Quote Originally Posted by kyuven View Post
As much as this would be nice, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Definitely not before 3.2.
They've mentioned time and time and time and time and time and time and time again that the major reason for the lack of customization options is due to the character files becoming too bloated.
To put it another way, in order to add GW2's system to this game, they would basically have to cram what amounts to a half-sized inventory system that could potentially contain every item model in the game within in, when they don't even have enough capacity to add something like a tacklebox, something they actually want to add and have expressed as much in an official response.

To put it another way: You'll get your "glamour book" when fishers get their tacklebox and not one moment sooner.
"But that doesn't make sense! They have nothing to do with each other!"
Both solutions would end up with a catalogue of items used for a specific purpose. The tacklebox, however, would only need the item names and icons, while the glamour book would also need the item's appearance files.
A box full of worms has more in common with a fashion magazine than you'd think.
I admittedly do not buy this "the data structures will get too big" claim. I find myself perplexed how their database could be structured that this could actually cause a problem. For an example, there are other games with more intensive item structures where appearance sets are much more flexible and they have significantly larger inventories to work with.

A "Glamour Book" (or a tackle box) should not be a large data construct and should have a rather small memory footprint.

Example: Demon Tabard of Aiming.

The Demon Tabard of Aiming has a unique ItemID of 9. In one table of the database there is a row 9 that then has columns detailing everything about the item; its stats, its equipable classes (a hex flag likely; 0000F1 means bards and archers can wear it), whether or not it can be converted/projected/dyed (likely a binary flag; 001100), which crafter can repair it, whether it's tradable or unique, if it can be sold, iLVL, required level, etc. This is the main database entry that everybody's Demon Tabard of Aiming points to.

Each character has an inventory database where it lists what items you have, their ItemIDs, where they're located currently, whether they're bound or not, whether they've been dyed.

These are small values. And even spread out amongst millions of characters still don't account for a very large amount of space. The item structure in this game should be very simple because our items are very simple and we can only do so many things with them.

Something like a Glamour Book could be as simple as a binary 1/0 (Yes/no) next to each ItemID to indicate whether or not you have that item added and available to use as a glamour.

But without knowing how their data is structured we'll of course never know (though I would absolutely love to!).