[Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge]

In today’s gaming market, most MMORPGs offer pretty advanced customization. Even so, when I think of 'the players who are the most serious about customization', one game comes to mind before anything else, and that game is Mabinogi.

There was even a running joke a few years ago that when Milletians who had left Mabinogi migrated to other games, "that game’s customization quality went up." If nothing else, that probably says everything about how seriously Mabinogi players take dressing up their characters.

It’s been around for nearly 20 years now, and I found myself wondering why Mabinogi’s customization is still so beloved after all this time... which is more or less what made me sit down and write this post.

A distinctive cartoon art style that has endured from the beginning

I think Mabinogi’s customization is impressively detailed, especially for a game made so long ago. You can change facial features like the face shape, eyes, and mouth, and it goes beyond that too, letting you adjust things like body weight, height, and even age, so there’s a lot of room to create all sorts of character types that match the exact image you have in mind.

And personally, I think the biggest charm is being able to dress those characters in all kinds of outfits and show off a sense of style that feels completely your own.

Of course, graphics technology has advanced so much that realistic visuals are everywhere these days, but that kind of realism also has a downside: if the texture of an outfit or the proportions feel even slightly off, the awkwardness stands out immediately, so in the end I think that naturally puts some limits on how free customization can really be.

By contrast, Mabinogi’s simple cartoon-style look comes with far fewer constraints in that regard. Because of that, everything from modern fashion to cute outfit styling tends to fit the game surprisingly well.

A game that takes dyeing very seriously.. (the black shades above.. all have different color values;)

If I had to pick the biggest reason people say a game’s customization level rises the moment Mabinogi refugees arrive, it would probably be “dyeing”.

Even with the exact same outfit, the overall mood can feel totally different depending on the color, and because Mabinogi lets players control that part themselves, I sometimes think countless players started out dyeing their gear and eventually turned into full-fledged dyeing monsters.

Since I run a blog, I notice that every time the Heart-Pounding Island event comes around, the views on my Siam dye posts suddenly shoot up... and honestly, I can’t help thinking those clicks are coming from Mabinogi’s dyeing monsters after all.

New outfits that keep arriving + collabs

If you want to keep players invested in a game, you need steady updates. So how do you keep fashion-focused players around... well, naturally, you have to keep selling “new clothes”.

Mabinogi regularly sells kits through periodic updates, and those kits bring in brand-new outfits players haven’t seen before. Sure, sometimes older outfits come back in reruns, but new costumes also appear and end up being traded on the Auction House for absurd prices. (Of course... they only get expensive if they’re pretty)

And from time to time, quite fittingly for Mabinogi, the game also does collaborations with anime or manga, and since the lovely outfits and cool weapons used by those series’ protagonists often show up as part of them, it sometimes feels like the perfect items to put the final finishing touch on your character’s outfit suddenly appear out of nowhere.

If you visit the town of Dunbarton in Mabinogi PC, you’ll often see countless pretty characters standing around like statues.

That alone says a lot about how many players are genuinely serious about styling their characters, and personally, if the old version is already at this level, I can’t help quietly looking forward these days to what things will be like once Eternity arrives.