Quote Originally Posted by Naunet View Post
Once again: WoW is not the only MMO with an appearance log and many other MMOs have been able to implement it much earlier on in their life cycles. WoW added their appearance log AFTER it had become hugely popular in other MMOs. Stop pointing to the time it took WoW to add one as some excuse.
I know of only one other AAA MMO that has a similar large scale appearance catalog, that being GW2, and quite frankly they had some of the best talent working on their backend (as evidenced by their mega-server tech as well as their ability to patch while the game is live and simply require a quick restart of the client to apply the changes)...and my point with the time it took WoW (and GW2 in development, which took 5 years to come release) was that it's not an easy thing to put together on a larger scale.

Other games tend to use what are essentially costume panels. You can save 1-8 outfits (depending on the game) by essentially equipping a gear piece in that slot on the cosmetic panel menu, then choosing to display that piece of gear over another. This approach is the more common approach. None of those games simply save the appearance in a catalog for you to use later.

So, given how infrequently the catalog has been implemented, a logical discussion is going to look at not only which games have added it but also how and when it was added. That it took 4.5 years for WoW to actually implement it is absolutely relevant, as the difficulty of designing and implementing such a system is relevant to the discussion...assuming it's feasible (could technically be added, but ends up with some nasty side effects, which means it's possible but not feasible) or possible at all.