Friday, September 5, 2008

The benefit of playing a popular class

"Hunters are populated with bad players", "Rogues can't find a raid slot". Here are 2 phrases you're likely to hear in WoW. In LotRO the popular classes are also hunters, as well as champions (guess they are like warriors).

After leveling up and finding it hard to get in groups and raids, some players decide to play a healer instead. But as someone mentioned on the lotro forum, if healing was so fun why aren't there more of them. Some players want to raid bad enough they switch to healing.

So when it comes to playing a new game, latecomers ask "what is the most needed class?" "I don't want to be like the hundreds of other hunters running around". Inevitably people say "we could always use tanks and healers".

It makes me wonder if warhammer has manage to make being a tank or a healer as fun as dps.

Recently I thought about how it must have been rough playing a rogue or hunter or any other highly populated class pre-arenas and especially pre-BC because the best gear was inside dungeons and the dungeon could only allow for some many yellow and green slots.

But with arenas and pvp gear the best gear could be had by mostly anyone without raiding. So all of a sudden not only do you get to play your fun class you also are able to get good gear for it now.

It was a win-win for the popular classes.

People whine about rogues now, but I can't imagine WoW changing (much) how things are because you would alienate a large percentage of your player base.

People snicker at FOTMs, but who doesn't want to play a class that has inherent advantages?

I'm drawn to playing support classes because of my personality. Due to their playstyle and lack of "you are the hero" mentality, support classes are relatively scarcer. But as I ponder picking up warhammer, I think I may be best served by picking a popular class for a change.

Popular classes are popular because they are argumentatively easier or simply more fun.

I've heard of ret paladins who have stuck with the class trying their hardest to make them work (rumor has it wrath has given them some love). Begrudgingly healing just so they have a chance at some better drops.

Why not choose a popular class that developers focus their energies on, something that will have a leg up as soon as I enter the "create character" button? Something I don't have to work extra at just to match up?

I feel a little dirty about following the herd to the popular class. But hey I'm just saving myself heartache later right?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Rumor has it that Burning Crusade has given ret paladins some love. We raid with a ret paladin that does DPS at par with other melee classes. The downside is that he gets lots of whispers in battlegrounds accusing him of stealing DPS warrior gear.

Anonymous said...

I always have a really hard time with posts like these, because the problem is I *DO* find healing fun and rewarding and it's actually my favorite way to play. Raid healing is intense and fun and by far the best experience I've had in WoW, and I've loved it in smaller-groups in EQ, D&D online, etc.

So whenever I see things like 'make healing and tanking fun' I want to say 'but they are!' and I become terrified that these changes to make the class more popular will take away the very things I like. Semi-case in point, I loathed the way healing worked in the little I played of LotR, because it felt so non-immersive.

On the other hand, I would definitely not say no to any mechanic that allows me to do solo-work easier/quicker.

Yane (Yet another night elf) said...

Please don't get me wrong. I essentially went from being a healer to playing a tank because of burn out. After switching to my tank, I still enjoyed healing the few times I did so. So I am with you as one of the minority players who find healing fun.

However, after playing a shadow priest and cat druid I realized how much easier life was on the outside (of an instance). And that is where we spend a lot of our time when we're not in a group.

Many healers I knew had a dps alt, myself included, not because they thought dps would be more fun but because dps made life easier. What's the old saying "I can't heal that mob to death." It doesn't take long to feel like why bother with the healer?

With all that said, I'll always roll a healer-type in whatever game I play because like I mentioned it just fits me.

But I plan on playing non-support classes simply because of the annoyances I'm aware of from playing WoW.

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