Character creation

Meow Morta came to be just before the Great Patching called Apocrypha because I thought it would be the best of both the new and the old. I would get 800000 skillpoints immediately and the next 800000 at double speed. Only problem would be to know exactly what I wanted to do. If I chose the wrong path in character creation I could have a head start at doing things I might actually never do...

What did I want from this game? Fun and excitement of course. Mostly independent play but not alone all the time. Slowly growing to become part of an economic backbone for other players... would be tedious and boring. This exciting fun would have to involve shooting, dying and cries of despair and victory. I needed a character who could fight.

I googled and skimmed through search results, read the forums and then googled some more. To be a fighter the character should have high perception and willpower and there would be very little need for charisma. Powergaming seems to be a strong trend among the players and particularly Achura of the Caldari were mentioned in more than one place. But I wanted to consider the roleplaying opportunities the different races of New Eden would give. Besides I didn't like the Achura character portraits I came across.

Amarr: fervent believers with a long history of slaving and conquering. Caldari: emerging police state where money is god. Gallente: liberal democrats. Minmatar: self-emancipated tribes of slaves. For me this clearly ruled out both the Amarr and the Caldari. Looking at pictures there was aesthetic retrofuturistism all over the Gallente and a cyberpunk twist with a splash of grunge in the Minmatar, but that wasn't nearly enough to tip the scale all the way to Minmatar.

Another thing to consider were bloodlines and ancestry. I tried to take into account the influence they had on attributes, the character portrait and roleplaying aspects. Although both the Intaki and Vherokior look nice and both reborns and mystics seem somewhat interesting to roleplay, the attributes just weren't good enough for a fighter. Out of necessity it had to be a choice between a Gallente immigrant with most extra points in intelligence and a Sebiestor tinkerer with most extra points in perception.

I chose sebiestor. I chose Republic Military School. I was ready... or almost ready. Getting the character portrait done proved surprisingly difficult. I think I spent too long at it. Luckily I had found help from the web how to avoid disconnection during character creation. After the face and background were done and I was happy enough about them I tried turning the character to left and right and up and down and every way it ended up she just didn't seem to get on terms with herself. Either she looked too arrogant, hostile or absentminded. The eyes were just stupid most of the time. Finally I found a neat stance and thought it was good and then on the next screen it had been reset. The portrait generation is frustrating and in the end I gave up. Hey, it looks nice enough on the login screen.