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Raezer speaking: I have taken this from The Cresent Order Forums. I thought it was great reading for someone that is trying to think of how to make their character stand out. Hope you enjoy.

(taken from a post of mine on the SWG forums...)

blurGUIDE #2: Wondering about how to create a great character?

A quick look around the forums reveals that many of us have boarding for over a year and a half, which certainly shows the commitment and excitement that this game has already encouraged in us - and which will only increase as we approach beta, then the game itself in December. Running parallel with this is, of course, is a whole bunch of new posters who have joined us in the past six months, just as keen as the rest of us. It's a truly exciting time to be here.

In addition to posting on the boards and reading some of the better sites which have sprung-up around SWG, I believe there are some other SWG-related activities you can be doing at this stage to maintain this excitement which are not only enjoyable, but will actually enhance your in-game experience and make you more attractive to the PAs which you may wish to consider joining - depending on your in-game goals and desires, of course.

One such area is the creation of a great character to portray in-game.

To be clear, your in-game character is born after undoubtedly some of the hardest decisions you will ever make in the game itself. So, let's begin. What makes up a character? I believe you can broadly break-down a character into five areas: species, name, profession, appearance and a back-story. Let's examine each of these components.

Species: This is the first question you should be asking yourself when it comes to character creation. What species do you want to be? Human? Bothan? Zabrak? Mon Calamari? Wookiee? There are plenty of great online resources regarding each of the playable character species in SWG with the best one being here: www.starwars.com/databank. So what do you want to be? More to the point, why do you want to be that way? This isn't a race, so let's sit back and reflect on why you've just chosen a particular species. Why, for example, do you want to be a Wookiee? Have you always wondered what it was like for Chewie in the movies, not being able to speak Basic, and think this might be an interesting species to portray? Or does it just sound "cool" to be a Wookiee? If you're leaning more towards the latter, I suggest you don't go onto the next step if you want to have a truly "great" character as it will be flawed in some way. How so? Well, if you're going to take the time to design a serious character, you should know everything about him/her and also have a good idea why you decided on those things in the first place. So if you don't know why you want to be a certain species beyond thinking, "Because it sounded cool," take some time in this area. Once again, it's not a race and your character will be all the better for this thought process.

Name: Your character's name is incredibly, incredibly important. After all, it's who you are! Take some real time in dreaming-up your character's name - and I mean that literally. This is a name you should dream-up out of your own thoughts and feelings - not copy from the pages of a book or a movie script. After all, it's already well-established that you won't be able to use popular and existing surnames like Skywalker or Solo (or even mispellings of them such as Skiwalker), so don't even bother trying! And with the recent news that first names will be unique, do you really think you'll be the first person on your server to be called by a common firstname like Matt or Rob? It's even debatable whether certain first names will make the cut at all - or indeed most of the names from EU, which, for some reason, people assume will be 'obscure' enough to sneak through. Unfortunately, they won't. Even if a name is not immediately flagged as already taken or filtered when your character is created, you can rest assured that someone, somewhere, will see your name and report you to a GM. So why bother trying? Use your imagination - this is an RPG after all - and come up with something you feel reflects something of yourself and your character. When it comes to certain races, such as Bothans and Wookiees for example, there may be certain naming conventions you want to follow. If you're unsure in these areas, you can either ask around the SWG community or, and I don't really recommend this (but I need to include it), use SWGs inbuilt name generator when you are creating your character. Personally, I couldn't think of anything worse, but the ability will be there in the game if you so desire using it.

Profession: "Great blur," you're probably saying when you reach this point in the blurGUIDE, "How can I choose a profession when I don't know too much about what SWG is going to offer me?" And I'll admit that this has the hardest area for a person creating a character until recently. However, between some recent FAQ announcements and reading between the lines of some other announcements, I believe there are enough 'general areas' where professions might lie, for you to have a good guess. For example, we know that there will be bounty hunters. We know that there will be craftspeople who make things. We know that there will be people who are politicians... and so on. Do some reading and see what you can come up with. Even if they haven't been officially named in the FAQ like the Entertainer, Smuggler, Marksman or Droid Engineer, I think you'll be able to see where professions are going in order to know where to swing your character. I probably have two points to make about this area of character creation before we move on to the rest of the guide. The first being, try not to tie yourself down too heavily. Don't write an extravagant character bio that revolves around your character making DL44 blasters, for example. Because you can't be 100% sure that this will actually be the case in the game. Better to say that you are a 'blaster maker' or 'weapon smith' in general. The second point is not to get too excited and write 'Jedi' as your profession at this point in time. And if you want to know more about that, see blurGUIDE #1: Thinking of a Jedi character or joining a Jedi PA?

Back-story: During the previous four steps in the creation process, your imagination may have skipped around a bit. In deciding to be a weapons maker, for example, you might have had some half-formed thought about your character having learnt the trade from an uncle. Don't lose these thoughts! They are valuable! Take the ideas that resulted in why you chose the name, race and profession that you did, and use them to help shape a back-story. I cannot emphasise enough that a good back-story will always result in a successful character as it will make you do certain things in the game - and act in certain ways - which you will enjoy. People may ask you questions, for example, which you can reply to 'in-character' because you know so much about them. Don't fall into the trap of 'making it up as you go along,' as this will always fail and be less satisfying in the long term. A back-story doesn't need to be long or written like a novel, either. Some people make that mistake. All you need is an outline of how your character has got from birth to where they are now, and any interesting things that have happened on the way. Detail is good, make no mistake, but you don't need to goi overboard. Also, one last piece of advice; we get a lot of bios sent to us at The Crescent Order. If I read another one where the simple farmboy, or similar, wants to crush the Rebellion because they killed his relatives, I'll explode Moral: Be original.

Appearance: This is a very personal decision when creating a character. Obviously, you must consider each of the steps which have gone before. If your character has just left the Imperial Navy, for example, chances are that he/she is still very fit. Creating a fat character would seem ridiculous for this kind of background. Meanwhile, if your character left the Navy several years ago - and has stopped exercising since - why not add a gut? It's the little details - and the reasons for them - that make a character fun. So don't just create the body of a super fitness guru if it doesn't necessarily make sense. Conversely, don't make your character a fat slob if there's no reason for it. Figure out who your character is, and what they have done to date before deciding on body shape. Then, of course, comes the actual face/hair component of your character. This is even more personal still, and I won't pretend to guide you in this area. Some people will, ultimately, try and model their own face to tie them even more closely to their character - others will go in the opposite direction - bald SWG males will give themselves swinging ponytails. Longhaired girls will play characters with Winona Ryder crops, etc. The only guidance I can give in this area is not to descend into parody. It might be funny to make the most exaggerated character you can... but it will be old after five minutes. Do you really want to spend the next year or two with that character?

Okie dokie. Still with me? How's your character shaping up? I guarantee that if you have followed these steps and put some time into your character, you will not only have a character you enjoy playing - and which others admire - but which will buy your way into virtually any quality PA in the game. Here's a secret: Quality PAs will bend over backwards to get a character like this into their ranks. Make no mistake, a quality character is worth 10 members who just want to walk around, have no idea about their character, want to talk about the latest sports game on the TV and generally just end up as 'space fillers'.

The purpose of this article is to really get you, the SWG player, to think about character creation long before you're allowed anywhere near the SWG character generator. The key bullet points to take home and meditate on are:

* A good character is worth his/her weight in galactic credits

* A good character has been designed and thought about LONG before opening the character creation screen in SWG.

This guide is written in the best intentions of informing and perhaps even entertaining the SWG community as we await the arrival of this game. If anything, I trust I'm helping people get a better grip on what makes a good character "great" and how they can capitalise on that both in-game and outside of the game, such as in PA relationships, etc.

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