Originally posted by h0urg1ass

Yet again, there are dozens of MMO's that wall players in with a ton of "No, you can't do that because you're X class" rules.  Why is this so called "holy trinity" so ingrained into the MMO psyche? Why does every MMO have to follow that pattern?  In my opinion we need to reward the developers that try to break the 1970's Gary Gygax, Class/Level mentality.  Some of us aren't sheeple.  Some of us don't need our hands held that much.  I, for one, want the devs to get their damn hands off of mine and let me build a character for once.  Not a class.  I want something that is truly my own from start to finish.

I have to defend Gary Gygax here... while he is indeed at the origin of the "class+level" design, he's definitely not at the origin of the "holy trinity with threat table" design. The classes in D&D are closer to the GW2 classes than to EQ/WoW clone classes.

Heck, in my opinion, GW2 is only a baby step in the right direction.  RIFT is more of a giant stride in the right direction, but they went vastly overboard and swamped us with so many abilities we need macros just to use them all.  I just want a list of skills to pick from and some points to put into whichever skills I want.  If I want to make a character that can use a sword and a shield and has a little skill in using a bow, then I can, and I don't want someone putting up an invisible "class" wall that says I can't.

I basically want my character in Skyrim to be plopped as-is into an MMO. (Unfortunately, TESO doesn't seem to be going that route.  I see Holy Trinity written between lines in everything they've released)

Tear down all the walls.  The devs should build the worlds, and we should build the characters.

Basically, you want UO... :)

PS: I'd take GW2's design anytime over Rift. Rift is just another "Tank/DPS/Healer with threat table" WoW clone. But that's just me.

I enjoy the DEs, heart quests and all the PVE fun that comes along with them. The lack of trinity makes the combat extremely shallow and stale. The skills are uninspired, using the same weapon skills since level 3 is boring as hell. I applaud them for trying something different but it's obvious that it's mostly a failed experiment (especailly after the last patch that returns to basic mmo endgame by forcing you into their horribly dungeons for daily laurels, same tredmill as WOWs almost).

GW2 is a MMO you play for a month tops before you have everything you want that doesn't require you to depend on RNG. There's no reason to play past level 80 unless you're in some really sweet WVW guild.

Lack of Quest Hubs: OMG, how can anyone find Quest Hubs better than hearts and Dynamic Events? Quest Hubs are meaningful interaction and immersive? How can you find a quest-giver that asks you to go find a necklace somewhere meaningful or immersive? The quest giver remains there statically and you can have another player go fetch it just as or before you've returned it. How totally and utterly meaningless can these static quest hubs get?

Lack of Defined roles: this is a two-edged sword. It's either LF Tank, LF healer, ... or you allow players to really fill different roles. The people who are used to playing certain needed classes that relatively few actually wanted to play, may not like that. The sense of being needed isn't there, that's probably true. It could have been a better game for dungeons if different roles were more clearly defined. With great flexibility you get the problem of having to choose how you play your class. That's not easy at all and can be quite daunting at first.