We need to talk about beards. Since my college days as a painter I have wanted a full, bohemian beard. Alas, it was not in the cards as every attempt I made over the last ten to fifteen years ended in a patchy, wiry mess that hardly passed as an artist’s beard. Instead I have kept my facial hair closely trimmed, a weak shadow of the real thing. On several occasions I’ve even grown a handlebar moustache to make up for the loss, but it’s never the same. I want a manly beard. Recently I’ve had some success, but up until then I had only one refuge for building a better beard.
Come on Square Enix, are you even trying?
Enter MMO character creators. Any chance I get I slap a beard on the face of a dwarf, human, orc, or elf because it is my chance to live the dream. It’s one of the joys of creating a character in an MMO, right? To design a look without limitations? Except even in this world of possibility I find myself limited. Too often MMOs have let me down with their poor facial hair selections. One of the reasons I often chose female avatars is because the customization options are better, but they shouldn’t be and beards are the obvious choice for adding spice to the male characters. We should have a wide range of styles, shapes, and shades regardless of setting—fantasy, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic— it doesn’t matter, beards are always in fashion. As it stands I’m lucky to find one good choice in each MMO I play and that just isn’t right. And don’t get me started on the NPCs I find in those games with better beards than the character creator offers. That’s just cruel.
Well done, ArenaNet. But could I have more than one option please?
So please MMO developers and studios, hire a guy whose only task is to create luxurious, exotic beards for me to choose from. Sell them to me in cash shops, gate them behind reputation grinds, place them in chests at the end of progression raiding, I don’t care, just don’t leave my avatar’s chin naked and ashamed. Sure, class balance will be even more difficult when beards start unexpectedly increasing damage output, buffing abilities, and lowering cool downs but that’s an unavoidable consequence of being awesome and I’m willing to live with it if you are. Just give me the beards, and I’ll give you my loyalty.
Waiting For Rez 
I 100% agree. I hate when games have poor beard options. I hate jewelry and don’t want eyepatches, so the ways in which I can customize a male avatar often come down to beards and scars. Scars aren’t exactly great, so too few beards and I feel like you should’ve rolled the character’s looks for me because I am not going to care!
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I agree, and as someone who ends up with a lot of alts I don’t want them to all end up looking the same so the more options the better. I had this dwarf shaman in WoW I really liked but I could never make another dwarf because there was only one good face and I didn’t want them to look the same. The beards on that race since the remodel are pretty awesome though.
I’d also like to see a robust tatoo selection in character creators. Multiple styles, full sleeves, etc. the Norns have a lot of choices in GW2 but with most games I see an occasional face tattoo but that’s it. My memory may be rusty but I think there was a tatoo paror in one of the old THPS games, maybe the one for the Dreamcast. I just remember getting sleeves for my skater. Something like that in game would be nice.
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The mental image of looting a beard out of a chest at the end of a progression raid is amazing. That’s all I wanted to say about that.
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Swords are for pansies. Real adventurers wrestle dragons with their beards.
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Come to think if it, I have looted a beard or two from mobs in Trove. But then in that game looting is like shopping a community garage sale blindfolded. Anything’s liable to pop up.
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Come to think about it, I don’t find too many games with good beards in them.
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