9-7-2009 Game News : Power customization the next big step in MMORPGs

MMORPGs have come a long way. For a very long time, players of MMORPGs were forced to have characters that looked much the same as the ones their friends were playing. Sure, there may have been differences when it came to what gear you were wearing, but more than likely you weren't wearing that gear because you liked the way it made your character look. You were wearing it based on what "stats" it had; i.e., in what it did for your character's abilities.
Even current MMORPG juggernaut, World of Warcraft, is just now getting around to letting you change your character in an appreciable way after you make him or her -- but they charge you $15 for it. (You can, however, visit a barber in game to make changes to your hair.)
It wasn't until City of Heroes hit the scene, a little over five years ago, that players had almost total freedom in how they could create their character. The City of Heroes character creator was, and is still, unprecedented in its nearly infinite costume options. Perhaps this is because City of Heroes was the first superhero MMORPG, and comic book superheroes are known for their varied and sometimes flamboyant outfits. Over the years, the developers of the game have added even more costume options, and have even recently introduced special animations that take place when changing costumes.
Power customizaton, the ability to change color and maybe other visual aspects of a power, is taking the idea of customizing an online avatar even further. It's been long asked for in City of Heroes, and players have usually been shot down. The game just wasn't built in a way that made adding this feature very easy. The original designers apparently never anticipated players wanting this feature, so they didn't design around the idea of being able to someday make changes to color palettes and the like.