Guild Wars 2

Recently I have been wanting to change my huge Norn guy to a smaller race like human, but as a programmer myself I began to think about all of the massive data changes to my account just to make this happen and I cringe.

But then I thought about the latest fractals I ran and remembered that one changed my character into a Char and the other changed him into an Asura.

What if, we had a character “Transmogrifier” it could be sold in the store and only accessible in you home instance. ArenaNet could sell one for each race. Then a person could change races at will if they have purchased the “Transmogrifier” for that race. It would basically be a constant buff.

The best part about this is that I can change any time, maybe I just want to see the awesome new sword I have on my Asura at a huge size, so I change to a Norn. Or maybe I want to do a jumping puzzle with my huge Norn but its just easier if I switch him to an Asura first.

Also ArenaNet could limit the areas in which this is possible, maybe they don’t want your character to change during any story instance, just remove the buff. Or they could make the “Transmogrifier” hard to get, or easy, or put it on a time limit.

I think this idea provides the largest possibilities and flexibility for both user and programmers. There is no need for a huge data change on an account if I’m just essentially switching body skins. Of course, as a programmer I know that from the outside looking in everything seems much easier, but the story is altogether different when your involved in the code base.

Just an idea, hope it helps.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potion_of_Ascalonian_Mages

So basically you want a race transplant like Darby?

Uncaught exception: cultural armor.

Uncaught exception: personal story.

If the item acted as a potion and changed the char to a standard model? That’s what it sounds like OP is talking about, not a change where you get to chose what your char looks like.

I dont think its a matter of having “massive data changes”. I think it has more to do with if the engine can support it and/or if the devs are willing to make the engine support it.

Someone once showed me how a WoW private server worked. Character data is all stored on a format kinda like an excel spreadsheet. With cells for all the info like name, sex, faction, race, reputation, rep level, and cells for gear slots. You want a warglaive? then put the itemid for it in the gear slot. Want to race change? go to that cell, select your new race from the dropdown box. Now that was a private server, but does it work the same way on live? i cant say for sure. But i’ve done a combined server transfer+faction change which means i also get a name change and race change and i’ve had the transaction complete in under 30 minutes. This was on a weekend and at 2-3am pacific time. So that leads me to believe that they have a user friendly interface that is meant to be used by a customer service rep and possibly even an automated system.

Not all game engines will function the same way and not all data is stored the same way across different games. The devs from SWTOR “claim” that the game will never support sex change because the character/companion storyline is hard coded and linked to character sex at creation. I dont believe them fully if they are saying it because the engine cannot actually support it or if the engine can support it but it is just to much work. I dont mean that in a tinfoil hat/conspiracy theory sort of way, i just wonder if they say it to save themselves the trouble of having to explain or justify their choices to a bunch of players. Now whether GW2 has all their character info stored in such a way that would allow them to easily modify it? i dont know. If there are people who run GW2 private servers (which i dont really see a point to in this game) they could probably answer that for you or give you some kind of insight.