Well, I\'ve though about this a lot, and I think it\'s time for me to actually post it and share my thoughts with the rest of you
Have you ever felt symphaty for all the monsters you so happily put down when you invade their home and steal their treasures? Have you ever though about why those bandits in Morrowind just attack you without even saying so much as a word, or why they attack you even if you\'re wearing an ?ber-armor and the best weapon in the game when they themself run around with rags and penknifes?
And are orcs or trolls so stupid that you cannot converse with them other than with a broadsword? Are all monsters mindless fools who attacks everything they see, even if they know that they wont stand a chance and that they could as well avoid a fight?

I want to change the fact that most monsters in RPGs are stupid and mindless creatures who exists only as XP-sources. I want to have an option to all this hack n\' slash and give each monster a personality. Monsters who you can form bonds to, and even refer to as friends or allies.
I will try to explain what I mean by giving you an example.

Your character are wandering about in Yliakum when he suddenly bumps into a monster. The monster takes a quick look at your pathetic armor and weak sword, and decides that you\'re easy prey, so it attacks you, but it underestimates your skills and with a little luck you beat it to the ground.
The monster becomes scared and begs of you to spare its life, and you do, because you find it unnecessary to kill the poor thing for some reason, so you cast a healing-spell on him. This changes your relation to the monster to \"neutral\", which means that he wont attack you unless you attack him first. Later, with help of your charisma and charm you manage to raise your relationship with the monster to \"friendly\". The monster will now defend you if you get attacked, give you gifts, or sell things to you, and if you go even further he will eventually consider you as an ally and perhaps even stand by your side on your adventures.
To avoid stupid AI, monsters who works in groups such as clans works as one single unit, meaning that if you help one member of the clan it will spread it amongst the other clan-members so that eventually all members sets you to \"neutral\" for example.
So each monster has a special relationship to every player, and threats all players different, and if they get killed the monster simply dies and the data is lost.
This could create pretty intresting situations between players who hunts for food and XP and players such as druids who defends their allies.

Being allied with normally hostile creatures could give you access to their stores (with special offers), give you free food, a place to sleep, important information and so on...
You could also get special, random quests that raises the clans belief in you, or gives you items or trias.

There should be many ways to create a bond to monsters. If you get captured by their clan for example (this would be nice to see in a later version), you could use your charisma to manipulate the members. Perhaps you\'ll manage to convince them to release you, either by bribing them, or simply by using your charm.
Also, if an NPC gets attacked by another creature and you side with the first (or the other) creature he will think of it as a friendly act and raise his relationship to you.

Perhaps I\'m a bit enthusiastic here, but it would be great to see some of those ideas in PS someday. Ah well, you can always dream

Well, I\'m pretty bored, so I\'ll start this thread about creating your own \"not-so serious\" RPG character. )

Include:

Name: (name here)

Race: (your race)

Class: (Class here)

Job: (Your job here)

Stats: (intelligence, strenght, wisdom etc.)

Weapon: (Your ?ber-weapon here)

Armor: (Your armor)

Description: (Describe your characters personality)

...or invent some of your own.

Well, English is not my mother tongue, so please add comments and corrections to this story.

***

As Ika stood there, gazing into the horizon she had this strange feeling again. Pictures formed in front of her eyes, disappeared, and turned into new ones.

She saw soldiers running for their lifes, running from their fate, only to get slaughtered by it.
She could hear the sounds of battle, the screams of thousands of people, fighting for their lifes.

Almost as if she was there...

\"Are yo oke lass? Yo look lie you\'e seen a Slagh\".
The stonebreaker observed her with worried eyes.
\"I\'m fine Girdur, don\'t worry about me\".
\"Ah, ye look pale. Ere, ye can take me coat\".
She couldn\'t help but smile. At least she wasn\'t alone on her journey. The dwarf obviously wouldn\'t leave her that easily.
\"No, really I\'m fine\".
\"Oke, if ye se so\".

A lightning followed by a distant rumble caught their attention. The weather in this part of Yliakum could be lethal. Ika had heard stories of horrible diseases caused by the storms.
The dark clouds came closer.
\"Ba me hamer! We need ta find shelter\".
They were in the middle of nowhere. It was like a huge desert of dark thoughts and despair.
Raindrops started to fall from the sky. It became colder all of a sudden and the raindrops turned into snowflakes. Ika pulled the coat close to herself.
\"Look, a hole in the ground, and it looks deep enough\".
\"Aye, ge down bfore d storm gits worse\".
She climbed into the hole and found herself in a small cave. It was dark and smelly, but at least it was warm.
Girdur slided into the cave and landed flexible as a Enkidukai on the floor beside of her. Despite his shape He almost didn\'t make a sound when he landed.
\"Tis a nice place, we\'ll wait out t storm here\".
Girdur sat down with his legs crossed. He dug in his backpack and picked up a piece of meat.
\"Are ye hungry lass? Ere\', eat this\".
Gratefully she received the piece of meat. It was pretty old by now, but she hadn\'t eaten for almost three days, so she accepted his offer gratefully.
\"Ere\'s a tunnel in ere\', I wonder where t leads.\"
When She got used to the darkness she saw the tunnel too. It was very dark and seemed to lead into eternity.
\"I\'m not sure if I want to find out\".
\"Shhh, did ye hear da sound?\"
As Ika listened she could hear a dripping sound bouncing between the walls. She tried to figure out where the sound came from and realized that it came from the dark tunnel.

\"Thas da sound of water. Less go deeper.\"
\"I\'m not sure...\"
\"Ah, jos fallo me lass. Sun we can feel da taste of fresh water.\"
Ika wasn\'t sure she liked the idea. Unlike Girdur her eyes wasn\'t used to complete darkness. She almost couldn\'t see where she walked, and found it very unpleasant.
They walked throught the narrow passage and got into a small chamber. In the middle of the small room was a natural fountain. A stream of water ran down from the rock.
The water was refreshing and they drank until they became unthirsty. Satisfied they sat down for a while.
\"Ye shodd ge sum sleep lass. Dunn worry, I\'ll gard ye.\"
She had slept in better places, but Girdur was right, she needed the rest.

She loosened the bedroll from the backpack, put her head against it, and closed her eyes.

***To be continued***

Well, I finally found the link to the \"crystal Space\" homepage (you can find it in the \"features\" link) and when I took a look at the screenshots I became stunned 8o
The graphics is fantastic (and will suit the game perfectly). I mean, for a free game the graphics is incredible, and the possibilities looks endless.
Wow, I expected a lot from this game from the beginning, but now I understand what potential this game really has )
Perhaps this really IS the game of our dreams, not only because of the graphics, but because of the gameplay as well.
This game is gonna be the best MMORPG ever, I can feel it

BTW. When you\'re visiting the CS homepage, don\'t forget to take a good look at the \"old screenshots\" as well. They say a lot

Take a good look at these
crystal.sourceforge.net/drupal/node.php?id=6

Here\'s some older ones
http://crystal.sourceforge.net/drupal/node.php?id=33

Will there be body-zones in Planeshift? With \"body-zones\" I mean zones on your body where you can get hurt, or tattoo yourself.
If a monster hits you in the face with his claws for example it would leave a scar (which heals by time).
Injury should even affect your condition, so if a monster breaks your foot you cannot run, if he breaks your arm your attack gets weaker and your aiming sinks.
If the monster is strong it could even mutilate your limbs so that some players walks around with prosthes (until they find a hospital who can replace their limbs.
You should also be able to tattoo yourself at \"the tattoo palace\" (a shop where you buy tattoos)
It would be more realistic, and it would make players become more unique.
You could also see what path a player had choosen by looking at his/her body (warriors usually have more scars than bards right?)

BTW: I think male players should have the ability to shave themselves. Beards should grow by time.

I\'m looking for a \"good\" guild. There are many evil guilds around, but is there any good guilds?

I don\'t like the character creation. You just see a 2D pic of the race you wanna be, I rather see 3D models so that you can turn the character around and zoom in to adjust faces for example.
Oh, and wouldn\'t It be cool if you could change every section of you body? You could for example choose the eye-color of your char, add tattoos, choose a hair you like and so on.
This would make every char become more unique. Of course you could buy different types of clothes later to look different from other PCs (and NPCs).
I have a list of things I would like to see in character modeling.

Face-section

*Hair-style and hair-color - There should be a good selection of hairs to choose from like ordinary hair, pigtail, bold hair, ponytail, mohawk, short hair, long hair etc.

*Face-type - If you want a thin face, a bold face, and so on.

*Eyebrows - if you want to wear make-up of different styles or just want to make your eyebrows thick or thin.

*Nose - Adjust your nose to make it bigger or smaller, and if you want you could add piercing to your nose

*Eyes - It\'s in the eyes right? So you should be able to change eye-color and have a good selection of eyes like evil eyes, pretty eyes, shy eyes, mean eyes, serious eyes etc.

Mouth- You should have a good selection of mouths to choose from as well. You should be able to add lipstick in different colours, decide if you wanna smile or if you wanna look sad, or serious and so on...

chin-  If you want a small or bold chin...

Face tattoos-  If you wanna have a tattoo in you face... There should be some different kinds of tattoos like clansymbols, religious symbols and so on...

Body section

Chest- What do you wanna wear tonight?
You should be able to choose if you wanna look Very muscular, muscular, normal, weak, very weak. If you choose to play as a girl you should be able to adjust the size of...you know hehehe  :rolleyes:  (no Lara Croft sizes thank you, Its unnatural )

Arms- Long arms or short arms? You decide!

Stomach-  I rather see players stomaches grow if they eat too much and never train
Anyway you should be able to have the choice to be fat, or to be thin.

Body tattoos and piercing-  More tattoos and piercing for your body.

Legs-  Adjust the lenght of your legs

Lenght-  Here you can choose if your char should be short or tall.