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Author Topic: Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"  (Read 979317 times)
Ingmar
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Auto Assault Affectionado


Reply #595 on: July 26, 2013, 02:18:01 PM

Bilging is the only one I really liked (and I had some kind of super multi-ocean high ranking with it at one point) so we'd make a decent team.

Sailing though, fuck sailing.

The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT.
Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
Sjofn
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Truckasaurus Hands


Reply #596 on: July 26, 2013, 02:25:06 PM

I never felt like I had a bigger epeen than when someone would admire my sexy, sexy rankings. Of course, it also means I get sent to the carpentry mines, because everyone seems to hate it except me. Unfortunately, when I played last, they usually would pull me off carpentry to load guns (carpentry is the most expendable during sea battle, I guess?), and I am fucking terrible at the gunnery game.

I was also pretty butt at the navigation game.

God Save the Horn Players
Kageru
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Reply #597 on: July 26, 2013, 04:09:18 PM

There's plenty in the game that tells you so, for quite a few MMOs I have played.  WoW, for one.  There are numerous quests that reference how incredibly awesome you are and how thank god you are there because there is some serious shit going down and they need someone like you.

WoW is very strongly progression based, so raids and "I kill elder-gods for breakfast" make sense in that narrative. For small values of "make sense" anyway. Some of the more narrative based content could just as easily be built around the potential of a single agent.

It's really just a question of design. If you want to make your content group only, challenging and tiered you'll gain the people who love raids and lose the people who want a more casual experience. Maybe that's a good deal.

But the more serious problem is there's probably going to be a dominant raid game. Because people want to compare their e-peen in the game were getting that e-peen is the most varied, challenging and recognised. Or to put it another way if you want to play the raid game you probably need to be the successor to WoW.

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
Typhon
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Reply #598 on: July 27, 2013, 07:19:30 AM

[snip]
It's really just a question of design. If you want to make your content group only, challenging and tiered you'll gain the people who love raids and lose the people who want a more casual experience. Maybe that's a good deal.

[snip]

I 100% think it is a good deal. There are so many games out now, they need to start specializing to specific audiences.  They need to start looking at EVEs success in a niche.  I don't begrudge the folks that like to have 10/20/40 other folks along for the ride and love the 'team' feeling in their games.  I think that those games should absolutely require grouping at every step of the way and have content hand-tuned for groups.

I'd like a game that scales from 1 to 5ish auto-magically and also has a difficulty slider - cause some nights we're either shit faced or just suck. And whether I'm solo or in a group I have a similar chance of getting the best gear in the game.
Phred
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Reply #599 on: July 28, 2013, 05:52:42 AM

There's plenty in the game that tells you so, for quite a few MMOs I have played.  WoW, for one.  There are numerous quests that reference how incredibly awesome you are and how thank god you are there because there is some serious shit going down and they need someone like you.

WoW is very strongly progression based, so raids and "I kill elder-gods for breakfast" make sense in that narrative. For small values of "make sense" anyway. Some of the more narrative based content could just as easily be built around the potential of a single agent.



I don't think he meant raids specifically. When I played WoW there were quest lines that lead to whole villages cheering your character for whatever, killing a local bad guy that was soloable from what I recall. Mostly introduced in the first expansion iirc.
Abelian75
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Reply #600 on: July 28, 2013, 09:39:36 AM


I don't think he meant raids specifically. When I played WoW there were quest lines that lead to whole villages cheering your character for whatever, killing a local bad guy that was soloable from what I recall. Mostly introduced in the first expansion iirc.


Yeah, that's exactly what I was referring to.

Basically, my point was:

- These games, taken at face value, are so impossibly ridiculous that in order for any narrative to make sense, you have to abstract away huge, huge portions of actual gameplay and just pretend none of that stuff is really happening.  In the game you and your friends hit the bad guy 100,000 times, but that's just an abstraction for, like, a bunch of you rushing him and one of you manages to stab him with a sword once or twice.  Beyond that, there are thousands of heroes around, all of them constantly solving the same huge world problems.  You just have to pretend maybe only your friends actually exist and maybe the others are just villagers?  And your friends are actually solving different issues, you just kinda choose to ignore that you're being told the same story?  Who knows.
- Given that, it's hilarious to make any argument for how many people it should take to kill a given thing based on what makes the most narrative sense, since you have to continually ignore the gameplay in order for the narrative to make sense.  Even these games own, in-game narratives ignore the game mechanics.  There's no lines like, "Fortunately, I'm too powerful to be assassinated.  It would take an assassin with the finest weapons available at least five minutes to kill me even if I was completely immobilized, and my guards would reach me by then."  Similarly, and what I was referring to before, they do, in fact, tell you that you are the greatest hero ever, despite the game mechanics flying in the face of that, just like they fly in the face of everything else related to the narrative.  And that's ok.  It's the only reasonable way of dealing with an extremely gamey game.
- So basically it's dumb to argue for or against soloable content on narrative grounds.  It is and should be purely a game design decision.  It does make sense for the toughest dudes in the narrative to be the ones that require tons of dudes to kill, typically, because if you're going to make it so that you have to do a bunch of real world work to kill some of the dudes in the game, it might as well be the toughest dudes in the story.  But it's NOT because it wouldn't make sense for one dude to kill Arthas or Illidan or whatever.  NOTHING of what you see on screen makes sense.
SurfD
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Reply #601 on: August 01, 2013, 02:52:23 AM

Just thought I would ask:  Any idea how big the download to install the beta client is?

The place I am currently living at is somewhat bandwidth challenged, and I am shareing the connection with the landlord.  They are on a 50gig a month cap, and I have agreed to try to stay under around 20gig a month.  Is grabbing the beta going to totally blow my bandwidth allowance?

Darwinism is the Gateway Science.
Evildrider
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Reply #602 on: August 01, 2013, 03:10:51 AM

There is about a 75% chance of that.   awesome, for real
Phred
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Reply #603 on: August 01, 2013, 12:33:57 PM

There's plenty in the game that tells you so, for quite a few MMOs I have played.  WoW, for one.  There are numerous quests that reference how incredibly awesome you are and how thank god you are there because there is some serious shit going down and they need someone like you.

WoW is very strongly progression based, so raids and "I kill elder-gods for breakfast" make sense in that narrative. For small values of "make sense" anyway. Some of the more narrative based content could just as easily be built around the potential of a single agent.




I don't think he meant raids specifically. When I played WoW there were quest lines that lead to whole villages cheering your character for whatever, killing a local bad guy that was soloable from what I recall. Mostly introduced in the first expansion iirc.


Just finished an end of zone quest in Rift Storm Legion that had the whole camp turn out to cheer my character so it's becoming more common, at least in those games that slavishly copy WoW.

Rasix
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Reply #604 on: August 01, 2013, 12:36:39 PM

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I thought I did some pretty epic shit going through WoLK leveling content. 


-Rasix
Lantyssa
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Reply #605 on: August 01, 2013, 07:08:47 PM

Even the end of the Draenei starting arc had the village cheering you on.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
SurfD
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Reply #606 on: August 02, 2013, 03:14:50 AM

There's plenty in the game that tells you so, for quite a few MMOs I have played.  WoW, for one.  There are numerous quests that reference how incredibly awesome you are and how thank god you are there because there is some serious shit going down and they need someone like you.

WoW is very strongly progression based, so raids and "I kill elder-gods for breakfast" make sense in that narrative. For small values of "make sense" anyway. Some of the more narrative based content could just as easily be built around the potential of a single agent.




I don't think he meant raids specifically. When I played WoW there were quest lines that lead to whole villages cheering your character for whatever, killing a local bad guy that was soloable from what I recall. Mostly introduced in the first expansion iirc.


Just finished an end of zone quest in Rift Storm Legion that had the whole camp turn out to cheer my character so it's becoming more common, at least in those games that slavishly copy WoW.


Beh, WoW sort of stole it from City of Heros anyhow.   One of the many things I missed about that game.   They knew EVERY mission you ran, and so had loads of hooks tied into the people on the street.  You would be roaming about town and random people would comment about how "hey, isnt that the Hero that took down so-and-so", or "Look, there goes X, the hero that solved such'n'such mystery".  Was pretty cool since the more "famous" you became, the more people seemed to know of your great deeds.

Darwinism is the Gateway Science.
Chockonuts
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Reply #607 on: August 02, 2013, 08:28:32 AM


Beh, WoW sort of stole it from City of Heros anyhow.   One of the many things I missed about that game.   They knew EVERY mission you ran, and so had loads of hooks tied into the people on the street.  You would be roaming about town and random people would comment about how "hey, isnt that the Hero that took down so-and-so", or "Look, there goes X, the hero that solved such'n'such mystery".  Was pretty cool since the more "famous" you became, the more people seemed to know of your great deeds.
Looking forward to the day when CoH is mentioned about as often as Auto Assault still is.

It's getting to the point where anytime someone even mentions it, you feel as though they should also include violins in the background or some 9/11 type tribute attached to it.

Seriously, it was just a game. They'll make more.
Pennilenko
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Reply #608 on: August 02, 2013, 09:15:09 AM

Looking forward to the day when CoH is mentioned about as often as Auto Assault still is.

It's getting to the point where anytime someone even mentions it, you feel as though they should also include violins in the background or some 9/11 type tribute attached to it.

Seriously, it was just a game. They'll make more.

You shut your whore mouth, it was a travesty the way CoH was treated. It is an insult to mention Auto Assault in a reference to CoH.

Kidding aside. CoH was pretty good. It is a shame it got treated the way it did from start to finish.

"See?  All of you are unique.  And special.  Like fucking snowflakes."  -- Signe
Ghambit
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Reply #609 on: August 02, 2013, 09:26:03 AM

Back then, there were a lot of great games that got mistreated.  It's ultimately our fault though; too much game-hopping. 

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
Evildrider
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Reply #610 on: August 02, 2013, 11:11:41 AM

CoH was the most repetitive MMO I ever played.  I had fun for the year or so I was subbed but after I left it never even became a game I went back to for a nostalgic look.
Chockonuts
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Reply #611 on: August 02, 2013, 12:04:29 PM

Looking forward to the day when CoH is mentioned about as often as Auto Assault still is.

It's getting to the point where anytime someone even mentions it, you feel as though they should also include violins in the background or some 9/11 type tribute attached to it.

Seriously, it was just a game. They'll make more.

You shut your whore mouth, it was a travesty the way CoH was treated. It is an insult to mention Auto Assault in a reference to CoH.

Kidding aside. CoH was pretty good. It is a shame it got treated the way it did from start to finish.
It was a decent enough game, I just never saw the shining, mystical life-altering aura surrounding it a lot of the ex-CoH players seem to talk about now that it's dead. There most certainly were, and still are, a plethora of games that should have been shut down before CoH though.
Fordel
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Reply #612 on: August 02, 2013, 01:10:30 PM

The best thing about CoH was the character generator. It was grindy as balls otherwise. I never got past the early teens in that game. Warehouse simulator wasn't terribly compelling for me.

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
Zetor
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Reply #613 on: August 02, 2013, 01:39:25 PM

The best part about CoH was the Mission Architect (no, not the farming missions  awesome, for real).

That, and Total Focus. Dat animation.

Kageru
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Reply #614 on: August 02, 2013, 06:34:03 PM


CoH being grindy was all about the way in which it was mis-treated as I understand it. A good foundation they milked while they worked on something else (which became Champions Online eventually).

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
Venkman
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Reply #615 on: August 02, 2013, 07:43:02 PM

Yea that's really what killed it. iirc CoH was the first MMO to peak early and then see a cliff of subscriptions shortly after. And yet they stupidly kept to their Vision of grind. This was completely at odds with their premise of crazy levels of customization coupled with action-y comant.

Eventually all their cool concepts did appear in other games, but it tooks years. And all the while I lament on what CoH/V coulda been.

Such a waste.
SurfD
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Reply #616 on: August 02, 2013, 11:21:28 PM

Yea that's really what killed it. iirc CoH was the first MMO to peak early and then see a cliff of subscriptions shortly after. And yet they stupidly kept to their Vision of grind. This was completely at odds with their premise of crazy levels of customization coupled with action-y comant.

Eventually all their cool concepts did appear in other games, but it tooks years. And all the while I lament on what CoH/V coulda been.

Such a waste.
Essentially this.  The reason most of the ex CoH people on this board gush about it is not because of the gameplay (which was repedative grindy ass mostly), but because of all the neat mechanics the guys incorporated into the game, many of which still seem well ahead of their time.  Things like Exemplar / Sidekicking allowing people of vastly different levels to group almost seamlessly without resulting in one party feeling underpowered / overpowered, or the Giant Monster system that let players of pretty much any level take on massive threats without being useless (imagine level 10s trying to fight a level 60 world boss in WoW.  They would be useless speedbumps, and probably die whenever the thing even looked at them).   Dynamic dungeon scaling was also another cool one.   There were SO many great mechanics at the heart of the game that got washed away under the overall focus on grindy, repedative leveling.

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Kitsune
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Reply #617 on: August 03, 2013, 04:14:59 PM

Essentially this.  The reason most of the ex CoH people on this board gush about it is not because of the gameplay (which was repedative grindy ass mostly), but because of all the neat mechanics the guys incorporated into the game, many of which still seem well ahead of their time.  Things like Exemplar / Sidekicking allowing people of vastly different levels to group almost seamlessly without resulting in one party feeling underpowered / overpowered, or the Giant Monster system that let players of pretty much any level take on massive threats without being useless (imagine level 10s trying to fight a level 60 world boss in WoW.  They would be useless speedbumps, and probably die whenever the thing even looked at them).   Dynamic dungeon scaling was also another cool one.   There were SO many great mechanics at the heart of the game that got washed away under the overall focus on grindy, repedative leveling.

The reason I gush about CoH is because you could jump a mile then punch a street thug down a city block and it was AWESOME.  That's really all it takes.
Venkman
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Reply #618 on: August 03, 2013, 04:41:24 PM

Yep. Very kinetic experience (is that the right word) I don't remember seeing again until DCUO, which had only some of it.

I just wish they coulda gotten their mind out of the grind.
Kageru
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Reply #619 on: August 03, 2013, 04:57:41 PM


They didn't want grind... they just didn't put enough money in to cover the slow levelling curve. Though this was the age where farming monsters was sort of considered content.

On the other hand DCUO was every bit as boring and had less of an excuse.

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
Venkman
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Reply #620 on: August 03, 2013, 06:34:34 PM

Agree on the second point, but Cryptic not wanting a grind? I don't see it. The leveling curve was EQ-like arduous for a game that otherwise had very console-y like sensibilities. I still feel they were sitting on a goldmine if they could have just gotten out of the whole "this is a MMO and therefore we must have a guaranteed 15 months of subs" convention. Man, they coulda just put in tradeable costume recustomization players woulda RMT'd the shit out of years before inter-player "RMT" became corporate-sponsored "F2P". We'd all be talking about how CoH started it all instead of EQ1.

My only solace is that in another of the infinite timestreams in the multiverse, this did happen  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?
Kageru
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Reply #621 on: August 03, 2013, 07:03:01 PM


I'd more consider that a symptom. They didn't want the grind, they just didn't want to invest money in content and what was left was a grind.

I mean any game that has one end-boss raid for several years is a good indication of a development team that just really doesn't give a damn.

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
Ingmar
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Reply #622 on: August 04, 2013, 01:16:53 AM

Yea that's really what killed it. iirc CoH was the first MMO to peak early and then see a cliff of subscriptions shortly after. And yet they stupidly kept to their Vision of grind. This was completely at odds with their premise of crazy levels of customization coupled with action-y comant.

Eventually all their cool concepts did appear in other games, but it tooks years. And all the while I lament on what CoH/V coulda been.

Such a waste.

CoH had more or less stable subscription numbers for YEARS, I am pretty sure they never fell off a cliff the way something like WAR did.

This narrative here about how CoH was some kind of giant failure is really just off. It was a successful niche game, that was all it was ever *going* to be, and it really only died due to age and lack of interest on NCSoft's part. I am getting the sense that most of you never went back to it after the Paragon/Cryptic split, they were doing good stuff with that game.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 01:19:16 AM by Ingmar »

The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT.
Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
PalmTrees
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Reply #623 on: August 04, 2013, 01:38:09 AM

Yeah, the CoH grind was pretty much gone, they put in a no-xp toggle so people didn't outlevel contacts. What they really needed, from day one to the end, was a steady stream of new and randomized mission maps. My goodness, I could navigate some of those maps with my eyes closed.
UnSub
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Reply #624 on: August 04, 2013, 06:28:47 AM

CoH had more or less stable subscription numbers for YEARS, I am pretty sure they never fell off a cliff the way something like WAR did.

This narrative here about how CoH was some kind of giant failure is really just off. It was a successful niche game, that was all it was ever *going* to be, and it really only died due to age and lack of interest on NCSoft's part. I am getting the sense that most of you never went back to it after the Paragon/Cryptic split, they were doing good stuff with that game.

It's subscription revenue had been in decline since 2007 up to the day it closed (rare peak aside). CoH/V had three very good years from 2004 to 2007 but arguably took some development body blows when CoV wasn't hugely successful in drawing new players and NCsoft put all of its spare money and resources into Tabula Rasa.

Also, CoH/V being niche depends on how you define 'niche'. For a while there it had nearly 200k active players, which generally put it top 5 in player subscription numbers within the Western market.

As for NCsoft not showing interest, they greenlighted both the Going Rogue expansion and the F2P change, but neither was successful in brining the players back for long.

CoH/V's place among MMOs has been hugely benefited by a group of cheerleaders who loved everything that Paragon Studios did, despite the fact that the changes they made to the game were never able to increase their subscriber numbers.

As for the grind... it was a bit smoother, but let's just say that if you wanted to start buying things in the Auction House the grind was still in full effect or you needed to be really lucky and get some rare item drops. No, you didn't NEED full IO sets, but they certainly made things a lot easier (and quirky, like when a random effect activated within some sets).

Draegan
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Reply #625 on: August 04, 2013, 08:09:15 AM

I played COH a bunch of times, I never made it past level 5 or whatever because the game itself was boring and shitty. but I play the crap out of the character creator.
Goreschach
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Reply #626 on: August 04, 2013, 08:30:55 AM

The tragic thing about COH isn't that the game died, as all MMOs do, but that so many of the brilliant innovations it brought to the genre still haven't been picked up by later titles. A number of them would be even more appropriate in the current f2p environment. Now that the game is dead, a lot of these techniques will basically need to be rediscovered by other studios as the game slips out of the collective mind of the industry.
Threash
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Reply #627 on: August 04, 2013, 08:44:43 AM

The tragic thing about COH isn't that the game died, as all MMOs do, but that so many of the brilliant innovations it brought to the genre still haven't been picked up by later titles. A number of them would be even more appropriate in the current f2p environment. Now that the game is dead, a lot of these techniques will basically need to be rediscovered by other studios as the game slips out of the collective mind of the industry.

Like what exactly?

I am the .00000001428%
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #628 on: August 04, 2013, 08:45:19 AM

COH ( And all the old titles ) also had the luxury of being in a smaller market of games. Now, there are least 10 MMO's launching each month.

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Goreschach
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Reply #629 on: August 04, 2013, 10:03:35 AM

The tragic thing about COH isn't that the game died, as all MMOs do, but that so many of the brilliant innovations it brought to the genre still haven't been picked up by later titles. A number of them would be even more appropriate in the current f2p environment. Now that the game is dead, a lot of these techniques will basically need to be rediscovered by other studios as the game slips out of the collective mind of the industry.

Like what exactly?

I don't keep track of every feature in every MMO, so some of these may have been used elsewhere, but just of the top of my head:

The mission difficulty slider had around half a dozen levels. Every mmo I've seen typically just does some 2/3 split like normal/legendary or easy/medium/hard. Not that six is perfect, I'd like to see more games generalize it to an actual slider that dynamically adjusts monster toughness and spawns. And the mission architect could entirely sustain a character( with the exception of AO slot token things, iirc). Maybe Neverwinter can do this, too? Usually mmo's that even allow character missions tend to gimp them in some way so players won't exploit them. Yes, it's understandable why. Honestly, at this point, I'm past caring what other people do in MMOs.

A lot of games have a sidekick feature now, but how many have exemplaring? Maybe a few, but I can't think of any offhand.

The aforementioned player specific citizen banter. Unlike WoW's scripted phasing system, this was dynamic and used all over the the gameworld. Did ChampsO implement this? I didn't bother with that game for very long, so I can't remember.

Palette and color customizability for the entire character model. Most games that offer any customization only allow for dying of things like articles of clothing. If I recall correctly, even ChampsO was missing some of the cosmetic customizability options of COH. The outfit swap buttons actually let you swap everything about your character, not just outfit. Body size, gender, skin color and texture, etc. And no, Second Life doesn't count. Because it's not a game.

You could arguably claim that COV was an expansion, but it was sold as a standalone sequel. I can't recall any other MMO having crossover compatability with a sequel, even so far as simply 'import your GameX character name to GameX 2!". You could even switch characters over with a quest chain.
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