Hello.
Rolling-up a character in the old-skool IE games was fun. As Psychoblonde said in another post, re-rolling stats using virtual dice is fun. Not point buy. Not select-a-character-and-go. No, listening to the theme music whilst drinking beer and clicking to get great stats.
Now I know some very serious hard-core types like playing gimped characters as a challenge. More power to your elbow, and if you want to donate those unused ability score points to me I'll happily take them.
Anyhoo, on to character generation. It should be fun. It should be a mini-game. Look at the personality test in Jagged Alliance 2. Consider the background rolls for careers in the P&P sci-fi game Traveller. What about those crazy background traits in Arcanum?
I don't have a load of answers here, but can some consideration be given to making the process of character generation really, deeply cool in of itself. Give it more love than you'd usually expect. Amaze us. Delight us. Indulge us. Make rolling-up a character so cool that I'd want to do it again just for the hell of it. Stats, character background info (even if it is just for immersion rather than tangible performance), personality info, race / sex / class dealt with in a different way (maybe genders from different classes have different roles in their cultures and you get a comment when you go off-piste), starting equipment, money, appearance...
Do NOT make it streamlined and 'convenient' (i.e. dumbed-down), a race to the bottom like, ahem, other RPG developers.
What do others think?