been a while

I've been hammered at work, which has led to a little blogging hiatus. This doesn't mean I haven't been reading like a fiend, though. One of the things I've been meaning to comment on since it came out is a post Tobold did on the question of avatars. I have to admit, I'm usually more or less on the same page as Tobold and his readers, but in this case, I was completely out of step. It had never occurred to me that you could have a game without an avatar. One of my complaints about WoW is the fact that the gear isn't customizable enough - why can't I change the dye, and make the green cape blue? It's such a basic concept. So to see the very existence of in-game fashion debated blew my mind. I would argue that in-game fashion is an aspect of the social part of gaming (just as fashion itself is an aspect of a society). Without it, you lesson the social cohesion of the game, and thus the strength of the game as a whole (if we are agreed part of that the attraction of an MMO is the social features).