ArcheAge Character Creation: Why I'm So Impressed

Listen, that title had ever single word capitalized, so you KNOW I'm srs.

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you've probably seen a couple of my Archeage inspired recreations. This is the first game in a while that has me legitimately excited about character creations, and here is why:

 MAKEUP.

Not body paint, not war paint, not dirt/bruise options, not just variety in facial/hair options, but literal MAKEUP options.

Now, don't get me wrong. Having cool dirt/warpaint/feature options is awesome, and I think tons of people love that, including myself. But I've never seen a game with actual eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush, and lip options that are THIS sophisticated. Most games I've played have 4-6 "makeup" options that minimally change the character's "eyeshadow" color.

So first, let me tell you a little bit about ArcheAge. (This is not a sponsored post. I am writing this because I'm pumped, no other reason!)


It's a sandbox MMO that originated in Korea, and is currently being translated and localized in the US. It's only in alpha here, but you can sign up for a chance to get in beta, or purchase a founder's pack to get early access to the game and help test in alpha and/or beta stages. Is it worth it to do that? To me, yes. There's more I like about this game than the character creation! The engine feels great, the combat feels intuitive and responsive, and yes, it is different from WoW (you know you were thinking it.) The endgame is mostly player driven world PvP, but if youre more into crafting, there is a WORLD of options. Farming, building, crafting, even pirating. You can literally build a giant ship and then LIVE on the ocean being a criminal pirate as your endgame, and it's viable. How cool is that?

The Sr. Community Relations Manager up at Trion Worlds saw one of my recreations and was kind enough to grant me alpha access, so I don't have creep on my husband's account anymore. I'm having a ton of fun playing it as well as playing with the character creation. I highly encourage you to watch some videos and streams of the gameplay, and consider signing up for beta or alpha. It will be free to play when it launches (sometime later this year), so you won't have to wait too long if you decide not to play beta or alpha!

Ok, let me just show you some options here.

You can choose from 4 races, male or female. Pretty standard. For today's purposes I'll show you the Nuian, which is basically a normal human. Here's what you see once you pick your race and gender:

You can choose from premade options, or create your own face from scratch. The tabs on the left for Eyes, Nose, Mouth, and Head all have sliders to adjust everything imaginable. (That's how I made a character that looks a lot like me. More on that later.)

The first thing that struck me about this character creation was the Eyes tab on the left. It had the standard options for iris color, but it had something I was far more interested in. BROW OPTIONS. Yes, viable brow options. From the way out there exotic types to the more wearable, realistic, sophisticated types.

As you can see, there are 4 pages of options. I highlighted a couple I really liked: the super arched, the badass straight brow, and my favorite, a nice angular but toned down brow (bottom right). You can change brow thickness with sliders, and you can change brow color.

The next thing that struck me was the plethora of eyeshadow/eyeliner options. This is when I knew I would be writing a blog post about it, and when my plan to do a series of recreations was born.

The eye makeup options range from simple black liner in varying winged styles, to smoky eyes in lots of colors, to elaborate, creative face paint. There's a huge range, and I love that.

I also love how you can see the Korean style influence in a lot of the makeup options, but they've definitely incorporated more Western styles. Whoever designed this SERIOUSLY knew what was up. Just look:

You can also customize by changing the eye makeup intensity with a slider:

At that point, I didn't think it could get any better. But it did. They even offer sophisticated blush and contour options.  Seriously, whoever designed this deserves a fucking medal.

There are different blush shapes and colors, and you can change the blush intensity just like the eye makeup intensity. The only thing that could make the blush options better would be a color chooser, but I'm so not complaining. They range from rusty hues that look awesome as contour, to pale lilac blush that's surprisingly on point with this year's trends (Radiant Orchid, anyone?)

And before you even ask, lips, yes. Just yes.

The options in this game have the most color payoff of any I've seen, and I love that. They use a color chooser system along with a dark-to-light slider so you can change intensity. The only thing that could make this better would be matte lip options, and that's a stretch. I've never seen a good matte, opaque lip in a game, but I would LOVE to. Even without that option, I'm still impressed.

So, after exploring the options and drooling over half of them, I decided to do what I had wanted to from the moment I saw the viable brow options and beautiful eye makeup: a recreation.

I used the sliders to make the character resemble me as much as possible, picked a style, and recreated it as best I could. I started simple:

I loved the idea and immediately went for one of my favorites, which was much more complex:

And I kept going:

The latest one I did was a different race, the cat-like humanoid Firran. I did this one because it' my actual in-game character! It didn't turn out quite as striking as the first ones, simply because I couldn't get the character to look much like me to begin with. But, I still had tons of fun doing it!

So that's it guys. I hope you enjoyed this little write up on what makes the ArcheAge character creation so impressive to me. As I said before, the gameplay is just as fantastic as the character creation so far. I'm so grateful to have access to the alpha (thanks Scapes!), and I can't wait to see what else happens in the game.

And yes, I will definitely be doing more recreations!

Do you play ArcheAge? Have you watched any streams/videos? What do you think? If you have any questions, comments, requests for recreations, or want to see more screenshots or a video, let me know! You can comment here or tweet at me: @coffee__pls

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Products used in recreations:

Look 1:

• Nyx green color correcting primer
• Skin79 BB Cream Hot Pink
• Nyx blush in Cocoa and Taupe (eyes and cheeks)
• ELF brow kit in Medium
• MUFE eyeshadow No. 162 (brows)
• ELF Cream Eyeliner
• Clinique Chubby Stick in Super Strawberry
• Red Cherry Lashes #83
• Circle Lenses: Barbie Super Moe Moe Brown (from uniqso.com)

Look 2:

• Nyx green color correcting primer
• Revlon Colorstay foundation in Ivory (for oily/combo)
• Little Sparrow Cosmetics blush in Lavender
• Nyx Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk (all white work)
• Nyx Macaron Lippie in Violet (with clear gloss)
• Red Cherry Lashes #83
• Circle Lenses: Barbie Super Moe Moe Brown (from uniqso.com)

Look 3:

• Nyx green color correcting primer
• Revlon Colorstay foundation in Ivory (for oily/combo)
• Nyx blush in Taupe
• Nyx blush in Cocoa (on eyes)
• ELF brow kit in Medium
• MUFE eyeshadow No. 162 (brows)
• ELF Cream Eyeliner
• Nyx Jumbo Eye Pencil in Black Bean
• Vaseline (to smudge out eyeshadow)
• I forgot what I was wearing on my lips!
• Circle Lenses: Barbie Super Moe Moe Brown (from uniqso.com)

Look 4:

• Nyx green color correcting primer
• Hard Candy Glamoflauge concealer in Ultra Light
• Nyx Blush in Taupe
• ELF brow kit in Medium
• MUFE eyeshadow No. 162 (brows)
• Nyx Wonder Pencil in Light (brow cover)
• Nyx Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk (base for stripes)
• UD eyeshadow in Peace, Ransom, and Honey (strips)
• Makeup Geek eyeshadow in Bitten (stripes)
• Sonia Kashuk matte neutral eyeshadow palette (grey eyeshadow)
• ELF cream eyeliner (speckles/liner)
• Nyx Doll Eyes mascara
• Nyx Macaron Lippie in Lavender
• Circle Lenses: Barbie Romana Grey