I'm curious how most people would react to something like this and if it would mostly be negative.

You start as a human or 2 other races but the other 2 class archetypes as well as 2 other races and their archetype are locked until you discover them and go through a lengthy process to become that race archetype(think something between EQ2 heritage quest and becoming a Jedi, pre-cu SWG). There would also be a possibility to mutate to another race after discovering it. So that means like 80% of the characters you can play need to unlocked before you can play them. Would this make being a certain race/ class a bit more unique or would not knowing if you would like the class be too much of a problem. I figure most people have a good idea of how a class plays with experiance from other games, I dunno.

Seems like an awful lot of game content to hide behind unlocks.  Presumably the dev team will spend just as much time making any of the classes, but players will only start with access to a small section of it.

I'd be a bit shaky on the concept.  It's possible to make a good game out of that, but damn tough.

Originally posted by mmoguy43

I'm curious how most people would react to something like this and if it would mostly be negative.

 

You start as a human or 2 other races but the other 2 class archetypes as well as 2 other races and their archetype are locked until you discover them and go through a lengthy process to become that race archetype(think something between EQ2 heritage quest and becoming a Jedi, pre-cu SWG). There would also be a possibility to mutate to another race after discovering it. So that means like 80% of the characters you can play need to unlocked before you can play them. Would this make being a certain race/ class a bit more unique or would not knowing if you would like the class be too much of a problem. I figure most people have a good idea of how a class plays with experiance from other games, I dunno.

In EQ2 you needed to unlock thew frogloks, dont know exactly what was the process, but it was some kind of  quest. But this was long time ago.

A good scenario would be vampire or werewolf. Undead after a death due to being killed by a certain boss might be fun too. I don't really see the problem with having races and classes locked but they would need to be fairly easy to access otherwise there's a lot of content only accessible to a minority.

I'm imagining early on you are confronted with the option of changing your class role. Finding out where to go to have it done and the process wouldn't be very long. But the locked races would be a bit of a challenge to find(a random begining) so it would promote exploration and a sense of adventure that takes you as far as your desire to become that race. A lot of the content would still revolve around the more accessible races/classes but more unique or story driven content would be with the locked races.

I think it'd work. Many MUDs used (and continue to use) remort systems that allow one to level up to the cap, then start over at the first level again with access to new skills, a new race, a new class, or even a combination of the three. There have been all sorts of variations on the theme; some MUDs require you to navigate massive labyrinths first, some require a certain number of gold coins, some allow unlimited access to entire tiers of classes/races, while others only allow specific remort paths (soldier > warrior > blademaster, koboold > orc > troll, et cetera).

Frankly, I wish MMOs would take that concept from MUDs. I'm terribly tired of the whole raid/pvp thing. Remorts pretty much allow you to use the same content over and over in a new way with the same character, all while providing the player with continued advancement and growth. It's definitely not something that'd appeal to everyone, but I have to believe there's a corner of the market open for a new (or, in this case, very old) endgame strategy.