We grade five of the best MMOs on their character creation. How did your favorites do?

Guild Wars

Character creation is really where Guild Wars shows its age. It's about to turn 5 years old at the end of the month, which is like 40 years old in MMO years. Not irrelevant, but certainly not in its prime.

There are no races to choose from in Guild Wars, so you're stuck with only 6 classes to differentiate yourself. More disappointing than that though, is the paltry number of options you have for the way your character looks. There are only a handful of face and hair options. So you'll almost definitely have 100 other characters that will look almost exactly like you. No ability to mix and match eyes, noses and lips either, each face is a package deal. And there are only about 8 options for changing the color of your costume. It feels very, very thin.

Something should be said about how hot the characters look though. It's almost the exact opposite situation that Age of Conan has, actually. Everyone in Conan looks sickly or evil while everyone in Guild Wars looks like they model. We're sure one specific face was modeled after a young Cameron Diaz. But when everyone is beautiful, doesn't that mean that no one is? No, it doesn't. But that doesn't mean it's interesting.

Grade: D

This coming year looks great for character creation. The Jedis of The Old Republic, the three clandestine societies of The Secret World and the seemingly limitless customization of APB are enough to make any character creation fan smile. Look for more character creation report cards here on Zam in the future!