beta servers not necessarily hit normal, that's their point. So my guess is Larísa can rest well without the fear of not recognising herself in the mirror.

Anonymous said...

Maybe death knight gnome faces ;-)

Cosmos said...

I'm thinking what gnomer said. Probably DK faces.