Just a thought from a returning player

[Hvinire]

Actually, the dev. team has been discussing internally about a feature such as this. While we can't promise anything right now, and developers are concerned about preventing harassment or misuse by allowing this, we'll continue to carefully look into it.

[Mirage]

The only sort of harassment I can think of that could come from this is if you also allowed people to change their names along with their race/gender. If that is the problem, force characters whose names have been changed keep the previous name as a 4th line in their search comments for a specified amount of time, for example 6 months.

[Rwolf]

If the dev team is discussing this on a moral scale, I assume it's possible to add system wise then. The only abuse factor I see is that someone can get married in FFXI (dunno who still does that) and change to same sex which is something SE specifically doesn't want. Don't want to start that downhill snowball and get this thread locked debating on the justification of such. If that is a concern, have them forfeit their rings. I like being hume myself, but I wouldn't want something so small to affect the whole community from being able to switch races/genders if they want. Monitize it and lock it out for a period of time like server swaps if they are concerned about constant changing. Not that I see the harm in it, but I can see the annoyance to some.

Well its interesting, on Earth, witchcraft and shamanism have for thousands of years also had masters who would go to sleep and their soul would take control of animals. In witchcraft it was called 'borrowing'. They claimed to have so much affinity with the natural world, they could take over minds of birds and fly through the sky seeing the world from the birds points of view, all while their body is sleeping at home on the bed.
So that sounds more like your monstrosity there. Or beastmaster, taking control of a wild animal and making it attack far stronger mobs, which is suicidal and the pet only does it because you control its heart. So we already have affinity-magics in the game, in Bst and Mon.
But in none of those cases does your own physical body go through a permanent change. When you exit the Mon system you are the same person. You have only used some affinity magics.
It is not the same as you changing your own race, DNA, whole entire skeleton, brain size etc. which you would do if you permanently changed from galka to tarutaru overnight. Its totally absurd to me. And has nothing to do with affinity-magics, which millions of people on Earth have claimed to use since the dawn of time.

Honestly, if we want to get literal to Earth, body augmentation, transplanting and sex change is a very real thing so it really isn't that absurd. Compared to witchcraft and shamanism, which isn't a commonly believed in and proven thing. A world filled in magic, filled with avatars, an elvaan who can shapeshift into a dragon which is her real form, gods, traveling in time and alternate dimensions. There's a way to get around anything. Visit one of the 5 mothercrystals of another race and the power of that crystal changes you permanently altering your form or tons of other story-related outs.

[Darwena]

I Will be happy with the facial/hair change.

[Kari]

Actually, the dev. team has been discussing internally about a feature such as this. While we can't promise anything right now, and developers are concerned about preventing harassment or misuse by allowing this, we'll continue to carefully look into it.

There's like 2 players in the entire game that would care about harassment cases enough to prevent this feature.
Honestly the abuse cases aren't even worth worrying about.

[Demonjustin]

If harassment is an issue, it should be reported to GMs, they is what they are here for afterall, and I am sure the name of the character would not change anything to do with the account for which it is attached, meaning that if people are abusing it to harass others it should be easy enough to take note of, and punish those who are using it in such a way.

[Camiie]

Actually, the dev. team has been discussing internally about a feature such as this. While we can't promise anything right now, and developers are concerned about preventing harassment or misuse by allowing this, we'll continue to carefully look into it.

I can't think of any right, privilege, ability, tool, etc. that can't be abused or misused somehow. We still have those things. Just put a time and monetary limit on it and be prepared for the occasional GM call. I think the devs are making things more complicated than they really need to be.