Aggro Me points out that another SOE experiment hits Test soon if it hasn’t already: in Everquest 2, you will very soon be able to play using the alternate models developed for the Asian market (affectionately known in the community as the SOGA models – previously pointed out here). What’s interesting to me is the notion that different people are seeing different things.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, of course. When UO3D came out, there were 2D and 3D versions of all the art. The EQ2 stuff is more interesting to me, since you can get close and personal in both versions of the art (something you couldn’t do with old UO 2D art). Also, in UO it was clearly possible for you to look atrocious. It was possible for the 3D version of your 2D art to simply not combine gracefully, and if you didn’t have the 3D client, you might never know why people were laughing you.

It’s never good to have your appearance changed against your will. In Meridian, we upgraded all of the character art and had almost a full blown riot on our hands because the new incarnation of the women, while more attractive in every other way, suddenly had gained a great deal of, shall we say, junk in the trunk. EQ2 appears to have side-stepped the issue of waking up with an all-new persona outside of their control – board reports say that letting you ‘tweak’ your SOGA character customization options separately from your ‘north american’ appearance. Has anyone had a chance to play with this? I’m curious as to how it all plays out.

The notion that one person is seeing things that another can’t see is intriguing to me for both gameplay and personal reasons. Sometimes, it kills neat features. On UO2, I advocated making our animation system open to the public and allowing players to create their own (provided they had the tools to do so). You would have been able to just drop the files into a /socials directory, and when you ran the command, only the other people with that animation in that directory would have been able to see that. The problem, of course, is that you and your friends would see you bumping and grinding on other people, and the target of your twisted affections wouldn’t ever know. At least until the screenshots are posted.