Tonight, a friend and I were discussing Blizzard’s consolidation of certain statistics on armor, such as spell crit and melee crit becoming one, and how it will allow them to create fewer items because multiple classes can make use of the same thing. While we’ll have to see whether or not it has an overpowering effect on hybrids, I think it’s a great change for the game overall.

It then occurred to me that there is still an annoying limitation though: armor type. Is it really even necessary?

It’s a classic RPG element to allow certain classes to only equip certain armor types, usually cloth, leather, chainmail, and plate. MMO’s adopted it along with their other classic RPG inspiration and never looked back. At this point, with all the other stats on the armor being the important thing, the only difference between the armor types is a little more armor class and a way to restrict which classes can use the item - neither of which are even needed.

I’d like to see a game do away with the armor types completely and simply restrict items based on class. A suit of plate armor can still be restricted to your heavy armor types, just slap Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight, Cleric, or whatever on it. It doesn’t have to actually be classified as plate.

What’s the difference, you say, if they are still restricted by class? The difference is that people don’t feel tied to the armor type that is specific to their class. It’s a player’s natural instinct to want to use the highest armor rank they are capable of, such as mail, if their class is able to use it. This often goes against their best interest though, as you’ll see players passing up cloth and leather that is actually much better for them just because it isn’t their preferred armor type. Take Enhancement Shaman in WoW for example: the best gear for them is often actually leather, but only the more educated Enhancement players will take it and use it. Most normal players just go for mail assuming it is what they are “supposed” to wear. If we just get rid of these types it is easier for people to focus on the stats and understand what is best for them to use. By restricting it by class, you still retain all the bonuses of having armor types such as allowing tank armor to have more armor class than other types. You can have a powerfully enchanted robe that is only usable by Wizards, without backing yourself into a corner when it comes to an item you intend both Wizard and Druids to be able to wear. Rather than being forced to designate this item as cloth or leather, you can simply tag it as usable by both and not worry about what it is.

The benefit of this is that designers could avoid having to come up with tons of items for the various character specs and roles. The versatility of individual items is improved and thus increases the chance that someone in the group will want the item. For example, instead of having a leather healing chest piece that only your Druid would want or even be able to use, it could just be an undefined healing chest that any healer type may be interested in. The stats are all that matter anyway, right? If they wanted to tailor it more towards a few specific classes they could simply restrict it to those classes. There’s no reason a healing druid should feel bad about using a good item just because it’s cloth, but having armor types places this inherent negativity on the idea of it.

Even more importantly, it would be much easier to design quest rewards. People often complain that quests in WoW don’t always offer something they can use or even equip. This kind of system would greatly increase the range of classes and specs items could work for and make everything much simpler. A designer wouldn’t have to come up with “spell damage chainmail” or whatever for the Shaman, they could simply make a spell damage item and put whatever class restrictions they want on it. Maybe it isn’t intended to be used by Wizards, so they just stick Shaman and Druid on the required classes for the item. In WoW, this type of item would have to be leather to allow both of these classes to use it, and the Shaman might feel less inclined to take it. But, if that perception of intended armor type is removed, they both feel good about getting an upgrade.

You could still have armor type distinction show in the actual graphical representation of the item, such as armor intended for heavy tanks showing up as platemail, and so on. Sure, for some items that are usable by many classes you might see some uncommon sights like a Wizard wearing a leather jerkin, but is that really a bad thing? There’s no reason, other than archaic Dungeons and Dragons inspired rules, that say a Wizard cannot wear leather anyway.

Class specific armor sets would be the goal players strive for anyway, and as these would be tailored specifically to their class they could easily achieve a more traditional look here - such as Wizards in their flowing robes and Druids in leather - or whatever look fit the lore of that world for the class.

Overall, I think this would simplify some common itemization issues and make for a more enjoyable game.

I’ve been messing around on Kingdom of Loathing today, a humorous browser-based RPG with such innovative character classes as the Turtle Tamer and Pastamancer. While it’s probably not something I’d spend too much time on, I did particularly love that they require the player to pass a literary test before accessing chat channels.

The test itself is mostly a joke like the rest of the game, but I can’t help but wonder how many of my fellow WoW players would fail it based on what I see in the Public Trade channel every day…

When thinking about class design, I have always been of the opinion that each archetype should be completely balanced in their ability to perform their intended role. The difference would simply be in the way the class “felt”, how it played and the abilities they used to achieve that goal - even if the end result is exactly the same.

For example, right now we have this tradition that the Warrior class must be the definitive main tank. Why? In older games such as EverQuest it could be argued that Warriors didn’t have spells like the Paladin or Shadow Knight, so they needed to be able to tank a bit better so that they would have a designated role. This is no longer the case in games like World of Warcraft. The Warrior has all sorts of special abilities that are easily on par with the other tanking classes, the only difference mainly being that the Paladin and Druid can heal. While this may be something to consider in PVP and Soloing, they cannot heal themselves while main tanking. Paladins lose their defensive capabilities while casting a spell, and Druids must leave Bear Form to heal. When looking at things from a tanking perspective, there’s no reason Druids and Paladins shouldn’t be able to main tank everything in the game. If it becomes a worry that players would then choose Druids and Paladins because they are more fun to play outside of tanking, it simply means that the Warrior needs some better abilities to make them equally fun.

Luckily, it seems that Blizzard is finally going in this direction. Recently posted by Ghostcrawler:

Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread.

Tanking design:

1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.

2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I’m going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.

3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.

4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.

5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.

6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we’ve failed.

7) This is a big one: the game isn’t finished. We aren’t spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren’t finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It’s fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don’t infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don’t work out, it will be posted here.

8) There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won’t list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We’re not in Tempest Keep anymore.

Concerns or feedback? This is a great place for it.

Sounds great for tanks, but what about the other classes?

We have an equally outdated tradition with the Rogue class in that it is always supposed to be the highest melee dps class, and generally the highest dps class of all. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved this as a Rogue player since early EQ, but I don’t necessarily feel the thought process behind it is sound.

One of the reasons often given is that Rogues have to stand in melee range where they are in more danger, and thus should be awarded higher DPS. However, this is almost always not a challenge for the Rogue, but the healers instead. The Rogue will just stand there taking the AEs most of the time, it’s up to the healer to keep him up. Even when that isn’t possible, getting out of range while you wait for a heal has never been particularly difficult. If you want to come up with a mechanic that makes playing a Rogue challenging, go for it, but just being in melee range is not it.

Other times, the Rogue is considered the highest dps because that’s all they bring to the table. They have no utility, only high dps. This is a poor design decision as well, because it makes the Rogue less fun to play than other classes. You’ll see a few Rogue players that claim this is all they want, more dps, but in the end it’s really not that good for the class. You start to see Rogues passed up for other classes with needed buffs or better utility even if their dps isn’t as high, because that utility makes the encounter or dungeon easier. Take the Assassin vs. Brigand in EQ2: while I admit I didn’t raid in that game because it didn’t hold my interest long enough, I kept up with it and almost always saw guilds desired Brigands far more than Assassins due to their powerful debuffs.

The point I’m getting at is that every class of a certain archetype should be able to perform similarly given equal gear and skill. Every class should bring utility and useful buffs to their group or raid in addition to being able to perform their archetypes function, and it should never be an issue to tackle an encounter with any class filling in its role. You shouldn’t always need a Warrior, or a Rogue, or a Cleric. You should always need Tank, DPS, Healer, etc. That’s it.

This would have two beneficial consequences in my opinion:

Skill. When the performance of a class is no longer based mostly on what the class is capable of (i.e. it is “expected” that a Warrior will not outdamage a Rogue) then those that are skillful at their class start to stand out more. If you’re a particularly awesome Ranger you may be topping the charts on damage every night, but then a new recruit who is particularly good at playing his Necromancer starts to give you a run for your money. Why is this a bad thing? Players on forums are always saying MMOs take very little “skill” and are only about numbers. But when you streamline the archetypes like this you put things in the hands of the players, and those who are more knowledgeable about their class, who react better in situations, and who understand proper use of their abilities - the ones who are skilled at their class - will be the ones who are putting out the best performance.

Players can play what most appeals to them, rather than what they think they need to play. I had a discussion the other day with a friend who quit WoW awhile back because he was a Protection Paladin but felt the raid game catered to much to using Warriors as the sole main tank, and he would never be anything but a “gimmick” tank for AOE situations - which was mostly true. It’s only now that Blizzard is beginning to address this. When I mentioned rolling a Warrior instead, if maintanking was his desire, he said he wouldn’t do that because Paladin is what he wanted to play. Makes sense.

I think a lot of educated or experienced players feel pressured to choose a class based on how it will perform later in the game. You see posts on forums all the time about “how does this class perform in raids” or “is this class desired end-game?” and so on. People will choose a class they may not even be that interested in just because it’s the “best” DPS or the “best” healer.

If the classes were more balanced people would simply look at how the class played and whether that seemed more fun to them. It wouldn’t be about the Druid or Cleric being better at healing end-game, it would be “Well, I think I like the sound of Druids stacking multiple HoTs instead of direct healing. I’ll be able to do just as well either way.” Or, “I want to tank, but I like spells too. I like how evil and dominating the Death Knight sounds.” They shouldn’t be worried about whether or not they’ll be able to function as well as another class in their given role, they should just be able to focus on what seems fun to play.

What do you think? Would it be so bad for the game if the archetypes were this even? Is it enough for a class to simply feel different, but not be able to perform their role any better than the other classes?

I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the new Refer-a-friend benefits Blizzard is offering WoW players. A free Zhevra mount (yuck, but I’ll take it since it’s free), the ability to summon your friend to you once per hour, and triple experience and honor while grouped with your friend, among other things.

If you’ve been itching to roll an alt but didn’t feel like putting the time or effort in, now is the time to do it. As long as you have a friend who wants one as well, of course. Then again, nothing stops you from dual-boxing if that’s your thing.

For me, this has somewhat breathed new life into World of Warcraft. I was relatively bored with the game, having leveled multiple characters over the past couple of years, and with the expansion looming nothing I could earn now seemed overly significant since most gear will be replaced in the new instances. What would last, though, is a new character. Thus, my friend and I devised a plan for him to activate a new account through my referral and we could both power up some alts with 3x experience, after which he would transfer the new character to his original account, and everyone is happy.

And so, Ardanir the Blood Elf Paladin was born.

The best thing about this promotion is the fact that you only get the triple experience when you’re grouped with your friend. Everyone knows leveling in WoW is a solo affair. Yeah, nothing stops you from grouping with your friends, but it cuts exp drastically and collection quests become a nightmare when you’re trying to get rare drops for multiple people.

Triple experience changes all that. It becomes fun to group and quest with your friend - as it should be - and you don’t even feel penalized when a quest takes longer than it might normally because the kills are raking in such great experience and you know when you go to turn it in it’s going to be more than worth the effort. It really changes the way the game is played and it’s a lot more fun for those of us who are burnt out on leveling normally.

You’ll see some people claiming this promotion is bad for the game, but let’s face it: Blizzard doesn’t care about the 1-60 content. They are focused on the future and obviously feel it is in a player’s best interest to get to 60 as fast as possible to join the majority of the playerbase. At this point, any real new player starting the game might feel like 80 levels is just be too much to go through to catch up and play with everyone else. It’s almost akin to the issue of AA’s in EverQuest, where new or returning players felt they would never catch up to those with 1000s of AA’s. If Blizzard is only going to focus on whatever content is the most current, they might as well do things like this to get the players there.

As for me, it’s given me a new goal that will at least entertain me for the next month or so (triple exp stops at 60, so it’ll be the normal grind from there on) and that’s only a good thing for someone as jaded about WoW as I am. I can’t complain about having another potential class to choose to take through Northrend to level 80 and the adventures beyond.

In but a few short hours, Ardanir reached level 21. The triple experience is almost humorous, as you struggle to get even halfway through the available quests in the area before they turn grey and stop giving experience. Still, it’s beyond satisfying to level so quickly and have all those talent points to play with. Needless to say, it’s a lot of fun when you’re used to things the old way. I highly recommend trying it out with a pal, even if they already play. The referring account gets a free month, so part of the cost of a new account is negated right there. Most people would be interested in trying an alt if they could level it so quickly, so it may be easier to find a friend to work things out with than you think. Of course, you’ll have to remain grouped all the time to get the bonus, so make sure it’s someone reliable.

I’ll keep you guys posted on Ardanir’s progress. Who knows, maybe he’ll be the character I take all the way to 80 when the expansion hits, and I’ll take you guys along for the ride. Right now, the future looks bright.

Death Knight

“I have given my life in exchange for this power. How could you hope to stop me?”

Death Knights are fearsome warriors who have undergone a dark ritual wherein their very lives are traded in exchange for haunting necrotic powers. This vile pact is usually made with powerful beings of the underworld, though there are cases where evil Gods have accepted mortals as Death Knights in their servitude. During the ritual, a soul gauntlet is grafted onto the knight’s hand which can never be removed, and ever thereafter drains away at his remaining life-force, slowly turning him into the undead. The gauntlet serves as a link between the mortal world and the world of the dead, allowing them to attack an opponents soul as well as their physical form. In the brief years of life that follow the ritual, the Death Knight will possess insurmountable strength and abilities - but once he falls, his body and soul will forever be enslaved by the dark master who turned him.

Use well the time left to you, for it will not last, and be wary of the gauntlet which now feeds upon your soul - it is both the source of your power and your doom.

Class Abilities

Following is a list of the various Death Knight abilities as well as a description of what they do. After each description, I will explain some of the uses each ability and potential combos the player can make during combat.

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I got an e-mail from a reader who was interested in some of the content of my previous post on character classes, particularly the sample specs and information I posted about the Warrior, Paladin and Death Knight. He wanted to know whether or not I had designed the actual abilities and spells for these classes or if I was simply offering an example of what different specs could be like.

Those class designs actually come from an older document I was working on, so I do have more material and other classes covered as well. Since there seems to be some interest I thought it would be fun to start a new series of posts where I take each class from my ideal list and break down how it would play, show examples of the core abilities, and discuss how talent points and gear would change the play style.

Also mentioned was how similar my ideal class list was to that of the original EverQuest list, the only real difference being the swap of Enchanter for Psionicist, Magician for Elementalist, and Shadow Knight for Death Knight. You’ll see the reason for those swaps when the design for those classes are revealed, and as for the rest of the list, I guess I just liked what EQ offered. I’m a fan of the traditional D&D classes anyway, and EQ followed that pretty closely. A few more classes (14 in that list versus WoW’s original 9) also gives the game more variety from the start and the way the talent specs would work would make itemization relatively easy, actually easier than WoW when you consider the game’s talent specs often need completely different sets of gear. More on that later though.

So, while the classes are relatively the same as EverQuest, I think once you see more of their abilities and some of the lore behind them you’ll find they are unique enough.

Look for the first of this series pretty soon. I’ll probably start with the Death Knight just because WoW will be adding that class soon and I’d like to show the difference between theirs and mine despite having the same name. Feel free to leave any comments you may have, especially regarding something you’d like to see done with a particular class that you would find interesting. I’d be excited to hear what other people want from these classes.

Quests have become a huge part of any MMO, being the main source of experience and advancement throughout the game and also the thing many players spend the bulk of their time doing. It’s obvious then that game designers should try to make quests one of the most engaging, immersive, captivating parts of the game.

Why then, do many players act as though questing is merely a means to an end? Countless players consider questing part of “the grind” to reach max level, and feel they serve no purpose other than as a tool for advancement. Why should the game begin at max level, when there are plenty of amazing adventures to be had all the way up?

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All sorts of interviews have sprung up in the aftermath of Comic-Con ‘08, including a couple from 38 Studios regarding the art direction of the upcoming “Copernicus”.

If you haven’t already, check them out:

• Allakhazam - 38 Studios at Comic-Con - Exclusive Concept Art
• Ten Ton Hammer - Idealized Reality: A First Look at the Art of Copernicus
• Massively - Comic-Con 08: 38 Studios interview reveals IP announcement next year!

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I’ve neglected to do any reporting on all the recent news from E3 and ComicCon about the various MMOs we’ll be seeing in the next few years, largely because I have been mostly underwhelmed by what I’ve seen and the fact that every other blog or news hub has said everything I could and more. However, with very little to talk about on any other front in the MMO world I decided I would at least take a moment to toss out my feelings on a couple of the major players that will soon be entering the arena.

Note that I won’t be explaining too much about each of these games, as I’ve said that has been done elsewhere. If you’re interested in learning more about them you can check out Massively and get the scoop.

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It’s time to wrap things up in the deep, cold dark of Kithyk. Our players are still searching for the mysterious source of arcane power that seems to be permeating the caves and mystically altering all natural life. They have battled through hordes of monstrous spiders only to find them led by a fearsome drider queen. Their search for answers introduced them to the Eurycean, an intelligent race of humanoid salamanders, and set them on a path of war against the cursed dark elves that have become known as the Ashen. They defeated Lord Myzar, who revealed to them that he had planned to breed an army of the mutated spiders together with his own race to create an army capable of marching deeper into the caves to find the source of the disturbance - and potentially a cure for the curse that was laid upon his kin.

Seemingly close to their goal, our adventurers now journey even further into the depths.

Halls of the Ancients

Visuals: As you descend deeper the natural formations of rock begin to give way to smoother stone that has clearly been worked by some unknown hands. Before long, these smoother tunnels lead into a massive chamber with glinting blue-green runes carved into the walls and supporting columns. The crystals are also present here, glowing a soothing blue, their excessive growth unimpeded even in these more structured halls. Giant statues loom in each corner of the chamber, depicting bearded humanoids cupping their hands around a sphere. Another hallway, equally massive in scale and similarly decorated, continues on from this room leading into a sprawling labyrinth of forgotten secrets.

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