So I’ve been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 here recently — relative to other games, at least — and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the whole class/profession system. It seems really silly to me.
[Background Info]
I’ll start with a little background. I first started playing MMORPGs when I discovered the online game Runescape circa 2005. It was an amazing sandbox online game to me at the time; however, I shared my gaming time with it among other titles. Flash forward to 2006. Me and my twin brother jointly purchase Guild Wars: Factions, the experience annoys me due to a lack of understanding of the game and the mostly instanced world. I quit Guild Wars almost immediately. 2007, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is released, and my brother is interested in “The King of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.” Within a month of him starting a trial account I was right alongside him. After quiting and coming back repeatedly — this was back during my Halo 2/Halo 3 Machinima Days — I finally managed to get my Human Rogue up close to level 60 just in time for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion. By this time, I was playing more and more MMORPGs (jumping back and forth from Runescape as well, which has had it’s highs and lows.) By the end of Wrath of the Lich King Expansion, I had experienced World of Warcraft Endgame, became the Co – GM of a fairly successful raiding guild (with my brother of course,) and was looking forward to the next chapter of World of Warcraft — mainly due to the fact that the Wrath content was too easy for an experienced game player like me, yet many other players thought they were good enough to do it. Cataclysm, the third World of Warcraft expansion proved to be a slightly improved grind-fest, and our guild, which took a big hit and the end of Wrath, regrouped and pressed on. After a short run in Cataclysm, we all gave up and decided that World of Warcraft was not worth the $15/month subscription fee. I mean, with Minecraft and Halo: Reach who needed World of Warcraft?
[/Background Info]
So, with that out of the way time to get back on topic. I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 quite a bit recently, and have been thinking a lot about the design of the game. While most of the major design elements are consistent with that of World of Warcraft — i.e. hotkey based combat, menu based crafting, and most notably, class based combat gameplay — there was an obvious and explicitly stated desire by ArenaNet (developers of Guild Wars 2) to deviate from the “traditional” MMO formula. Now I’ve played both games, and it seems that the major mechanical improvements in Guild Wars 2 are fairly straight forward: streamlined User Interface, dynamic “questing” system, removal of race-class restrictions, and apparently, a significant reduction of weapon restrictions for classes.
Guild Wars 2 aims to make you a part of the world through scaling and “sidekicking.” The game adjust your stats to the area you are in, and it makes you feel more a part of the world. Yes, you are stronger than the guy in the level 4 zone, but unlike in World of Warcraft where you slaughter that guy by stray AoE, you are instead a reasonable amount stronger, and still have a fight on your hands. This helps keep players invested in the world and helps max leveled players enjoy lower level areas. Personally I think an overall level in Guild Wars 2, and in an ultimate MMORPG, was the wrong way to go, it keeps players at distinct “levels” — quite literally.
So if Guild Wars 2 aims to invest you in the world, why does your character — who apparently already has a distinct set of skills — wake up one morning, and in my case, decide to go help a farmer feed cows and do meaningless chores, despite the fact that I can already set things on fire. In my opinion the more logical option for a supreme MMORPG is to have a beginning more similar to the original beginning of Runescape 2 (That’s just Runescape for those not in the know) and a skill advancement system in the style of a Guild Wars and Elder Scrolls hybrid.
This would mean that players DON’T pick a class to begin with. They instead get to go through an introductory phase where they can experiment, with the option to train in a specific profession at a later time. This means players that would not like to play a combat based game, could go on to do sandbox content (with a default or less custom combat setup, if needed.) Players who decide to choose to advance the combat capabilities of their character — i.e. most of them — could then choose or pursue a profession/class, players can develop their characters thoroughly to their tastes with more of a mixed system similar to that of Guild Wars where players are less limited in their skill choices, leaving open the possibilities of changing/mixing professions/classes, or effectively eliminating them altogether. This allows players to do what they want to do in the world that has been built; however, there are supplementary design decisions to be considered before this approach would work, such as player interaction, but that is for another time.
Obviously, this is just the viewpoint of an outsider looking in, and it is a personal opinion of how MMOs should be — that is, not just a big open sandbox or a big amusement park — but rather, a mix of the two where pacifistic players who enjoy their open world can co-exist with the players who like to dive headfirst into combat development of their characters. After all, what is a hero if there is no-one to rely on them for safety? Even still, what is the hero without his weapons, armor and flashy things that are carefully crafted by others? I think the ultimate MMORPG lies somewhere in this domain, where a player merchant can decide he wants to become a hero, and a player hero can end his campaign to sell armor to his/her fellow adventurers.
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