so jater i have a queston.

will Chara Custimazation be make your own personal graphics or are there a bunch of sets to choose from?

can you design clothes if so will it be the same as above?

in while you are in game play can you change your looks?

well now i think about it i have multiple questons.

It's fairly simple to have 'dyes' to chagne the color of equipment or to have heraldric symbols pasted onto a cloak or piece of armor.  It's also quite easy to allow a player to modify a texture or decoration. 

The problem with designing your own clothes/patterns/symbols is that jackassery knows no bounds.  Some people would find a giant penis on the back of someone's cloak inappropriate.  Just imagine the "creativity" you'd see in WoW if Blizzard implimented such a feature.

What I think would be cool and feasible is a guild icon that you can decorate armor and gear with that is fully customizable, but has be submitted for approval first.

Another aspect of character customization that would be cool is aging. 

Regarding Aging -

If I decided to hop back onto EQ, my characters would look exactly the same as they did the first day I created them.  There are 20 days in EQ for every day in the real world.  If my character was 20 when I made him 9 years ago, then he would be 200 now.  Wow... lookin' good for an old dude.

I'm NOT a graphics type of programmer, so someone else would need to discuss the implications of this in a game.  But from a player's perspective I think it would add a lot to the sense that time does progress.  It's also a kind of status symbol indicating how long the character has been around in game.

skipeth i now find your insights very.... well insightful.

i agree that if some one was making there own design then absolutly had to send it through a system or game admins before they could use it. but also what i was trying to say is ask if you could design the Shape of armor or cloaks or even your weapon. aging im not sure how theyd do ageing but i do know that the CoS will be held in real time at least i think so. but it would be cool to see ageing in a game, it  BGGLES the mind.

and i would like to see some NPC's do this

I'm glad you have been ... insighted. 

I agree with the idea to make own armour/designs witht the system admins but instead of making people work why not make a filter of unusable templates for it.  I've been playing The Sims 2 in the time while I'm waiting for CoS but in there you have custum designable clothes very confusing but it works!  It would be awsome to do this but you should also pay for this in game money like each piece of stuff is a certain amount it can all look the same but better defences lightness ect. will cause more but I might've went a little to in dept but this is my insight on the system.

 There are a couple different concepts under discussion here lately (good for you guys).  The first is player designed symbols and armor/clothing and the other is ageing.

As for characters designs, we do plan to let players design a guild symbol.  This will likely be a texture they have to submit for approval, and will have to fit a specific template size so that it can be used in the various places created for that art in the game.   As for Armor and Clothing, players will have choices in tinting and patterns, but they will not be making these, only picking how they want their armor or clothing to look when they go to a blacksmith or tailor.

Ageing... though a cool concept in theory, not a practical one for CoS.  Yes, time flows on in Citadel of Sorcery, but the reality is that you will likely only play ANY MMO for a few months or years (depending on the player).  A person doesn't change drastically enough even over five years to make a difference in their look., so this is kind of a waste to program into the game.  I mean, we'd LOVE to have the game last twenty years, but that's not going to happen.  (And yes, I know that game days are going to be faster than real days, but not THAT much faster in CoS).And finally on this subject, due to the storyline, characters don't age quickly (they live about 1,000 years or so in our mythos). 

I hate being the voice of reason, I'm usually the other side of the coin.. "HEY! Can't we do this?". But in the case of aging, we have to choose where we want to spend our work time, and that's not it.

Jatar i think you are right and thank you for the "word of wisdom" in this case. so i am guessing both answers are right for this. you taint and add symbols to your clothing like a paint job in a racing game. i also agree that aging is cool but it we are talking mmo so i think your right there to

Personally, I tend to play an mmo 1-2 years before getting tired of it.  With a 1k lifespan, there's definitely little point of aging over time.  Would you consider age as part of the character customization at creation?  Unless there is some plausible reason that everyone is in the 18-22 age group?

 Yes, we will have age choice during body creation.   And though the system will be able to create more elderly bodies, these will not be available to players.  We don't want frail bodies that look like they need a cane swinging a double axe while doing a back flip.  The system can create old looking bodies, but these are for the NPCs, which also use our body generation system so that there are almost endless varieties.  Players will be more in the age range of 15 to 40.

Thanks for the info Jatar.

As for old guys doing backflips, King Bumi in Avatar is over 100 and although he looks old he is one badass earth bender.