How important is character creation to you?

        I came across an article the other day that stated games need more pregenerated characters. It occurred to me that I had never used a pregen character except in situations where there was no other option.

        How important is the character creation process to you? Is it a ritual of optimization and building a rich back story to match or do let the story write itself? When you do make a character, do you enjoy simplicity or complexity in the process?