Sorg is a name that has become synonymous with the beauty profession in EntropiaUniverse. Having spawned in Entropia in August 2005, he did not start his beautician business until almost a year and a half later. Despite this late start, his determination has enabled him to become the most skilled beautician in the game in just 11 months, successfully unlocking the fabled “afro” cut just a couple of months ago. Then suddenly, upon the arrival of VU9.0, almost everything he had achieved to date in his chosen profession was wiped from existence... or was it?
Sorg, a member of the “Vampires HQ” society, explains his move into beauty as a way to cover his hunting losses, selling all his mining and crafting skills to buy hair spray and gel to start his beauty skilling. Notwithstanding some light-hearted jibes about his new career choice, membership in Vampires HQ (primarily a hunting society) enables Sorg to have access to a regular supply of beauty products. Eventually he was able to further his skilling from the income he was receiving from his new business, even attracting investors. “Indeed, I have some investors, who are also friends." says Sorg of his benefactors, which include Neodav and Pingouin, along with the most recent addition, Littlefeather.
In the real word Sorg is a 22 year-old mechanical design engineering student in his 5th year of study. He explains one of the drawbacks of his virtual identity. “The most annoying thing is that it's taking too much time, and even causing me some trouble in real life. It’s hard to go sleep when people are still arriving at the salon late into the night.” He is a little too scared of actually counting just how many hours he spends in game, but says “Around 80% of it is spent on beauty, including looking for stock, meeting people and replying to PMs”
To help free up some of his in-game time, Sorg employs a number of associates to sell his services for him, providing the community with much needed jobs for those with an aversion to sweatin. With the small amount of free time he does have, he enjoys a little hunting and adds “I started skilling Mind Force recently by healing some sweaters at swamp camp, and I try to keep skilling MF from time to time. I also chat a lot as I meet a lot of people by doing beauty and get many new friends out of it.”
I confess, when I met up with Sorg to talk to him about his Entropian career I was anticipating a fair bit of negativity, but was pleasantly surprised by the positive outlook he has. When I asked for his views on VU 9.0, and how the recent changes might affect him personally, his immediate response was “I like it”. Slightly shocked by this initial reaction, I asked him to explain. “The beauty system is now made to allow more customisation than ever before. Each part of the face now has different shape and skin and there is a lot more options on body too, 19 now whereas there were 5 before as well as some new hair styles, party-coloured hair and beards.” When asked about the fact that he previously had unlocked 26 hairstyles but now is down to just the ones available with avatar creation, he explains “I read a lot of people were angry with
MA because they couldn't make their avatar different than others and that everybody was looking the same.
MA may have scratched all the previous avatar system, but are now building it on a more solid basis, which will eventually allow people to customize the avatars far more than pre VU 9.0.” and regarding those lost hair cuts? “I would of course preferred having them right after the VU, because it’s now 2 months of skilling hair for nothing. However, they have balanced it a bit, by adding more settings to body and face surgery, so I still have some unique unlocks. I fear more for the lower skilled beauticians, who got most of the things locked again in surgery and hair.”
One of the things Sorg hopes to see in the future is some new beauty skills to unlock; “It's getting slow now, and it'll be hard to unlock all the new features on body without a new skill. Maybe a loot system, like they did for colouring this VU too!”
One of his regrets about the new VU was the removal of the hairstyles people already had purchased, “I did feel bad for all the people who got an expensive haircut shortly before the announcement from
MA that their avatars would be reset. It will probably have to be after VU 9.1 before they will be able to replace them now, since the VU 9.0 didn’t release the extra cuts as I expected.”
I hope VU 9.1 contains many extra cuts for Sorg, as I hear rumours of a lynch mob if certain people don’t get their Mohawks back sharpish!
