hey everybody, i wanted to see everybody's opinion how much VISUAL character customization matters to you?  ONLY how your character looks from your initial creation of your character to the armor and weapons you get to make your character look truly unique in the game. 

I personally like a lot of character customization in a game. If I'm going to play a game for a while, I want my character to look decent and somewhat different from other peoples characters. For me, its quite important.

Most important thing to me cause if I look like everyone else then I don't feel special and don't want to play anymore.

To me a character in a MMO represents the achievements time you have put into the game.

It matters to me a lot, however I'd like to clarify that. I dont' consider the SOE 435 facial sliders to be visual customization. A character's face is the least seen and least recognizable aspect of a character in most MMOs, so that kind of retarded minutia isn't important to me. What IS important is

- being able to maintain a certain appearance throughout my character's life without negatively affecting my stats/skills.

- being ablwe to use a certain weapon look/style without negatively impacting my character/s stats/skills

Games that, for me, handle character customization well:

- Ultima Online : dyes to change the color of clothes and 'accent' attire like shirts, sashes, capes, quivers, etc

- PotBS : avatar appearance is not affected by gear, with the exception of weapon. With the ships, I can paint my ships and run up my own custom flags and sails

- LOTRO : I have two 'costume' panels that I can load my display clothing into. I'm able to maintain a uniform and consistent look for my character. No skittles here :)

I put it at a 9 because the attachment a player forms with their character is what an MMO is all about, IMO. The only reason I didn't put it at 10 is because I'm fine with looking like everyone else in my tier/class/level range as long as I look good.

It's not THE most important thing to me since a game with freakin awesome character customization, yet crap gameplay is still a crap game. However the same for me goes the other way around; awesome gameplay can't save a game if the characters look bad...to me at least.

Visual custimization means almost nothing to me.  I would much rather see resources put into character development, combat mechanice and game content.  I would love to see some actual meaningful character decisions being made at creation.  Such as choosing stats, choosing some important racial and class traits.  Actually requiring planning before making a character would be wonderful.  But then all MMO's now are made for casuals and the 25 year old kiddies who lack attention span and patience.  Unfortunately, flash will always win over substance/

I give it a 9

Not that character customization is the MOST vital of things in an MMO (content needs to be plentiful and up-to-par), but it is a really important thing that needs to be payed attention to more. I happen to enjoy customizing my character ingame =).

matters the most because if you don't have a unique character to represent yourself than how can you develop a relationship with anyone. Thats why days modern mmo people just go around calling everyone noob and minding there own business instead of teaming up because they think everyones a clone emotionally and physically. Some of these people are numb in the mind.

Visual customization is important but only a small piece of the total character customization puzzle.

Developers, and non-discerning gamers, often think that "customization" is simply visual customization.

In truth, though it seems like customization is visual because it is what you see, what is more important is what you do not see, such as skills, spells, class design, Quests completed, Quests CREATED, and so forth. 

I put a "7" ... it's important, but not the end all.  Your outside appearance and the gear you wear (if that is somewhat specialized too) can greatly influence how other players interact with you... However, your skill and attitude/imagination also determines a lot of what you will experience, so I don't think the visual is *that* important, but it's still important.

I hate games where the characters are almost paper doll cut outs of each other, though...  Variety is the spice of life, and in a virtual world that's supposed to be geared around RP'ing... well, the appearance of your character to other players *should* matter.

Customization is pretty important to me, especially weapon and armour upgrades, it's the visual representation of character progression.  I find nothing more dissopointing than running to the trader or looting some cool stated loot to find it looks exactly like the stuff i've been wearing for the last 10 levels, nothing turns me off a game faster than poor visual itemization. It kills my need to play quick sharp.

Well it matters to me alot too. However wurm online is probably my favorite MMORPG I've played and it has pratically none so I don't really know how to place my vote. I really think the more the better but I guess if it was a 10 I'd be happy walking around in some virtual chat room as long as it had lots of visual character customization and well that isn't the case, infact I'd (and have been) alot more happy playing a game with none that offered other things.

EDIT: ended up giving it a generous 3 because there was no 2. I hate having to give it such a low rating because I really love visual character customization but when considering it I think it was fair.

I don't need a million options.  One good option is enough. 

There are games I play purely because I enjoy the character creation options.

Most of the people who want to be unique always want to wear black.  They all end up looking exactly like each other in their "uniqueness".

i think this is something that is very important to me. i like making my character look the way i want him/her to look based on the roleplay aspect im going for. so the more options the better for me.

I think people put too much stock in character customization. When it comes down to it little issues like this are not gonna keep me from playing a game. Yes they're nice, but not really that important. I think solid gameplay, storyline, and community the main factors in a good game character customization comes way after all of those. I actually would put HUD setup, graphics, variety of monsters, and many many other things before character customization. When it comes down to it you're only gonna spend maybe 10-15 min tops on making your character when you first start anyway cause you're gonna want to get in and play your new game. People really only take time to use those features for re-roles/alts and if the game isn't that good you're not gonna re-role a character now are you?

I could care less about customization, especially when its the most burdensome part of the game system performance and lag wise.  Also I like to play with more then 10 people in mmos, and the more customization you have the less you can put onto a server.

Visual cutimization is nice.   Nothing is more annoying than seeing everyone decked out in the same high end gear.   But that's just annoyin and stays that.

I would say it matters a great deal to me, cause if I can't make a custom character why bother playing?

Of course most games make it moot since the camera is so far away you can't see your or other peoples characters and everyone will be covered in the same suit of generic medieval armor anyway.

So I prefer if customization was more than just face and body but clothing as well and the camera was much closer so you can actually see peoples faces and such.

Visual character customization is extremely important to me. If I can't play a character that fits my visual tastes, then I have a lot of trouble enjoying the game. This is my big problem with WoW, I refuse to play Horde (I dislike everything about them, specifically the visual atmosphere), so I only play Alliance. But there's a problem, if I want to be a male character, then I'm stuck with the choice of 3 roid-monkeys or 2 midgets, neither of which appeal to me one bit. So I played a female human, which I can sorta tolerate, but it just feels awkward. Not to mention the character models in WoW are trash, they're all blocky and deformed, there's no sort of robe/dress physics, all the armor is just painted-on textures, and of course the characters can't wear hats or helmets without their hair disappearing. As a final note, what I find interesting about that last point is that there's several NPC's who wear hats and still keep their hair, just goes to show how lazy Blizzard was when they designed the avatars in their game. Though if they ever change this, like by giving the character models a much-needed facelift, (They improve the graphics in other areas, so why do the character models have to look like crap?) then I'll be happy to return.

You know it doersnt matter a lot, until you go into a game where there is little to NO character custmization. When you can see clones about you with the same armor, same race, same look. I dunno, it just makes you feel ...'blech'

Character customization is a feature that some games (CoX) thrived on. Champions Online may recapture that (remains to be seen ..but hopefully they have good gameplay in addition)

For me, it's the second most important element in an MMOG.

First is gameplay.