MMO Classes

Some of my friends briefly mentioned support classes either in blog comments or on Facebook, and I wanted to write a little bit about them because I think it's a fascinating subject. Especially because of some recent events.

In both Everquest and Everquest 2 there were a number of different classes. I'll mostly talk about EQ2 because I played it the longest. Ha, a while back I checked my time logged on my old main EQ2 character and on him alone it was something like 191 days. INSANITY.

Anywayyyy, in EQ2 there are 24 subclasses. There are four main archetypes - Fighter, Mage, Scout, and Priest. Within each archetype there are 3 classes. For instance in Fighter there are Warrior, Brawler, and Crusader. And then each class has a subclass, so a Warrior can turn into a Berserker or Guardian. I pity the poor fools that thought up this system and tried to balance it through all of EQ2's changes and expansions. On the other hand, it led to a REALLY great gaming experience, even if it is cumbersome to the designers.

When you think about the archetypes you have a basic idea of what each one will do. Fighters will tank - they'll keep aggro and take the hits. They each have their own flavor and pros and cons, some are better at encounters with lots of adds, others are better with a single target, some have small self heals, some primarily tank by avoiding most attacks, and others, like the plate wearing tanks, just mitigate the damage. The priest archetype heals and keeps everyone alive, but they all do it differently. There are wards that protect against incoming damage, HoTs or heals or time that tick over a duration and heal a certain amount each tick, and direct heals that just give you life when cast. It's more complicated than all of that, but that's the general gist.

The mage archetype includes your magic users. They are generally ranged casters - some have pets that do damage & others do not. Some are high damage, others are more DoT based or damage or over time, and then we get to the interesting classes thought of as "utility." They don't do the highest damage, but they provide group wide or raid wide buffs that make everyone else perform better. They might augment attack power, regenerate everyone's mana faster, things like that. The Scout archetype has the same thing. The three classes under them are Predators, Rogues, and Bards. The Predators deal huge damage, the Rogues deal a lot of damage but can take a few more hits, and then there are my favorites...THE BARDS.

The Bards are Dirges and Troubadors. Dirges mostly augment melee classes, making them perform better. Troubadors on the other hand are more useful to casters. I loved playing a Dirge, as stated in one of my first posts, because they are a jack of all trades.

This type of class is unfortunately being seen less and less. In MMOs the designers want the player to feel like a hero in this imaginary world. Take WoW as an example. They want you to feel like a legendary tank, or an amazing healer, or the class doing the most damage. Who wants to be the most useful or everyone's favorite companion? In a world full of people showing off their e-peen no one wants to be a utility class anymore. It's such a shame. It was my favorite role to fill. You had to think quick on your feet - should I run this buff? Should I rez that person? Is it most important for me to get my debuffs on the boss? Which debuffs should be cast first? When do I use my spells that interrupt? When do I siphon my own life to the tank. SO MANY DECISIONS.

I often bounce between being a very shy person to a rather gregarious one. If I'm with friends I know well, or with new friends that give me alcohol, I'm super talkative. Other than that, when it comes to meeting new people, I'm pretty damn shy. Even in WoW where I will probably never see that same random person again I am still shy. Being a utility class FORCED me to interact with people in game. I'd have to talk about what buffs they wanted me to run, I'd be calling out if I was rezzing someone, and besides - when you're a utility class you're not competing with people's e-peens and at the same time you're helping them, so they just love you right off the bat.

Playing pure DPS, especially as a death knight, doesn't allow for a lot of interaction with strangers. I have one buff that helps other people, and I should keep it up all the time, end of story. Plus death knights aren't a very liked class (it's getting better though). I'll make new friends with other players if I'm in a group with mostly my friends and we all get to talking, but that's it...

Until last week! I was working on the last achievement I needed for the Easter in game holiday and it was a pain in the ass. I had to find a female orc over level 18 and there aren't ANY. I was camping outside of the horde tol barad base, hoping one would run by. Other alliance people were there as well, and since we had nothing better to do we got to talking. To make a long story short the whole process took about 2 hours and a nice Priest joined me in my quest for the female orc. We ran all over the world together and eventually found one! And then the next night we saw each other online and decided to PuG (pick up group) a Baradin Hold raid. Oddly enough I've never done that in all of my time playing WoW. I might join a raid with friends I know in real life, or solo, but I haven't really made any random in game friends in a looooong time. Not since EQ2. Not since I was a helpful dirge.

I guess I'll see where this all goes, but breaking through some of my shyness has made me feel a lot better. Okay, enough of this absolutely gigantic post. No one is going to read this one anyway, lol.