Was World of Warcraft the only game that did "classes" right

[Dark Souls II]

Now hear me out.

I'm not a WoW player, I played some vanilla WoW and then some Burning Crusade WoW (the blood elf girls are hot - they look very much like my niece), and I think also briefly the one after that, was it called the Frozen Legion or something like that? The Dark Cataclysm? Nevermind.

But whenever I want a good example of a class done right, I get back to WoW.

Rogues that apply various poisons, and can actually turn invisible, and you can roam the world invisible, and PvP assassinate dumb Alliance niggers on some road. Now that's gaming.

Warlock who can summon a hot succubus bitch and that's his thing, only the warlock can do that.

Shamans are another example, very unique, totems and shit, you can play as a tauren and basically be a big cow boy but spiritual, I remember being a teenager who played a little bit of WoW on pirate servers with my friends and dropping some dextromethorphan (a dissociative, like ketamine), and spending hours on hours hallucinating myself as a tauren shaman in the WoW world, in my parents' basement.

 

[Fedora Master]

Hell no.
You'd have to take the class balance changes into account.

 

[Vlajdermen]

No single player = game doesn't exist

 

[Cryomancer]

WoW = EQ clone.

 

[Dark Souls II]

I think the (old) Blizzard had it right in general. If you take Diablo 2, Necromancer and Barbarian are two entirely different experiences, both done well. Now take any nu-RPG, and even any of the Infinity Engine games that I love, and whichever class you choose is basically just flavor, and the gameplay is more or less the same.

No single player = game doesn't exist

An understandable sentiment, but how come rogue gameplay in no RPG is as good or as rogue as in WoW?

 

[Fedora Master]

WoW = EQ clone.

WoW is EQ for Millenials

 

[Vlajdermen]

I think the (old) Blizzard had it right in general. If you take Diablo 2, Necromancer and Barbarian are two entirely different experiences, both done well. Now take any nu-RPG, and even any of the Infinity Engine games that I love, and whichever class you choose is basically just flavor, and the gameplay is more or less the same.

No single player = game doesn't exist

An understandable sentiment, but how come rogue gameplay in no RPG is as good or as rogue as in WoW?

Doesn't matter. Wow has no single player. Wow doesn't exist. At all. It is a myth.

Good point on Diablo 2. I think that's essential to any good action RPG, that two playthroughs can feel entirely different. Though the RPG elements in Remnant 2 are deemphasized, it did accomplish that with its combinations of classes and weapons. It has a better weapon variety than most dedicated shooters. Hell, all dedicated shooters.

 

[Tackle]

Lol so to summarize, WoW was great because hot Blood Elf chicks, sexy succubus bitches and drugs. What are we discussing again?

 

[luj1]

Well, youre basically saying that classes with distinct playstyles and clear strengths and weaknesses is good design. So yes, obviously. And I don't think WoW is the only example. Try ToME.

 

[Angelo85]

For that "Tactics is the new RPG" rings true. More often that not you find that feature in games of that subgenre.

 

[Morgoth]

Spiritual cow boys... I'll never look at Tauren the same way again.

 

[Nekron]

Rogues that apply various poisons, and can actually turn invisible, and you can roam the world invisible, and PvP assassinate dumb Alliance niggers on some road. Now that's gaming.

cheers to that

 

[Daemongar]

No. The initial incarnation of WoW did a lot right. Fancy graphics, different classes, races that could only be certain classes, a feeling of an actual difference between Appliance and Horde. Lots of good stuff, and in that way wasn't bad. Were they planing a flag somewhere/coming up with something new? Not really. Other games before it did the same thing, maybe even better. Dark Age of Camelot had 3 realms all with differing races and classes which really felt different. And yes, assassins could turn invisible, gank and poison, before WoW.

WoW took all that variation in classes and boiled everything into DPS or HPS. That's about it. All that variation but no one gives a shit as you are only as good as your DPS or if you can Tank. So hit level 900 or whatever in wow now. Put talents in stealth and have people call a noob for giving up on pure dps power. Live a lonely life online if that's your thing. WoW more or less broke MMRPGs in this way.

 

[Luke Skinwalker]

No. The initial incarnation of WoW did a lot right. Fancy graphics, different classes, races that could only be certain classes, a feeling of an actual difference between Appliance and Horde

A P P L I A N C E

 

[luj1]

For that "Tactics is the new RPG" rings true.

Always was

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

WoW was the first mmo to do classes wrong. It was the first casual MMO where rogues could still turn invisible, but couldn't go into a dungeon and loot it blind, because they would turn visible while looting a chest (there were routes, but not worth anyone's time). They couldn't steal from players (duh, bound loot), and they could ONLY steal junk and copper from mobs, which made stealing useless as fuck. They couldn't even steal quest items, how stupid is that? And of course they could never steal real loot that mobs dropped.

Nobody logs in and goes "hmm what will I do today, ah let's go steal some shit from this one area". A perfect example of how to ruin a class. In older MMOs, rogues could not only do everything I listed, but they also could fucking track players and mobs. If there was a contract on a player, they could find his tracks at a city exit and then one hour later find the poor guy, who was hiding for a couple hours until his PVP flag expired after he attacked some player. What a cool class role. Compared to the diluted, gimped down version in wow...

I could rant about other classes, but it requires so much explanation that I just don't want to bother. Wow doesn't deserve to be talked about. It's the "pillars of eternity" of mmos. It killed magic, classes, reasons to play together in small groups, it killed the pre-max-level gameplay, and what it offered at max-level was shit, too.

It was so boring, people gathered up and raided Stormwind or Orgrimmar. And of course lost nothing and gained nothing from the entire thing. If you killed Thrall, a legendary action in and of itself, he dropped NOTHING and even gave zero XP. How retarded is that.

 

[glorificus]

WoW is one of the only RPGs that has done the Mind Control ability right (Games like Psi-Ops and Second Sight have done it as well, but they're not RPGs). The Shadow Priests and their spells - Mind Vision and Mind Control actually changes your character's PoV to become that of your targets, and you get to see everything they see. And in the case of Mind Control, it functioned essentially as a possession, where you take control and move their character around as you saw fit, and even attacked and used their abilities. This is the correct way to do Mind Control, and much preferable to the EverQuest Enchanter's Charm mechanic turning an enemy into a pet, but one that you did not directly control.

So in terms of unique mechanics only available to specific classes, WoW at least has that going for it. And as a side note, I do wish more RPGs that have psionics as a power/magic system copied this function from WoW.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

WoW is one of the only RPGs that has done the Mind Control ability right (Games like Psi-Ops and Second Sight have done it as well, but they're not RPGs). The Shadow Priests and their spells - Mind Vision and Mind Control actually changes your character's PoV to become that of your targets, and you get to see everything they see

All you could do was move the character, which is once again an example of dumbed down, pussified design. The right thing would have been to assume full control, i.e. use abilities and cast spells.
This spell was so useless, it was only ever used in Arathi to drop people down from the Mill. I can't remember a single time it was used for anything else. And if god forbid the perfect situation presented itself once/year, e.g. you could drop someone from a height in Nagrand, the enemy would use a trinket/ice block/bubble/cloak of shadow/anything and give you the finger. Everyone could break any effect. Nothing could be "too op" by design.

 

[Zeriel]

They literally just copied EQ. You are a secondary.

 

[Dark Souls II]

In older MMOs, rogues could not only do everything I listed, but they also could fucking track players and mobs. If there was a contract on a player, they could find his tracks at a city exit and then one hour later find the poor guy, who was hiding for a couple hours until his PVP flag expired after he attacked some player. What a cool class role. Compared to the diluted, gimped down version in wow...

Okay sounds way better than WoW but what game are you talking about

 

[Vasara]

In older MMOs, rogues could not only do everything I listed, but they also could fucking track players and mobs. If there was a contract on a player, they could find his tracks at a city exit and then one hour later find the poor guy, who was hiding for a couple hours until his PVP flag expired after he attacked some player. What a cool class role. Compared to the diluted, gimped down version in wow...

Okay sounds way better than WoW but what game are you talking about

Ultima Online

 

[Sergio]

WoW having distinct and unique classes is nothing new, as old MMOs have been doing it since forever. It does stand in massive contrast with modern popular MMOs like ESO or FF14, which instead went for class homogenization for the sake of balance and streamlined encounter design (which is objectively shitty from player PoV).

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm going to have to agree with the OP here.

I think class design in WoW is a byproduct of Blizzard's RTS design back when they were still on top of their game with that. Many aspects of WoW were utter decline but not this one, and i think we have Rob Pardo to thank for that.

 

[Hydro]

I had a lot of fun with the classic WoW. Me and my mates spent many cool hours roaming the world. I also kicked many horde rogues’ asses (they laughably sucked against us cool dudes paladins lolol).

 

[Velkamit]

I thought the classes were overall great, I only ever really played Vanilla WoW though so I can't speak to the classes in the expansion.

I think the Shaman class overall was weird and seemed rather... pointless.




One thing WoW did that was great is having spell casting/general abilites have a sense of urgency.

When you cast a fireball in WoW you don't jump in the air do a kick flip and spin 360 degrees, you just cast the goddamn thing.