[Digital_Utopia]

First off, a "confession" of sorts. For the last 2 weeks I've been living the WoW life. Although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun, most of the reason why I took a friend up on an offer was to get a chance to experience the game now - as opposed to how I remembered it when I left shortly after BC.

However, through dealing with WoWHead and what used to be the Armory, an old annoyance has been refreshed. I can go to WoWHead, and see my character, his gear, and any other gear on that site in 3D. I can go to Battle.net, and see a picture of my character exactly how he appears in the game (looks like a shot from the char select screen). In LotRO? Oh, well - we can see a class icon, or choose a predefined icon representing our race for the sigs - but that's it.

It's really a pity - considering how much work they put into cosmetics and dyes. Something that WoW still hasn't done. No, it's beyond a pity - it's just downright annoying. It's like someone giving you a free car, but telling you you can't leave the driveway.

Here's the deal - I don't make posts to whine, and I'm not about to start. In an obscure way, Lua Scripting has made what once was infeasible - merely time consuming. Because of the ability to link any item in the chat window via id, it's now possible to "try on" every single piece of gear in the game.

That, in combination with a 3D ripper - should allow for the same web-based try-on, character display. The type of thing this game practically screams for.

Now, like I said - this would still be time consuming, especially if I'm the only one gathering stuff; but I'm not about to start asking for help until I've got something to show for it. I just thought I'd throw this out there - in case there are others interested in this idea. I'm going to start off with a 3D viewer for the individual races/sexes without gear - hopefully including the individual hair/face meshes for each race/sex, and color options.

Whenever that's up - then the search for help comes in.