Death wears no clothes

I'm not into MMORPGs or whatever they are called these days. Never saw the point in paying monthly for a game I already owned, never saw the point in paying monthly for what is basically a 3d chatroom combined with a shallow RPG experience. Never saw the point in paying monthly for a game that demands dozens of hours on end for just reaching level 10 (I can get that for free just by playing Baldur's Gate). I think the monthly payment is what mostly had me off. And the games didn't really offer me something extra that would make me invest the money and the hours. Not to mention that I can put aside any game I'm playing and get back to it a month later without having to worry about a month I paid without playing. Not to mention that when a new expansion is released everyone has to buy it in order to have the privilege of accessing the new areas in a game they already have been paying for monthly for over a year.

At any rate, I'm not an online RPG player, one way or the other. So I might not "get" the point in the next thing I'm going to mention. This Wonderland article mentioned some (very nice indeed) concept art from "Guild Wars", with a link to even more concept art. What piqued my interest is actually this link to flickr collection of 2 factions from the game, the Assassin and the Ritualist.

Now, call me old fashioned, but don't both character seem to be somewhat lacking in terms of clothing? I don't know about the Ritualist (I guess there's more than one way pleasing the ghosts, if you catch mah drift), but I can't really see that assassin in that outfit. Especially if you check the head-gear. It seems that they had a very limited budget that could have gone either to clothes or to a headgear. If you take a look at the assassin, just to push the point, it looks completely ridiculous. (Speaking of which, why would an assassin need to hide her face? It's not like your victims will be in any state to recognise you). I think Soul Calibur's Taki had a better take on the whole thing, She wore a full body, tight fitting suit, which is a lot more reasonable. As a thief/assassin, any loose garment might get caught in some nail or the likes when you climb the fence/wall. She did have a mask in Soul Calibur, which, I guess was later dropped. Again, in comparison, Guild Wars assassin is all about loose garments, from skirt to jacket. I guess the idea is that she's dressed like that to her victims a very nice parting gift.

Again, I'm familiar with the females in fantasy, and the whole "wouldn't a chain armour be a better choice than that leather bra?" concept. It's not a one-way discussion, as having your heroine run around in (leather) underclothes is not much more sensible than having your hero run, jump and climb in full plate armour. But you can keep the eye-candy appeal without sacrificing your common sense. Take Xena for example. I also couldn't help noticing that both new classes were a bit morbid in nature. I guess someone has to cater to the Goth kids. That would explain the outfits as well.