I think once I get racial shields done (something ive always wanted to see in game) ill work on stuff like that! Right now I am waiting for declined/approved or this is what you need to fix from the art department.
They have particle ornamenations in Everquest 2. As for doing this in Player Studio its pretty much impossible without the in house particle editor SOE uses for Everquest. Considering there limitations on player studio (no alpha channels for fancy scrolling textures such as the blood shield, or ocean series of items) it sounds like they are trying to keep things simple compared to what they are capable of in house.
SOE is taking baby steps here. For every submission, their artists have to take the time to review it and make notes for changes or approve/decline. If you only have twenty submissions per day that's not bad. If you have 500 submissions per day there will be a huge backlog and all of a sudden that artist is now a freshman-level college instructor -- probably not what they signed up for. SOE has stated they are taking this program slowly. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the more talented Player Studio artists have some of the limitations removed over time. I know that the artists have mentioned on several occasions that they are very impressed with some of the player studio items already submitted.
Yeah they want to see how this goes and they may expand to give us Alpha access, right now though I feel this is enough. Remember you can request particle effects added in the upload process and they may add it.
From what we've seen so far, there are a lot of neat items being submitted. I always take a few minutes to look thru the posts where people show their items. Very impressive. I would say you're right. As time goes on and artist "John Doe" shows he's able to provide good quality items that fit the proper configuraitons, they will give them more latitude. I'm really interested to see if they open it up to character models at some point. That would be awesome to see.
