Comments on: Class Consciousness: The Cult of the Splat

By: Tam

Tam — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:10:15 +0000

I suppose there’s an increased ownership and uniqueness in playing the class you have chosen… hence all the passionate feeling, and the fact that whenever you say something about this particularly class that is close to your heart, it doesn’t matter if a thousand other people have said it too.

I suppose the problem with class/race specific stuff is that it’s hard to balance? I mean, I loved it when priests all had their own little race-specific spells – but ultimately it just meant priests of one race were *slightly* better than priests of another.

Equally shaman quests are pretty painful. I mean it feels awesome that you have to do a special questline but there comes a point when you’re hiking back from Hillsbrad with your cup of water and whatever that you think “maybe I should have been a mage.”

So I suppose the paradox sort of class/race specific attention is that winds up being ultimately limiting rather than the reverse.

Sorry if I am talking at a slight tangent here, I was just thinking…

By: Se7en Tidbits: “My Parents Were MMO Quest-Givers” or “Camping Cyclops” « Are We New At This?

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:09:21 +0000

[...] “[Blizzard has] never really been happy about class based content though, not since vanilla which did feature class questlines, class mounts, class epics, and so on. To my mind, and in the world of F2P and cash shops, that’s a lost opportunity.” Spinks delves into the importance of splats and Blizzard’s masked hate of all things class-ori…. [...]

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:16:15 +0000

This is why I believe Hunters should get pets on day one, and should be taught how to make them work within the first three levels.

Apparently, Blizzard finally agreed.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:14:45 +0000

There’s definitely that PokeMon flavor of Hunters… and the fact that the pet is a hugely visible bit of player customization. Players love that sort of thing; it gives them ways to own their characters… especially in a strict class system.

By: Don’t make me get my main « A High Latency Life

Don’t make me get my main « A High Latency Life — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:47:00 +0000

[...] Don’t make me get my main An ex guildie wrote this, and Spinks wrote this. [...]

By: dorfeater

dorfeater — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:18:23 +0000

Class specific content is an important aspect. Not only does it give you special things for ‘you’ to do like you mentioned, but it also gives you even more class pride. Say what you will about EQ/EQ2′s Epic class quests, love ‘em or hate ‘em, once you got one.. then you finally felt like you were officially a (insert class here). It was a badge of pride.

As far as the idea of “splat content”, I like it. I would buy class specific content.. even if it really didn’t get me much (like powerful items or something) as long as it was good content, and the end reward was something worthy to Paladins. For example.. I would honestly pay probably between 20-40$ JUST to have my Libram swinging from a chain on my hip like in WC3.

Really makes you wonder how long it will be before Blizzard opens up a real cash store, my bet is not much longer. What with the crazy profits they made off of the pony and all.

By: dorfeater

dorfeater — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:09:25 +0000

It’s always been healthy competition to me.. in any game. Some people do take things to far though or don’t know how to handle competition. That’s when we get those hilarious wars.

I’m not quite sure about how other Paladin’s feel, but I know I sure do wanna /punt a DK everytime I see one. Which is awesome because my raid leader is a female Gnome DK. : D

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:49:20 +0000

I also think there were a lot of hunter blogs because of the aspect of getting pets. Before the pet talent revamp, you had to go tame a variety of pets to “learn” different attacks for your pets. When I was playing around with a hunter alt I went and read a bunch of information about how that all worked. No way I would have been able to figure it all out on my own. So, even with pets “simplified” to just use talents, I think a lot of those old resources are still around.

As to why class-based blogs are so popular, it’s all about social identity theory. People like to belong to groups. It’s an “us vs. them” issue, which is why you get Mages and Warlocks trading barbs (and the fact that they can “steal” each other’s loot doesn’t help….)

Some thoughts.

By: Klepsacovic

Klepsacovic — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:22:44 +0000

Even if we have alts, they are alts. Most people have their main character, and perhaps are more attached to it because they have been able to say “I prefer this class to that class”.

I miss class-specific quests. While they are exclusive, they’re also new content for alts, so they aren’t quite wasted.

By: Uzi

Uzi — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:07:45 +0000

Yar. And some great gaming all that is. What I could see is some sort of multiple quest chain or gaming leading to extra secondary profesions, an instance or raid quests based on a pack. Rather than have one per class focus it round intrests or the current ‘protector’ ‘Vanquisher’ et al.

Of course one of the principle aims of Cata seems to be to reduce this sort of complexity to allow simpler maintence but oh well…I can dream.