Which skin tone do you find most appealing for the dark elves? (Images in Blog)

Blog by Rosie Rappaport, Senior Art Director

This week we would like to get your ideas about the skin tones of dark elves.

Way back when we were first creating the EverQuest player characters, we wanted the dark elves to be totally black and shiny, like obsidian. But with the tech at the time, there was no way to add true highlights to surfaces so if we made the skin totally black, it would have been really hard to see the features. If we painted in highlights, the overall color would have looked more grey. Our compromise was to make them blue – because it’s a cold and recessive color, similar to pure black, but not grey and light enough to show features. Thus- the blue dark elf was born! Fast forward 18 years, and there have been many interpretations of what skin tone dark elves should have from blues to purples and even to white. Don’t worry though, we are of course going to be creating options in EQNext, but we want to know where to concentrate the range.

A- Do you like a very light, almost albino dark elf? They look very elegant and it could be argued that underground dwellers would have very light skin.

B- Medium is about what we have currently colored the concept for dark elves that we’ve already showed you.

C- Saturated skin is closer to the saturated blues of original EverQuest.

D- Very dark is the color we originally thought would be cool, and couldn’t do- but now we think we can!

Let us know which you find most appealing, and give us your thoughts and feedback in the forums!
EverQuest Next