One Character

Would you play an MMORPG that only allowed you one charcter?

I’ve been thinking about this alot lately, mostly because I strive for a little “identity” in games. I am Ishiro in the World of Warcraft, and Ishiro is me. So far in games I’ve never run into another Ishiro (but I don’t play asian games), and only one Ishira. That means, more than likely, if you are in WoW and see Ishiro, its a pretty good bet it is me. The problem comes in with if I tire of being an alliance human priest on Durotan, or a horde undead warlock on Eitrigg, or any of the other Ishiros I have out there, I can’t change him without deleting him and starting over.

I think this is why, more and more as I think about fundamental game design, I favor a skill based system of some sort, where everyone starts exactly the same and becomes different through the choices of skills. The advantage, of course, is that if the game allows me to redistribute skill points or simply to focus on new different skills, I can be an all new person but without the crazy item swapping of class based mechanics where I have to delete my character, or the complete identity overhaul of playing a new name.

Now… take that desire to play one identity and take that to a physical limitation of being only allowed to create a single character in the game world. Again, I think I’d be in favor of it as long as my character worked like I’ve described above, where my fate isn’t decided at character creation and the only way to change is to dust off and nuke the site from orbit.

So yeah, that appears to be the direction I’d like to see games go, and the direction I’m going to take my silly Game That Never Was project.

Alliance: Silithus and Tradeskills

The land of Silithus has been very good to Ishiro, as he is pleasantly making his way through level 59, well on his way to never needing experience again… until they raise the level cap that is. Its exciting. I’ve never been at the level cap of an original game before.

But, Silithus is a very dreary land. I guess it is a testament to the art skills of the guys at Blizzard that this desert wasteland actually depresses me. Or maybe its that the Hive bugs are a constant reminder that I actually sat through Starship Troopers 2… on purpose.

Besides the levelling, I have been doing what I can to work on Ishiro’s tailoring and engineering. Since I’m not rich enough to buy felcloth from the market, nor bored enough to farm it, my tailoring these days consists of making mooncloths when I can, which is one every 4 days. I can usually find 2 felcloth in 4 days. Engineering on the other hand is going even slower. Lorilai is an armor smith, and her skilling up is using all the materials, and since she’s the miner she gets first dibs. I did manage to make myself a mechanical dragonling which should be a fun toy once an hour.

I really want to spend more time in the PvP battlegrounds, but I think getting 60 first will be a good thing, because as much as I love the BGs, I’ve always felt like a runt. Well, soon, runt no longer.