Guild Wars expansions: Trend of decreasing face / hair customization...

The face alone should not make the character.
We should get a wider facial selection, and just because people want Tyrian faces on Nightfall characters, doesn't mean we should have to start a new character in Tyria.
And if they're going to stick to chapter-specific facial selections, then make a wider variety for the other campaigns rather than having 10-15 for Tyria, 5-10 for Cantha and 5 for Elona.
I personally would like to see all the campaign facial selections added under one template, but because this probably won't happen due to picky people who are strictly 'campaign' oriented, I would like to see a few more faces added to Nightfall in the future.
Albeit ... the facial selections that were there for the Factions preview event ended up being all the faces available once Factions was actually released.
So, chances are, none of our wishes will be granted, and if they are, than someone out there really cares about their customer's views and opinions.

I for one have nothing against more faces, I just don't think that we should be able to combine faces from other campaigns. Call me old fashioned, but RP is suppose to be in character. Sometimes you end up with characters that aren't quite what you expected. But guess what? You play anyway! You even have fun!

Funny thing is, there is a good chance that the lack of facial and hair selection was actually caused by US. How can I say such a thing? Easily! 90% of (non-bot) monks have the buns. There is a variety of about 3 different faces. 90% of eles have either the layers or the pigtails, and that same 90% has exactly the same face. Ritualist is the same, 90% of them have the same face AND hair. Why bother taking the time to add variety when the bunch of sheep that the gaming population is, refuses to use it?

Finally, I love it, just love it, how these spirited discussion always include the argument/suggestion that if Anet doesn't do as "I" want, they must not care about their customers.
Anet has a plan, they have a game, which is THEIR creation. If they can accomodate player suggestions then most of the time they are happy to do so, but they won't violate their plan simply to keep a vocal minority happy. And that is all this is. Guru isn't the be all and end all. We aren't even a signifcant sample size of the GW population - and even we are divided. The idea that you want it, and that person over there wants it, and so everyone MUST want it, is delusional at best.

Your argument about restricting the faces for the sake of RP is not really valid. It has been well-established in the lore that Canthans, Tyrians, and Elonians have been visiting each other's continents for a long time. For instance, Canthan Xunlai Agents in every outpost, Elonians in the Crystal Desert, the Zaishen, etc etc. So, isn't it possible that people have immigrated and settled on other continents?

Let me give you an example.

Say you want to make a Canthan-faced character in the Nightfall campaign. In full RP mode, you could claim that your character is the descendent of a couple of Canthan merchant families who settled in Elona 50 years ago. Thus, he/she looks Canthan, but his/her BIRTHPLACE is Elona. Note that birthplace, from a story point of view, is the only thing that makes Prophecies/Factions/Nightfall characters different from each other.

For those of you who want to choose cross-campaign faces and hairstyles, it's not that big of a stretch to imagine racial mixing. You could make a Tyrian-faced warrior with Elonian-style hair, and explain it by saying his mother was Tyrian and his father was Elonian.

However it is ALSO established, that trade relations between the continents broke down during the Guild Wars. So while some residence of Elona may claim Ascalon ancestry, chances are they are actually of mixed blood and wouldn't have full Ascalon faces anyway.

Honestly I don't see the big deal. Anet is looking into the idea of a hair dresser. If you want a Factions or Prophecies face, why not just wait it out? There are some many other things that are more important than getting that perfect hair style. Besides which, I've heard a number of people complain that they don't like the NF hair either. So if you want an Ascalon character you should be starting it in Ascalon and then bringing it to Elona.

But then I forget the most important part of these boards, the idea of: "I WANT, therefore Anet should work their butts off to make it happen for ME."

As I said, we are barely a drop of water in the GW population. Our opinions are our opinions not, as some of you would have, divine edicts.

Actually, I just checked the timeline. Cantha began trading with Tyria in 221 AE. The Guild Wars began in 1013 AE, and ended in 1070 AE, and according to you, trade relations broke down during the Guild Wars. Present day is somewhere around 1072-1075 AE.
So, it is STILL possible that a group of, say, Canthan families immigrated to Ascalon in, say, 1010 AE, thus they would have been living there throughout the Guild Wars. If their children married each other, they would have produced descendants who look fully Canthan but were born in Ascalon. Thus, the descendants could easily have been followers of Prince Rurik.

My point is that RP can very easily be used to explain away cross-campaign characters. So RP is not a good reason to restrict us from mixing and matching faces and hair!

If, and only if, the population size is large enough - and the people involved are xenophobic enough - to sustain such a pattern.

Regardless of what argument is used. There is NO reason why they should do this. So very many people are not simply after the faces, they are after the hair too. I say again, if you want an Ascalon character why not create it in Ascalon?

The largest problem I forsee with allowing all faces and hair from "paid for campaigns" is that by the time we reach chapter X there will be so many hair and face options for a new character that it will take several hours to create. YES, customisation is nice. YES, it does tend to make the game better. However 90% will still choose a Paris Hilton clone, and - for those who are serious in trying to create a nice "character" (as opposed to a supermodel/prima donna clone) - the creation of a character will become a 4 hour affair. This is ok for your first character, maybe even the second. But slowly character creation will become a pain in the rear. And I've not even got started on the technical side of things!

I'm all for variety. I'd love to see 10 options for hair and face (each) per campaign, but I see no reason for digging the old ones out of the closet.

Are you crazy?! ITs probably hard enough for them to come up with realistically decent faces for VAIN players. But 50?! That is pushing it. Realistically, Atleast 7 -10 faces is all there is needed per class per location. Otherwise the development team spent all its time on faces and not on the actual game itself.


Umm. Come now, there is no need to use that term. African is the actual and factually correct term, Keep using it. And not all African female faces have wide noses. Matter of fact, there are plenty female African faces that have skinny noses.

ALSO, Anet put in 8 shades of skin color for most professions to avoid the racial crap. What the hell?!

I'm not adding anything new - just adding my voice incase Anet looks in
I think we need more faces / hair.
Like others have said - if you have all 3 chapters you should be able to mix and match from all of them - and across profession , why not let my ele have a necro face and hair that would spice things up.
For the person who said why bother making more choices when 90 % use the same anyway (such as the monk's buns) That because we don't have a wide enough choice. Of cause 90 % of female monks are going to have "buns" hair if there is only a choice of 2 ok looking styles.
The chars who can make themselves look the most unique are the warriors because of the obvious different helmets they can have. The different Monk scalps , necro scars , ranger masks etc just don't differentiate themselves from each other enough to add to the character customizations

Adding in my two cents here:

I think a lot of the new options are very nice. Creating a character in the Nightfall campaign, and then looking back at the Tyrian campaign, I was pleasantly surprised that even the Nightfall options I didn't like aesthetically were better executed, technically (particularly the hair options). It's clear the Prophecies team has learned a lot from the first release.

That said, the paucity of options is a serious concern of mine. Comparing the options in Nightfall to those in Prophecies -- Not only does Prophecies have a larger number of facial options, but the facial options are far more distinct. Some characters have wider/closer larger/smaller higher/lower eyes, lips, noses, cheeks, jawlines than others. You have a real choice, even if there are similar options. In Nightfall the majority of the differences between the faces seem to be eye and lip coloration and eyebrow angle. When you factor in that there are only six or so faces for each class, the similarity between the faces is really hard to excuse.

I am rather disappointed that many of the design choices made in previous campaigns have been continued rather than expanded upon. E.G. Female monks with hair in buns, rather than some more interesting hairstyles.

In general I think the Nightfall characters offer a nice amount of additional options for people who already own Prophecies/Factions, but I don't think I would be satisfied with them if I only owned Nightfall. It is my strong hope that those of us who own multiple campaigns (or plan on it) will be able to create characters utilizing features from all owned campaigns, rather than only one. I think that would satisfy most of the people, including myself, who have concerns about the lack of character creation options.

it's not about making a prophecies character or not. it's about having more choices in how your starting character will look in expansions which are very limited in choices.

Tsunami - I am all for choice, not once have I stated otherwise. I simply think that choice should consist of NEW faces and hair, rather than old ones.
Furthermore, if you read what I've written you will realise (and if you look around you will come to realise) that a goodly proportion of players want to create a 100% Tyrian character in NF. Why not just create the character in Tyria? After all, for pvp purposes creating a character from Cantha/Tyria/Elona is all about picking a certain "look". If you want the Tyrian look you make the character Tyrian.

As I said, look at what mod teams have done in their spare time for other games. it's perfectly possible. So yea, maybe I was shooting a tad high with 50, but I don't see why a professional artist team couldn't make a dozen faces in one day, thus "doubling our fun" (TM anet) by making us have more choices

I knew I would have to clarify that -_-

Actually, African does not mean much regarding ethnicity - you can have egyptians, moroccans, congolese and (nowadays) south africans that were born in Africa and don't share many facial traits. Negroid is a tecnhically correct term (despite what connotations a similar word might have taken in English), as is Mongoloid for "oriental" people and native americans (note this one also can also have negative connotations), and Caucasoid for indo-europeans. Here, just to get a little grasp of what I'm saying (despite being on wiki, it's firmly based on bibliographical sources, so it's moderatly turstworthy):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_o...l_anthropology

Now, this is a rather old classification; there are plenty other ways to classify human ethnicity (ie. in five "races" that include, for example, indigenous australian as a separate group), including classifications that completely ditch the "race" concept, which is quite tenuous nowadays. Regardless, "negroid" remains a way to easily identify the appearace of people with ascendancy on native subsaharian african populations.

but to be realistic, anet will unlikely create many new faces / hair to address this issue. so the most practical suggestion is to at least mix in the variety from previous chapters. whether a character is elonian or not is more based on skin color than facial features anyways, since some of the nightfall faces can already look tyrian or cathan if assigned the proper colors. there are 2 solutions to this problem. and either solution is better than settling for the current skimpy choices given to us in the expansions.

Ok, realistically, I can understand that new hair and faces are low on the list of devs things to do. However a better solution would be in recycling the old ones from different professions.

Example - Queen Christie might have the hair and face of the vast majority of eles, but new players will NEVER be able to create a character like that without getting the campaign. Thus she does have the chance that - in a couple of expansions time, and barring the deleting of her ele - her ele will be rather unique. Honestly, do you really want to get to chapter 6 and find some new player wondering around looking exactly like your character? Being thought of as a "noob" because that look is the current new craze for that profession?

Players claim to want options so they can be unique. Realistically, they all just want a Paris clone. Passing warrior faces on to the chapter x eles would help avoid the former, while still allowing some degree of the blonde bimbo clone.

plus there is also the issue with hair choices being very limited as the faces in the expansions. and there is nothing wrong with the hair choices being mixed in from all the chapters.

the whole point of the idea is to have unrestricted possiblities for character appearance creation, so people can make the character they prefer or can identify with. like how skills can be mixed from all chapters and professions, same should be possible for character appearances. this issue wouldn't be brought up if anet was decent enough to give us more appearance options to begin with. but they didn't and don't seem to consider this aspect of the game.

Did you ever notice that several Prophecies monk faces definitely look oriental? They would pass for 'Canthan', not 'Tyrian'. However, I cannot create a Factions monk using a Prophecies monk face, even though it LOOKS Canthan. Why is that? Furthermore, I would LOVE to see the oriental Prophecies monk faces in combination with some of the beautiful oriental-inspired Canthan hairstyles. But I can't. Why is that? Instead, my monk is stuck with, IMO, the only decent Tyrian monk hairstyle - the infamous buns.

As for the argument "if you want your character to look like a Canthan, then start them in Cantha", the issue is the gameplay at the beginning of the campaign. For example, if I made a Canthan character, I'd have to start them at Shing Jea island. What if I wanted to start at Ascalon, because I love doing quests that give me skills as rewards, but I really really wanted my character to look Canthan? I'd have no choice but to start at Shing Jea, and I'd have to spend more gold buying skills. All for the sake of my character's face.

I cannot see the logic behind wanting to restrict the options. If you are so concerned about having an Elonian character who actually looks 'Elonian', then you are free to ignore the *option* to use faces/hair from previous campaigns. You should not be so concerned with what other people will choose.

I also agree with everyone who has said that they want to be able to make, for instance, an Elementalist with Necromancer hair if they wish to. I will add to that-- we should be able to make a blue-haired Mesmer if we wish. Why is it that only Elementalists can have light blue hair? Or how about a Paragon with chalk-white skin? Why is the chalk-white skin restricted to Necromancers?

What really gets me down in character creation is the lack of attractive males. It's basically possible to create a passably attractive female character of any profession, in any chapter, despite the lack of choice. But the males? Let's face it - It's Elementalist or nothing. There are a few nice necro face-and-hair combos, but then they have that whole hunched-over thing going on. And why do the male warrior have to be built like figurative tanks when a skinny female warrior in a bikini can handle that warhammer just as well? And how disappointed was I with the choices for a male Dervish in the NF preview?

I know none of that's going to change, and that they're hardly going to create a full-customisation system just because one fangirl wants to play a /nice looking/ male monk, or a male mesmer who doesn't run like some kind of ape, and of course there are /much/ more important things they can work on that will be much more beneficial to gameplay, but all the same...

I just find it sad that in a game as graphically impressive as GW, every outpost has to be filled with clones (and fugly clones at that) =(

i saw many good points of view here, but mostly i have to agree in lack of good faces and suckin chapter restrictions keeps me from makin a descent character, the most important here, is player should feel good about character looks to feel motivated in buildin his progression, i mean, will you go 400+ hours on a character you cant look for too long ?

i think not, for me its very dificult to decide the looks of my characters, harder each chapter, i had more faces i liked on prophecies, less on factions and almost none on nightfall, in fact i spend like 2 hours on character buildin screen when i played nightfall on 22nd, and its not the fact theyr african themed, is cuz there was no descent one, at least for my taste, and i think the op stated they are givin us less faces and poor quality ones, and i think its totaly understandable, i do want more templates and textures, i would even pay for havin new ones just to have what i like.
i dont think there should be only dark skinned or african resemblance on a african themed, unless your sayn there is no caucasian people there, and its not true, since racism there is a problem, i think the though of havin one race lookalike is racist.

ok, put on the faces and hair packs on store anet !!!

I guess we Americans (at least the ones I know and game with) prefer the more rugged look of the characters in Prophacies and find the faces in Factions acceptable. But in Nightfall the look of all the males in all classes are way too feminine. So much so that we all chose to play female characters instead of the soft wimpy looking male. However there is one female class I won't play. The Nightfall elementalist, she dresses like a porn star and I don't want my 12 year old daughter or 15 year old son watching me play her much less playing her.

And while it is true that the helmet/mask/hood covers the face, it is not the point of others not knowing whats underneath. I will know. Besides, I don't build them to please other gamers.

If they dressed like porn stars, they'd be naked.

So female Mesmers running around in those skimpy, semi-see-through Enchanter's gowns are more appropriate?
If you really take offense to a character's dressings to the point where you won't play them, you're missing out on a lot of fun gameplay.

And I don't mean to be crude, and I'm not saying I don't respect your opinions and/or values, but give me a break; the top the elementalist female wears is almost the equivalent to a bathing suit top, at least on the Sunspear armor, and the bottoms are essentially a slit dress whereby you can see her legs. *Audible Gasp*

And sure, we all know what's 'underneath'; rendered shapes and textures combined in such a way that they ultimately resemble the female form.
This isn't Penthouse, or GTA for that matter, it's a video game trying to retain some form of cultural value.


Back to topic though:
Give me more faces!!!!
I like that idea of putting render packages in the GW Store, pity I just cancelled my credit card though, alas ...

i dont think we should need to buy more appearance options. its just a matter of face / hair selections should be equivalent in quantity as prophecies--especially if anet charges the same amount for the expansions.

This would be a horrible idea and would definitely cause an uproar in the community. Why charge the playerbase for something they already deserve if they were to buy a new chapter or each consecutive chapter, especially considering the fact that the variety in selection keeps decreasing (especially for us males)? It wouldn't really be a programming nightmare to implement an option where you are able to access character customization options from previous chapters (if you own them) because most of it is already done.

I like the fact that you can't just use the old faces in the new games. Not because of RP or any of that, just because it's a new story, in a new place, with new people, and it'd be stupid to be running around with an old face. I hope ANet stick to their choice with that particular point.
What would be good though, would be having more new faces and hairstyles to choose from when the new chapters came out. At least on the Dervish and Paragon who don't have a lot of old faces already...
Although, looking at the triple-screenshot from the OP, the faces in each expansion get less game-like and more attractive with each expansion... Now if they could just combine that with more brand new choices they could leave character creation alone until the next one and work on improving other elements of the game.

Good point.

I would be riled if the face was an integral part of GWs gaming. Unfortunately, GW is not a hyper-intensive MUD that makes aesthetics important. Concerning combat, I don't care how your character looks, I want it on the floor, dead.

However, the diminishing number of selections is a tad perturbing, but only because of the nightmarish inconsistency with elementalist colors throughout the expansions. The prophecies elementalist colors aren't restricted to any geographical area because they're practically impossible within the human spectrum XD.

Well, maybe you do need to spell it out because I just don't see it. Who is going to be offended by the caveman reference? There are no cavemen left to be offended. You seem to be the only one who thought it was a racist statement.

OMG, no you didn't say that! Especially after calling someone racist for the caveman reference. That is the most racist and ignorant thing I've seen in this thread......so far (granted I'm still on the first page, so there's time ). What you are saying, basically is that all <pick a race> looks alike, so there will not be as many choices to make.

Wesley Snipes-Denzel Washington-Morgan Freeman(not an action star, I just love him.)-Danny Glover-Isaac Hayes FTW!!! Ok, so they are not out there as much as others, but they are out there.

I totally agree.

HUH?

I like people, regardless of any indentifiers.


I agree there should be more faces to choose from. However, I do not agree that they should be from previous chapters. NF is supposed to be based in an african like setting, then they should be african faces. I do not want to see black caucasians running around. That would just be wrong. And just like any race, there are the good looking and bad looking....let's see a selection based on that. I don't remember anyone bitching about the oriental characters in Factions, let's don't start now.

If I do make a new character in NF, it will look african, dark skin and all.

lets not forget there are persian and caucasian in the region of africa, (just as there are other races in europe) I think a diverse choice is more than needed. I saw many dark colored characters with caucasian features and hair....I think there should have been black, white, asians, persians, etc...in the first 2 chapters. Cmon Anet give us more choices....and dont charge us for it please...

Comparing an african influenced face to a caveman could be interpreted as racist and offensive . Of course im not offended, since its completely unintentional.

See...i never called anyone racist. I dont think you're a racist so stop telling me i said you were. :P

read the following:

I (me) think (my opinion) it sounds racist (not implying that it is racist).

Someone who is more sensitive could take your post as a racist statement very easily. Thats why i said you should be a more careful because some people might flip out on you.

I stand by my statement. Being area specific limits your choices. I'm not being racist. Its called a gene pool.

Yes there are stand outs, but by law of average, phenotypes will fall within certain ranges in one area. Eye color, hair color, facial structure, height etc. Mutations and outside genetic sources can influence a gene pool, but it will not impact the overall expression of an average phenotype.

And yes Morgan Freedman is the man. ^_^

On a side note:
I have no problem hanging out with any color, any race, any relegion, state of mind (crazy people!) or sexual preference since i adapt very easily. The only people i dont asociate with are hard-drug users (weed is ok) and drunks.

Racism sucks, however its a reality of life and you cant change some people.

PM me if you wanna continue arguing. lets not derail the thread.

-----
BACK ON TOPIC

I agree that faces need to stay chapter specific, simply because it does give indentity to a character.

On the topic of hair: I want perfect white hair for my future Dervish but i cant get it >.< Anet please give us at the very least hair color dye-ing!!

I tried to make three different character concepts last weekend and not one of them worked out.

I wanted a black female ranger with an African name and appearance. There were lots of female ranger hairstyles, and exactly ONE of them looked African, and it was hidden behind a big do-rag. Otherwise straight hair all around.

I wanted a white, male, blond-haired paragon. Opposite problem. Every face, every hairstyle looked African. No matter what I did, every paragon with blond hair and a white face just looked odd.

And last, I wanted a male dervish with a middle-eastern appearance. Nope. Again, every face, every hairstyle looked african. This seems especially silly since weren't the real-life dervishes middle-eastern rather than black african?

Firstly we don't know for certain if x hair and y face will match up... Maybe they will, maybe they won't. We don't know. If they don't - THAT has to be fixed. To allow for the full range of skin tones offered, I'm guessing all the faces would have to be effecitvely re-colourised. Why, well I'm taking a punt here, but I think you will find they control skin tone by certain filters. I'm guessing that is why the coloured skins look so darn horrible in Prophecies, the original colour was designed on peachy-pink tones trying to re-colour that through a filter to warm dark brown tones isn't as easy as it sounds.

Next the interface itself has to be changed either completely, or the simple solution - allow for scrolling in the individual windows. Can you imagine the nightmare of character creation scrolling through all those faces?
"Oh I think the one I liked was back on line 10... Or maybe it was 11... Oh dang I've lost it now..."

And I'm sure there are others.
For goodness sake, 10 options allows for a large number of combinations. If you want true customisation, play Oblivion.

Side Note: Oblivion character creation was great, the first time you do it. After that... I was clawing my eyes out second time around.

I'd really like more customization options -- maybe the ability to create a non-anorexic female, or perhaps a male character who isn't ready for Wide World Wrestling. And yes, beards.

This is, after all, and RPG, and ANet shows a real lack of creativity when it comes to character models. What keeps people playing an RPG is a connection to their characters.

To sum it up, I was really excited about the Paragon. However, it seemed like for faces I could either have a big scar or pick from a few other faces which looked highly alike. As for hair, I could be bald or have four different styles of braids. That pretty much killed it for me, and I was really excited about the Paragon before that. Faces and hairstyles are important to me as a role player since they help me feel attached to my character.

Looking at the females, it seemed like the faces and hairstyles were much more distinct. I agree that faces and hairstyles should fit in with the concept and regionality of a profession, but I think that Anet could have done a *much* better job within that theme.

However, it is only one small thing, and I generally find myself satisfied with the choices Anet makes and trust in them, but I guess not everything can meet my hopes!

There are a few ways they can do it but the only thing I was suggesting is if they were to allow us to access those options. They do not necessarily have to put it all in one interface, rather, they could split them into different modules or into different interfaces and make them chapter-specific. Also, they do not necessarily have to mix in the different hairs or skin tones with the different faces in each chapter. They can keep them in seperate UIs or menus and not have to mix anything and that would allow us to choose faces and hair from other chapters while customizing our character for a specific chapter.

For example, in Nightfall, if I wanted to customize my character with options from Factions, I would open up a UI that have customization options from Factions only and would not be allowed to choose hair, skin tones, etc. from other chapters to mix with the Factions options. The body of the character would be irrelevant because by now, all bodies would be accustomed to the armors of each chapter (i.e. a Tyrian character being able to wear Factions armor).

But yes, I see what you mean by the different combinations that would have to be rendered to fit each other if we are asking for the ability to mix and match with each chapter as we choose and that is what some people in this thread would be asking for. This task would probably be taken by the artists of Anet and I have no say in the difficulty of it.

As for Oblivion... I don't see how that is relevant to anything. I've played it and yes, it has cool customization options but not really my cup of tea. Also, it's mostly in first person or when you're playing in third person, you usually are only allowed to see the back of your character. Besides, Oblivion's options and Guild Wars' options aren't really that similar. In Oblivion, it's more "down to the bone" while in Guild Wars, you just click on things and adjust the height. I prefer Guild Wars' approach because I wouldn't have to bother with sliders of filters. /end offtopic

Would anybody be opposed to the following idea?

When you create a character, the game asks you to choose your character's birthplace - this already exists in the game (it asks you to choose the campaign).
AFTER this, the game could ask you to choose an ETHNICITY - Tyrian (or Ascalonian), Canthan, or Elonian. Choosing one would take you to the appropriate face and hair options for that ETHNICITY. Of course, your choice of ethnicity would be limited by the chapters you own.

This looks like something that would be very simple to program. And it makes perfect sense from a role-playing point of view, for reasons i described in my previous posts. If you don't want to go look for them, here they are in a nutshell: It is silly to assume that, for instance, all people born in Elona are of the Elonian ethnicity. This is because people from each continent have been able to travel to other continents for hundreds of years. It is entirely possible for a person of Canthan race to be born and raised in Elona or Tyria.

While I would still like to be able to put Canthan hair on a Tyrian, I admit that I am not a programmer/artist and I cannot say if that kind of thing is even possible without extensive work. However, this suggestion seems like something that is simple to program, and it would at least alleviate SOME people's concerns about the decreasing hair/face options.

the solution can be as simple as adding more face / hair options to the character creation screen [based on what chapters you own] and have them in scrollable windows so the options can fit the space. a lot of extensive options are already in scrollabe windows in the character creation screens.

considering you can already bring existing tyrian / cathan characters to nightfall, forcing people to make elonian looking characters before starting nightfall won't do much other than restrict people's character creation choices--and restricted to a very lacking range of choices.

As far as I can remember the faces and hair styles from the factions preview were the same choices you had when Factions was released. Which imo is pretty lame. I want to make my characters different from other people and not have them in a world of clones.....

ANET MAKE MORE FACES AND HAIR STYLES please

Half the problem with clones in NF will be the problem that has been pointed out 1001 times already: People seem to refuse to make characters not of their own ethnicity.

This will only be a problem for the people who cannot, will not, or simply choose not to RP, and tend to stick with either a character that reminds them of themselves or a character they personally find attractive (which most likely will be of their own ethnicity). The problem here is that GW is about 80-90% filled with people that think this way.

Tis' a shame, but people are free to make their own choices. I don't necessarily call it racism, just habit, really.

Oh, I was so excited about NF being African/Arabic. I was a part of a table-top game years ago where my character was a staff (offensive type) wielding desert nomad with warm brown skin and coppery hair. I don't know whether to make my paragon like that character, or my dervish. Anyhow, her story was that she had lost the desert of her home due to some fairly nasty conflict. Even by the end of the game which lasted longer than we expected, she still hadn't managed to find her way back and make peace with what her homeland had become. Elona is perfect for her! It will be like she is coming home, and I'm really quite excited about it.

Also (even though I'm lily white) the darker tones in NF are lovely, I don't understand why people can't bring themselves to create a character with such skin tones. I really can't. Just like people saying the Asian faces of Factions were ugly. I'll admit to saying that I thought a couple of them look similar, but (with the exception of a few) they were hardly ugly. Oh and a paragon with dark, dark skin and white and gold armour very nice, that's what I did in the preview and I loved it.