MOP reader Tanek recently pointed us to a thread on Lord of the Rings Online forums where players have been debating the merits of allowing characters in the game who don’t currently have a full range of skin tone options to do so.
“Combined with the recent announcement of the Stout Axe Dwarves having a female option in character creation, it made me wonder how much the source material should be able to restrict player customization,” he writes. “LOTRO lore has certainly been bent if not broken before to suit the game, so how much of a defense is it to say such-and-such did not exist in the books, so we can’t have it in the game? Not that I want to have eagle mounts like some have asked for over the years, but making your character look the way you want even if it doesn’t exactly fit? Maybe that should be fine.”
What say you? Is it really that much wackier to have dark-skinned Tolkien high elves than it is to have the Rune-keeper class – and lockboxes? How much should an MMO’s source material restrict player customization?
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!
