Getting to know your new face or just getting a new one.

Human females look so cheeky. :3

With the implementation of the new character models, I really appreciate Blizzard giving us the option to change our chars' faces with the barber shop. However, as disturbing as it is to be getting plastic surgery at a barber, I'm rather annoyed at the inconsistency of being able to dye a worgen's fur and yet not being able to change my human's skin tone. It's perfectly feasible, logically and in an RP sense, for the fleshed races to re-customize their skin tone. I mean... they have the bleach and dye just sitting around, and I doubt that any goblin has ever listened to a warning label about avoiding contact with skin. Certainly, it's more plausible than modifying a draenei's horns or a night elf's ears, both of which sound like the poor patients would later die of infection from being operated on with a straight shaver previously used for dwarven manscaping.

In my opinion at least, I'm not a big complainer; when they announced and subsequently released the new models, I understood and accepted that my character would look different than it has for years. Better, even. But after reading that the only thing the barber seat would not change was skin tone and then logging in to find that the only thing with which I was unhappy was my suddenly ghost-like skin, I couldn't help but have one of those "Really?" moments when it seemed like the game was specifically targeting me to complain.

Melodramatic? Perhaps a bit. But after all their efforts to transition players to the new models as gingerly as possible and to keep them happy with the choice of free re-customization, it seems they still want to make a little money, but only off of a few select races. I see people on the forums futilely trying to justify the arbitrariness by saying dying hair is something easily done in a salon while one can never change his/her skin color, like self-tanning cream doesn't exist and skin lighteners aren't sold all over the world by merchants just as dubious as goblin barbers performing rhinoplasty.

For now, it seems I'll have to go the self-esteem route and accept my unnaturally pale skin color as a part of who my character is. Despite it not being what I originally planned for her appearance, I'll chalk it up to growing older, changing times and styles, and definitely a more cheeky outlook on life. Just look at that face and tell me she didn't come out of this Pandarian war with a brighter expression belying the years of bloody horrors she has endured and demonic blood tapping she has undergone.

... maybe that's just the smile of insanity.

-Avia.