The header image is a simple display glitch from around the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, wherein I believe the wrong body model was loaded for a character’s head and body. Still images do not capture the weirdness of someone whose head is apparently nestled where most people keep hearts and lungs. It was a glitch, obviously, but in some weird way it’s sort of charming; like seeing a stagehand in the background of a beloved movie, it’s a reminder that these things are pretend without explicitly telling you as much.
Sometimes, glitches are outright harmful (the camera in Final Fantasy XI has a bad tendency to plant itself inside the body of large enemies, thus glitching and obscuring the battlefield at the same time). Other times, they’re appealing for their weird or freakish properties (seeing the inside of character faces in both World of Warcraft and RIFT). And sometimes they’re just charmingly odd (there was a bug in Final Fantasy XIV for a while that allowed you to enlarge your character to ridiculous size). So what graphical MMO bugs do you find somewhat endearing? What weird bits of display oddity have crossed the line from being bad into being sort of welcome?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
