So you may have noticed that I have a girl’s name but my toon is a dude. Last week I gave Blizzard $15 to partake in the character customization service that they offer. To be honest it’s a pretty good deal considering that a name change alone is $10, so for $5 more you get the option of a name change AND the re-customization.

Lyssa was the first character I created when I started playing WoW back in December of ‘04. I had this great idea of playing a toon modeled after my wife. Well after almost 5 years of my wife telling me that Lyssa looks like a dyke and having to look at sissy tanking shoulder graphics and sissy character animations I finally got fed up and turned Lyssa into a man.

The entire process was pretty painless, I initiated the process at work by logging into my WoW account, picking the server, the toon then giving Blizzard a credit card number. They ask that you have to be logged out of the game for at least 30 minutes before you can start customizing in the game client, not a big deal since I was at work and wouldn’t be doing it until I got home that night.

I wish I had thought to take some screenshots of the game client, when you login there is an icon next to the character that you are customizing. You have the option to login with the character as-is or change him/her- if you login as-is you can still customize but I’m thinking you have to wait 30 minutes after logging out again. Once I clicked the customize button I was taken back to the original character selection screen. All the race and class buttons are grayed out, the only active buttons are the sex and feature buttons. Your toon actually appears with all the gear you currently have equipped which I thought was pretty neat. Anyway, after about 10 minutes of picking skin color and face I got to the name field.

Now, the name was something that I was struggling with. On one hand everyone who knows me on the server knows me as Lyssa and the blizzard servers will automatically update friend’s lists, etc with the new name. On the other hand…well, it’s a girl’s name.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that who cares if it’s a girl’s name or not and, besides, our server is one of the original servers and any name that I would want is most likely taken already. I decided to stick with what I had.

It’s been a few days now and I’ve got to say that keeping the name isn’t that big a deal, it doesn’t bother me at all. The guildies are having a good row at me (loltranny) and I’ve certainly shocked a few buddies who had no idea that I was through with it.

At the end of the day I’m totally glad I did it, I’m much happier with my toon.