Age of Conan

How good is character customization supposed to be in this game? Does character creation allow you to create a look that will almost ensure you will look unique in the world? Will every person of a particular class be wearing the same armor, or will there be a variety of armor looks out there, so we may look unique?

I know you progress by gaining xp, but how do you gain new skills and spell? Are they granted automatically or do you need to see a class trainer to learn them? Can you pick and choose your skills and spells within a particular class or will every person of the same class have the same skills and spells?

How many different ways can you develop your character? Is there more to it than picking a class, learning the skills and spells until max level or are there multiple levels of character development, such as the ability to pick and choose skills, spells, and abilities that make your particular class stand out from others f the same class?

I don't follow games through out their development, because I'm not a very patient person at times. This allows me to "not care" about their release date and let the game release when it is finished witout pitching a fit. The draw back to this is that I don't know much about the game, so I usually start researching a month before release. Around the same time Open Beta comes along and the NDA is dropped.

How my character looks and develops is one of the most important things to me. I want to know that this is not just another pick your class and auto-train your abilities that everyone of the same class has until max level, with the only customization options being talent type trees.

I can only reply to your first question. Yes, you will be able to customize your avatar so that it will be -completely- unique. AoC's character creation rivals that of City of Heroes in terms of depth and breadth.

Skills, spells and such come automatically with level

I thought SWG had just about the best character custominzation and WoW has just about the worst. You could do a whole hell of a lot with your character in SWG where as in WoW you were very limited. I ranked CoH in between those two, closer to SWG. My question is where would AoC fit in on this scale?

There are a number of videos on youtube showing character creation (some better demonstrations than others).

Here is a link to a recent dev walkthrough which gives you a small idea of the level of variation and customization:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJfQtBM7r1I

Originally posted by jaycat80

I thought SWG had just about the best character custominzation and WoW has just about the worst. You could do a whole hell of a lot with your character in SWG where as in WoW you were very limited. I ranked CoH in between those two, closer to SWG. My question is where would AoC fit in on this scale?

Looks to me like AoC will far surpass SWG on character creation customization. Also ,there seems to be a lot of visual variety in gear, even at early levels.

Yeah, I hope AOC's character creation is good.  I remember video's of Vanguards character creation shortly before release and it looked awesome.  What we got after the game launched though was underwelming.

Character creation sounds promising. I am disappointed with the class progression style though. I am a bit tired of being told how my character will develop as he grows, like I'm an imbecile that cannot figure it out on my own. I don't need a sandbox game, but some latitude within my class is desirable.