Don't Let Your Girlfriend Roll Your Champions Online Toon

This is what happens when an angry female gets a hold of the character creation system in Champions Online.

Champions Online has an incredibly deep character customization system.  The sheer amount of sliders and options available on the customer options is almost overwhelming.  Sure, you can always useCryptic’s preset builds, Vixen, Tank, etc, but where is the fun in that?  I took the opportunity during Monday’s first day of Open Beta to roll a new character, a munitions toon.  Only I wasn’t the designer.  My girlfriend took the reigns for that.

I’ve tried numerous times to get my girlfriend to play MMORPGs.  In fact, I tried so hard that I was able to write a column about the experiences for ProjectLore.com.  It just didn’t happen.  The game, World of Warcraft, just couldn’t draw her in for a number of reasons.  Most notably that the basic principle of everyMMO, questing and grinding for XP, read like ” a chore” to her.  An idea that didn’t interest her in the slightest after a hard day of work.  But there was one aspect that she absolutely loved, designing her little used dwarf female Hunter.  Lilyterrain was created after a painstaking hour+ process.  Anyone who’s made a character in WoW knows that there aren’t many options in Blizzard’s giant.  Despite the seemingly small supply of choices she spent an obtuse amount of time weighing each choice.

After the (failed) experiment ended it became obvious that she enjoyed only one thing, the creation of Lilyterrain.  With that fact still fresh in my mind I asked if the real Ms. iTZKooPA would want to design my newest character, a munitions expert in Champions Online.  She jumped at the chance to connect with me inside a digital world again.  Even if it was only the briefest affair.

I quickly logged in to CO before she could rescind the offer.  After waiting an atrociously long time for the character screen to appear a standard female toon was selected.

“Why are you picking a girl?” I was asked.

As an answer I swung the camera to a profile view, and waited.  The only response to the torpedoes now covering the screen was a forceful slap on the shoulder.  Perhaps she took the flame bait a bit more personally than I expected.  To try and smooth things over I swung the avatar around again, highlighting the sculptured rump.

“Honestly, I’d rather look at this ass, rather than this one” I stated as I swapped to the default (read stereotypical) chiseled male toon and his equally perfect posterior.

“Hmm, makes sense” was the quick response.  With that Ms. iTZKooPA went to work.  Although she had dozens more options, hundreds of slider positions and an incalculable combination of settings at her disposal the creation was over sooner than I expected.  Circa 45 minutes later, and the newLilyterrain was completed.  She makes a dwarven female look like Felicia Day by comparison.

Yeap, that’s her in all her un-proportional, tight chested, small breasted, large nosed, male chinned glory.  We laughed out loud together at the proposition of me playing this toon for at least 6-months.  I can’t say I didn’t deserve it, I mean I did tease her about the idea of creating a “fantasy” character with perfect dimensions, beauty and power.  That being said, I didn’t realize how vengeful, and hilariously dedicated, Ms.iTZKooPA would be.

Looks like I learned a valuable lesson.  I’ll design my own Dungeon & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited character, thank you very much.

The “pretty on the inside” being also displays the power of Cryptic’s character creation engine.  Or the company’s dark, disturbing humor.  Not sure which yet.