I remember back in the day, when my daily dosage of roleplaying came in the form of text based muds. I remember dreaming of the potential of a graphics based version of my favorite mud. Now with mmorpgs being pretty common, id like to ponder the differences between graphical mmorpgs and text based and what both bring to the table.
Small Community
Most muds had small tight nit communities. In a community such as this, the players are usually the developers. Also the common players and the devs mingle together to form the community. Player ideas are heard and discussed.
With a few hundred players, its a lot easier to become known for your accomplishments. A player can actually become famous/infamous. Your actions feel like they can affect the world and the players with in. I have yet to see a mud that has multiple servers running, where you do not come into contact with every player on.
With the immense size of most graphical MMO's, it is very difficult to stand out. The players and devs do not mix. Most players feel as if their ideas or suggestions are ignored.
With a few million players, its nearly impossible to become famous/infamous. Most graphical MMO's do not even give options for players to be known. Your actions feel as if they do not affect the world or players with in it. Most Graphical MMO's run several servers, where you do not have the options of encountering even 1/10 of the games population. Massive Multiplayer seems to be defined by how many people you can fit on one server, that being 100, 1000, or what ever the server limits maybe.
Theme vs Balance
When designing a guild/class/profession, all that went through my head was, what theme will I use. After developing a theme I would put together ideas/abilities that fit with the theme of the class. Balance rarely crossed my mind. When designing a class, the idea of balance was based upon the theme I chose.
I remember creating a race of symbiotic creatures simply know as the symbiotes (symbs). The idea behind the class was that a symbiotic creature combined with the host (your character). This creature was rather selfish and this help to influence what abilities your character had. Pets for example, the symbiote itself didnt work well with others, therefore you were not allowed to have pets or group with other players until you learned to control the impulses of the symbiote. The symbiote itself was treated as its own sentient entity, so when speaking there were no " i, me, my " it would be translated as "we, us, ours".
The symbiote was an internal entity and it focused on manipulating the character internally. We gave it abilities such as enhanced strength, regenerative functions, toxin filtering, etc. Healing spells that of a cleric actually hurt a symb, due to the symb not being a natural part of the players physiology, it was attacked by most healing functions. Symbs did not wear armor due to the symb itself being able to surface to the skin.
This is just one example of a guild created. We tried to create something unique. We tried to be creative. We tried to weave a players advantages and his weaknesses together in such a way that followed logic. WE tried to follow a theme. The theme of the guild was very important. We didnt just add abilities to balance power that did not fit with the theme of the the guild.
It seems that when designing class/guild/prof 's, most games go as generic as possible. They try to stick with the generic warrior/priest/mage/rogue concepts, rather than trying to be creative. They seem to entirely focus on the idea of balance and ignore the concept of a theme all together.
I believe WoW rogues will be the easiest tool to show the concept of theme vs balance and the lack of theme when creating this generic class. Rogues are a stealth class that can wield various weapons and wear light armor. Stealthing in WoW follows no logical concepts of the idea of stealthing (someone can be staring at you while simply vanish). Stealth isnt much of a crutch for a rogue. What I mean by this is, if you removed stealth from the class, they would still function well due to a myriad of other abilities. They add abilities such as cloak of shadows to balance out the class for PvE, not realizing how absurd this ability is in PvP. When I try to think logically, why does a rogue have an ability to remove all magical affects from themself and become near immune for 5 seconds. Rogues are not magical by any means, so why give them anti-magical abilities. A mage can remove curses from himself. A mage is magical, so he should have some understanding on how to remove negative magical effects. A rogue has no magical abilities what so ever, so how do they understand how to remove them?
When I ponder a rogue class, I think poisons, daggers, stealthing, stealing, and squishy. Obviously, I do not believe that every attempt at creating a rogue class should follow the path of my ideas. Although I do believe every creation of every class should stick to a theme. So lets see how Blizzard gives rogues weaknesses then counters their own attempt...
Light Armor -- Evasion 50% dodge melee + missles
Snare -- Sprint/CloS run 70% faster and breaks snare
Daggers -- Expose armor weapons that do light damage vs high armor
Traps -- Disarm trap
Range -- Crippling poison, deadly throw, sprint, stealth
Magic -- Cloak of Shadows
Rogues have options to fight every single class in the game as well as plenty of options to escape every single class in the game. If your about to ambush a caster, you have a poison specifically for that (lengthens casting times), you will get the opener, you have kick to counter him casting as well as various stuns, when he finally does cast you have CloS to counter that. The only ability that can keep a rogue visible are bleeds and with consumables they can be removed (or if yer a dwarf), pretty much guaranteeing a rogues escape.
Summary
Where are the new an unique classes/guilds/profs. Why are we stuck with the same concepts over and over, warrior(tank), mage(nuker), rogue(stealther).
Every class should be defined by his advantages as well as weaknesses. Every class should stick with a THEME and not venture out into other classes themes just for the sake of so called " balance ". A class should not have a counter to every ability in the game.
Players want to feel as if they can have an effect on their environment. Players want the option to become well known among the games community. Players want to feel as if their voices are being heard.
Sadly, I believe a MUD accomplishes more of what I want than todays graphical MMORPG's.
