Remarks from former WoW designer gives insight on WoW's classes

[Orby]

This was a good read. But those saying tinker or dark ranger will be disappointed. 10.0 is dragons: dragon isles, dragon race, dragon class.

Mechanical dragons > tinker...

[Coniferous]

An argument that a certain fantasy or gameplay is already covered by an existing spec/class only shows a person's lack of imagination and experience in the RPG genre. At a higher level it also shows lack of understanding of marketing.

An argument that you can just keep adding classes shows a lack of understanding of balancing.

[Kumorii]

Well its not really the same logic. A person wanting to play as a Dark Ranger can roll a Void Elf to resemble Sylvanas, go Marksman Hunter to get the feel of a dark Hunter without a pet, and can even obtain Sylvanas' bow and quiver in a Raid and get 2 Dark Ranger abilities. People who would want to play as a Tinker can't get anywhere near that close.

It's the same logic... You get more tinker stuff from engineering than two abilities. Every race can pick up engineering as well. Including gnomes and goblins. So you can already imagine you're a tinker. You just don't want to see it that way. Yet you tell others they should.

But I mean, at the end of the day it's not about if engineering is enough or not. It's about the attitude to tell others what fulfill their needs. You are a hypocrite when it comes to the arguments to dismiss others wishes compared when it comes to tinkers. It's that simple.
You don't even need to make the dismissal hypocritical arguments to vouch for tinkers. So why do it?

People would have less problems with you if you just focused on tinkers rather than dismissing others wishes. Just my thoughts though. You do you.

[Teriz]

As the ama said



I think we will most likely see Dark Ranger or one of the many other classes not in game from the RTS that are NOT an April fools joke. Bard would be a good one as well

If you look at the portion of the AMA I posted, Jordan goes on to say that while making NE warriors the stand in for Demon Hunters was the original intent, the Warrior class could never quite get there, so he understood why they were eventually made into a class, since no existing class could really house all of their concepts effectively.

On the other hand, the Hunter class has demonstrated the ability to house Dark Ranger abilities on multiple occasions, including the current expansion.

[Aucald]

While this thread is about future classes, as per usual the Tinker-related argument is sucking all the air out of the room. Let's pivot to discussing other classes besides the Tinker, and drop the back-and-forth argument.

[Teriz]

An argument that you can just keep adding classes shows a lack of understanding of balancing.

Indeed. Ironically Jordan's arguments support the attitude of those that don't want new classes. Again, 3 new classes in almost 20 years is very low compared to other MMOs. In all likelihood, we’re probably looking at one more new class, and after that, I could see Blizzard moving to spec overhauls and maybe even 4th specs. However, the notion that Blizzard has a lot of future classes planned is simply not supported by the evidence.

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This was a good read. But those saying tinker or dark ranger will be disappointed. 10.0 is dragons: dragon isles, dragon race, dragon class.

Honestly after reading this, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no new class in 10.0, and that the 13th class is being reserved for the 20th anniversary of the game.

Which would be crazy because at that point, it would have been 8 years since the DH class was released.

[Uncia Amethice]

Survival is what you're looking for.

I mean it really, truly isn't remotely the same. But considering you're banned, I won't waste more electrons printing a detailed response.

[Teriz]

I mean it really, truly isn't remotely the same. But considering you're banned, I won't waste more electrons printing a detailed response.

I thought that aligning Combat with the Pirate theme was a smart move. Especially given that before Legion, Rogue specs kind of blended together. A lot of players also wanted a pirate spec or class. Moving forward, I think we're going to see more spec overhauls like Outlaw and Survival, especially as new class themes begin to dry up.

[qwerty123456]

Again: not really.

Because any non-melee spec is a departure from the concept presented in WC3, and a huge departure from how the concept was presented in Burning Crusade. Every demon hunter wielded warglaives. No demon hunter wielded anything else. All demon hunters were melee combatants. None was ranged.

And your comparison to "summon infernals destroys the terrain" is not a valid comparison, because in that case we're then not talking about class design, instead now talking about world features, such as "destructible terrain". And summoning infernals does make a call back to "destroying terrain" anyways as the impact area on the ground is temporarily shown with fel green cracks when the infernal lands as part of the summoning animation.

They already departed from the concept by giving it a new demon form that gives the tank spec.

It wouldn't be too hard to give them another spec based on a different demon. Perhaps a ranged one where you stay in the demon form during combat.

[AngerFork]

I think we will most likely see Dark Ranger or one of the many other classes not in game from the RTS that are NOT an April fools joke. Bard would be a good one as well

Reading this, it makes me wonder if Dark Ranger might become a spec rather than a class, similar to how they tried to work a couple of different concepts into the Warrior class. I could absolutely see it with this idea becoming either a fourth Hunter spec or perhaps some sort of offshoot class combined with something like Shadow Hunters.

[Uncia Amethice]

I thought that aligning Combat with the Pirate theme was a smart move. Especially given that before Legion, Rogue specs kind of blended together. A lot of players also wanted a pirate spec or class. Moving forward, I think we're going to see more spec overhauls like Outlaw and Survival, especially as new class themes begin to dry up.

I think I would have minded it less if I hadn't already played a couple of combat rogues for years at that point who most decidedly were not pirates and wouldn't be carrying pistols, so it felt like I had something taken away from my characters thematically. As mentioned before, I think I would have minded it a lot less if they would have just given us some glyphs to visually swap out the pistol stuff for your choice of thrown weapons (so my troll rogue might have used throwing axes for example).
But then, I was also a little annoyed when my demo lock back in the legion pruning lost half of her toys so they could give them to the demon hunters instead...

[Teriz]

Reading this, it makes me wonder if Dark Ranger might become a spec rather than a class, similar to how they tried to work a couple of different concepts into the Warrior class. I could absolutely see it with this idea becoming either a fourth Hunter spec or perhaps some sort of offshoot class combined with something like Shadow Hunters.

Yeah, Shadowlands was the perfect opportunity to introduce a Dark Ranger class. Sylvanas is featured heavily, it comes after BFA where she created many Night Elf Dark Rangers, and it lines up with previous expansions where new classes are introduced. Given that Sylvanas is more than likely gone after this expansion, and Hunters have continued to be the class that gets Dark Ranger abilities and items, I think it's fair to say that the future of the concept entirely revolves around the Hunter class.

A Dark Ranger fourth spec for Hunters would be very fitting. Alongside an option for Forsaken to be undead elves.

[Mojo03]

They already departed from the concept by giving it a new demon form that gives the tank spec.

It wouldn't be too hard to give them another spec based on a different demon. Perhaps a ranged one where you stay in the demon form during combat.

Another thing with DH is they’re only allowed to be elves. Literally the 2 most prominent archer races.

On top of that. Traditional glaives already have the form of a bow. Just throw a magic string on one and boom.

Or yet another option. Have them throw glaives like dancers in FF14.

There really is solid options for third spec. They’re just lazy.

[Gigantique]

I think we technically have blade master swords though they are old and low poly. Wouldn't hurt for a touch up. Totems woukd require another animation set and do look kind of silly though.

Actually the bfa pvp swords from season 3 iirc look pretty blademaster-y

[Candlewick]

Actually the bfa pvp swords from season 3 iirc look pretty blademaster-y

Huh I didn't know that I was thinking of the simple thin bladed swords from vanilla and tbc myself.

[Al Gorefiend]

except you learned nothing from your main post. Alchemist and tinker are too close to professions and thus rolled into them. This has been done over and over and even told by blizz it doesn't fit the fantasy. It's over. Otherwise, blood mage, blademaster, shadow hunter, dread lord, crypt lord, warden, firelord, pit lord, and naga sea witch are all heroes, where are they? It's over

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your biases are hilarious. Warden is as close to rogue as tinker is as close to the engineering profession, as well as your other examples being no where close to their mark. While blizzard logic they think this all works this way, this is exactly why you're never getting your wanna be gundam hero in this mmo

Wannabe-Gundam hero? How is a Tinker too far-fetched when we have big cinema names like Iron Man fighting equally matched against magic and super strength? A class that uses technology to its full potential is an untapped class identity, I really don't see how arguments against Tinker hold any merit.

The concept is simple. You are a hero who is a technological mastermind that doesn't use magic because they can't/don't need to. Goblins by lore rarely incorporate magic into their society at all. In fact up until Cataclysm the established lore was that Goblins became so technology-inclined BECAUSE they lacked magical aptitude.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm of the opinion that classes do not need to be 100% unique and not overlap with any other class. Ultimately, there are only so many ways to design a class, especially in a WoW-style game that has a very restrictive set of limitations (the main content is centered around raiding, which means playing with at least 9 other players. The game does not have a true physics engine. There is a GCD. Bosses are generally immune to CC. Etc). Ultimately, what matters most is giving the player an effective class fantasy. A Warlock and a Necromancer might not differ much from each other mechanically, but they offer two very different class fantasies, which at the end of the day is what is most important (behind being fun to play).

I've always found the playable warrior class to be a rather meh class fantasy. I hardly have any fanart of WoW warriors saved. But I find Death Knights and Demon Hunters to have very strong flavor, hence why I have lot of DK and DH fanart saved. Ideally, I would rather that we had a lot of specific class fantasies like Warden, Dark Ranger, Tauren Chieftain, etc, rather than just a few overly broad ones.

The only real problem with having lots of classes like this is that that would be quite a lot of alts a player might need to enjoy all of the classes, each alt having inventory space, bank space, a talent tree, etc. It would be grossly impractical from a server storage perspective. Also, it would be impractical for the average player to actually enjoy all of those alts because they would literally not have enough time to level up and gear them all. So either the leveling grind and the gearing treadmill must be massively curbed, or you must allow characters to be able to switch between multiple different classes as in FFXIV (ie, a Scourge character being able to switch between DK and Necro, or an Alliance character being able to switch between Paladin and Mage). So you would only need a few characters to play all of the classes rather than dozens.

PotM are NE evles only. Also "Priestess" pretty much denotes female only as well. Hence why the concept was melded into the greater Hunter and Priest classes (later Druid class).

It's a shame that genderlocking didn't make into WoW (Druids being male only and priestess and wardens being female only), as they were a part of the flavor.

This class system is pretty much what GW2 does. It works fine.

GW2 started out with overly broad classes like warrior... and then immediately ditched that philosophy and switched to providing specific class fantasies. The Revenant class is GW2's version of the Death Knight, being a warrior who channels the spirits from the Mists (GW2's underworld). The Holosmith uses Asuran technology. The Mechanist uses Canthan Jade tech. And so on.

Or yet another option. Have them throw glaives like dancers in FF14.

Preferably without the girly animations. Or, at least, allow male DHs to have their own set of animations.

[Al Gorefiend]

I just wish I could drill it into people's skulls that ever since the creation of the two-specced, two-raced Demon Hunter literally anything is precedented so long as it can be mirrored into the other faction.

The only logical hurdle devs have to leap over anymore is if it can fit within both the Horde and Alliance, so classes like Shadow Hunter wouldn't work because no Alliance race can accurately embody a Voodoo using troll.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I just wish I could drill it into people's skulls that ever since the creation of the two-specced, two-raced Demon Hunter literally anything is precedented so long as it can be mirrored into the other faction.

Making Horde-style Shamans available to the Alliance, and Paladins with Light aesthetics available to the Horde, was a mistake. Factions SHOULD have exclusive classes. So long as every faction is able to beat the content, that's fine. The obsessions of a minority of hardcore raiders should not dictate game design that affects the core feel of the game.

[Candlewick]

Making Horde-style Shamans available to the Alliance, and Paladins with Light aesthetics available to the Horde, was a mistake. Factions SHOULD have exclusive classes. So long as every faction is able to beat the content, that's fine. The obsessions of a minority of hardcore raiders should not dictate game design that affects the core feel of the game.

If the classes didn't have the tool kites they did I would agree... something like splitting rogues and warriors wouldn't be to big a deal. The buffs from pallies and shamans are just to massive to do that though.