I Got Class

Telwyn put up a post about classes that started me thinking. It does seem like a given that more classes must be better, doesn't it? 

Without getting into the whole choice paralysis quagmire, when I look at a new game, the more classes there are, the more interested I'm likely to be. Conversely, when I see one of those generic Warrior/Mage/Thief/Healer set-ups, my inclination these days is to pass.

As a casual player (let's not start that discussion again...) there really aren't many downsides to a game having more classes than a community college. All I have to do is pick the ones I like and leave the rest. It's not like it's going to affect anything I'm going to be doing. A game would have to be very old school to insist on specific classes for solo leveling or at-cap solo content. 

Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Except it doesn't always seem to work that way. For example, I've taken all the core Guild Wars 2 classes up the eighty level ladder to the top and while it's true to say it's never been what you'd call difficult, boy, did it vary in how tedious or frustrating it felt.

I'm not alone in thinking that. You can hear people saying it most days in Queensdale, the starter map of choice for people with strong opinions. At nearly nine years old, GW2 still manages to attract an astonishing number of new players and they're not shy of introducing themselves and telling the world at large what they think of the game. 

Maybe it's the great community that ANet like to brag about that makes people feel comfortable about outing themselves as newbies and asking questions. Like the ever-popular "I'm new. What class should I play?".

Alright, the questions are usually more nuanced than that. And the players asking them aren't always exactly first-timers. Often it'll be more along these lines: "I'm thinking of starting a new character. I tried a Mesmer but I didn't really get on with it so now I'm thinking maybe a Guardian would be easier?" (Yes, a Guardian would be easier. The only thing easier than playing a Guardian would be hiring someone to play the game for you. Which, if you're playing a Guardian, you pretty much already did...).

Okay, okay. Cheap shot. My point is, even with just nine basic classes, plenty of people clearly feel overwhelmed.  

Except GW2 doesn't have nine classes, does it? It has nine classes multiplied by how many weapons each class can use because each weapon changes 100% of  the combat skills. (Yes, alright, 50% if you have two weapons and only change one. Don't be picky!)

I've been playing an Elementalist since 2013. Actually, since 2012, but at first I was moving from class to class like Tom Cruise on top of a train. Within a few months of GW2's launch I'd played all eight classes to the cap. It only took about two weeks for each of them. 

It took me a while to settle on a favorite but eventually I ended up mostly playing Eles on all three of my accounts. You might think that would mean I'd have a good idea by now how to play the class. I mean, 10,000 hours and all that, right? 

Nope. I can play a core staff elementalist and a staff Tempest and that's it. I have no more idea how to play an Ele wielding dagger and scepter than someone who'd never played the class at all. 

Exaggerating for effect there, obviously. There's a good deal of transferable knowledge in the traits and so on. But the spells? The rotation? The synergies? Not. A. Clue.

GW2 players and anyone paying attention will have noticed the word "Tempest" a couple of paragraphs back. That's another class. Wait, didn't he say there were only nine of them? Thanks for noticing and why, yes I did!

Tempest isn't a "class" nor yet a "profession" (We'll get to those. Be patient.). Tempest is an "Elite Specialization". Elite specs are what Anet use to make absolutely sure the game will never be balanced and most classes will be considered "broken" until the heat death of the universe.

When they were designing the first expansion and following some kind of precedent from the original Guild Wars, where collecting and combining skills to make different builds made up a huge part of the supposed charm, ANet thought it would go down well with the fans if they added a way to change your class without, y'know, actually changing your class.

Not that we have classes in GW2. Profession is the preferred term. (I said I'd get to it). And there are eight of them.

Sorry. Sorry! Nine. I meant nine. I forgot Revenants. I always forget Revenants and that's because I can't understand them. I have one. I levelled him to 80, no idea how. Never knew what he was doing. Never knew what I was doing, come to that. Didn't matter. Leveling in GW2 is that easy. They could put a thousand classes in there and it wouldn't make any difference. They could all face-roll to cap. Although as I said some of them would bore you into a coma doing it.

The Revenant, though, isn't a true core profession. It can't be. It isn't available in the core game. Not that the core game exists any more. And yet that core game set to remain the de facto default setting so long as it's all ANet's willing to give away for free. 

Come to think of it, you can't buy Heart of Thorns any more either, which is where the Revenant was introduced. If you want HoT now, you have to take it rolled up with Path of Fire, the second expansion, the one that doesn't include any new professions at all. Just nine more new elite specs.

Confused yet? Don't worry, so are the devs. Someone didn't think it through, did they? I guess when upper management were all chanting "We don't need expansions. We won't make expansions" it seemed safe enough. No more expansions means no more awkward additions to the roster and no more balancing nightmares. Well, no new balancing nightmares.

So they're making another expansion. And it has to have more classes - sorry, elite specs. Otherwise half the potential audience would walk away. And it doesn't matter what they're called, they're classes and with two expansions down we've got twenty-seven of them. 

When End of Dragons arrives we'll have thirty-six. We'll have to. People expect them. There'd be hell to pay if an expansion didn't come with more legendary weapons and a new elite spec for each of the professions.

New legendaries are safe. They don't affect gameplay at all. They just need to be flashier than the last lot. Elite specializations, though, those either have make the core class more powerful or allow it to do something it previously couldn't. If not, why would anyone be interested? 

That's what happened with every expansion to date (all two of them). The introduction of new classes brought sweeping changes to group composition in both competitive and co-operative play. For a while everyone wanted druids or weavers or firebrands or soulbeasts or scourges or whatever Metabattle told them they wanted. 

And for every new class that made flavor of the month, another lost their chair. (Maybe that's why ANet started selling actual chairs in the Gem store...). 

I focus on GW2 because I know it, because I play it and because I think it's a fairly extreme example of the problems that can come with adding new classes. 

At first sight ANet's task looks manageable. Just nine classes. That doesn't sound too bad. World of Warcraft has a dozen. EverQuest II has twenty-six. Only, as I think I've made clear, that's not really how it works.

If the third expansion follows precedent, GW2 will effectively have three dozen classes. Leaving aside the separate issue of who has access to what under the variety of various current, legacy and future combinations of expansion ownership and membership level, there's absolutely no evidence the developers on board have the capacity to balance the classes they already have so how they're going to manage with nine more on top is anyone's guess. Anyone's guess so long as that guess is "badly".

The worst part is that in order for the expansion to be as attractive as possible to the maximum number of players, the new classes will have to outperform the old ones for at least a few months before eventually being dialled back. Or players will have to believe they do. It's the same thing.

As anyone who's ever played an mmorpg and gotten themselves involved with the conversations around it will know, what players believe is going on and what is really going on have very little to do with each other. And it's not facts that matter. It's feelings.

More classes mean more people feeling their class is being ignored, more people calling for buffs to their favorites and nerfs for everyone else. It's not just just class envy, either. With the perception that one class is better than another comes the expectation that some classes are more worth playing than others. Even if someone enjoys their underperforming class there's peer pressure to drop it and swap to something more efficient. Or at least more fashionable.

I watched that happen in EverQuest when Beastlords were added. BLs weren't the best at anything much but they were great at lots of things. Having one in your group meant you could do without several other classes. I played a Beastlord then and even in friendly groups with people I knew well there was sometimes tension.

The bad feeling was such that a decade later, when it was announced the class was finally coming to EQII, the forums almost caught fire. Even today you can hear people complain about the very existence of Beastlords in the game.

If you play on your own, the way I play EverQuest II, that doesn't matter. I played a bruiser for years when aparently it was the most useless, broken, worthless class. I didn't even notice. Now I play a Berserker, which I learned recently is dangerously overpowered and ripe for a few hard swipes with the nerf bat. Didn't notice that, either.

But I can bet I'd be brought up to speed pretty fast if I ever decided to start grouping again. Players who talk to each other in mmorpgs tend to talk about which class is better quite a lot. It takes a strong personality to keep on playing the outliers when it feels like everyone's looking at you with either pity or contempt.

Of course, there's always the old saw about bringing the player not the class. That one works two ways. Sometimes it means design the game so any class can do the job and everyone can play anything they want. Sometimes it means if the player's good enough they can outperform most players even when they're playing at a disadvantage.

I don't mean any of this to suggest mmorpgs shouldn't have lots of classes. Not at all. It works for me. And even though the game isn't all about me, the flip of this coin is that nothing in mmorpgs is ever truly balanced. Balance itself is a myth. Yes, adding new classes always creates winners and losers but every balance patch does that anyway, if it does anything at all. With new classes you can just see it coming.

All I'm saying is that more classes isn't a universal good. It sounds like it would be but it's not. At best it's added complexity. At worst tt's a recipe for chaos, disruption and discontent.

And I'm fine with that. Just so long as they don't nerf Eles. 

Again.

Cat Class

EverQuest II has a lot of classes. Twenty-six to be precise. They break down into four archetypes (Fighter, Priest, Mage, Scout) which reflects the early days of the game, when you didn't get to play as your final class choice until level twenty. And there were only fifty levels.

You had to jump a bunch of in-game hurdles, too, before you finally ended up with the character you wanted. It was never a very popular system, although I guarantee you'll still find veterans who claim it was the bixie's kneecaps. There's always someone who'll claim to like anything. Maybe some of them even mean it.

Along with most of the original systems and mechanics, the class system was changed long ago to allow players to begin as they meant to go on. About the only holdover from the archetype system is the allocation of a single, primary statistic from which each draws all their power, something which was only ratified relatively recently. 

It won't surprise anyone to learn that Fighters rely on strength, Priests on wisdom. Mages on Intelligence and Scouts on agility. And all classes draw on stamina for their health pool. For legacy reasons everyone gets everyone else's stats (officially known as Attributes in the game, a term I have never heard anyone use in sixteen years of playing) but only two of the five actually do anything.

When it comes to armor, things loosen up just a little. The cleanest archetypes are Mages, who all wear cloth, and Scouts, who all wear chain. Most fighters wear plate although monks and bruisers wear leather. That used to be tied in with their reliance on agility to avoid getting hit but of course these days they rely on strength so it no longer makes much sense from a lore perspective. 

Priests are a hotch-potch. Some of them wear plate, some leather and some chain. Their heals also don't always stack well with others of the same class or even wearing the same armor (obviously not because of the armor), which is why you regularly hear lfg calls not just for healers but asking for specific classes or armor-types.

When picking a class at character creation there's also alignment and race to consider. For most practical purposes the original Good/Evil split between Freeport and Qeynos doesn't make much impact on gameplay any more. Anyone can group with anyone else and talk and trade with them freely, almost all quests are neutral and so is just about every city introduced since the first expansion. 

Over the years some of the restrictions that once existed have been relaxed. Ratongas, once pure evil, can now be good or neutral and goodies can become cool Inquisitors instead of boring Templars. If you want to be a Shadowknight or a Necromancer, though, you still won't be able to start in Qeynos or
Kelethin.

It's all very complicated and frankly not all that interesting or important - until you come to make a character. Which is why I'm talking about it now. 

The servers are down for the bi-weekly patch so I thought I'd finally get on with making my Vah Shir, the new race added with Reign of Shadows. I'd already bought another character slot to make space so it seemed about time.

Only I ran into the same problem I always run into when making a new character in EQII (and in pretty much any other game for that matter). I know what I like. 

Doesn't sound like much of a problem, does it? Well, it is.

I like pet classes, I like fighters with massive AEs and I like highly mobile, ranged classes. I also like classes that have fast movement speed and ones who can feign death because I like to be able to get free of combat when things aren't going my way. Back when I used to group more, what I really liked best of all was healers, preferably those with direct heals, but there's not much point playing a healer when you solo all the time, especially in a game with healer mercenaries.

On my subbed account I already have at least one of all the classes in EQII that I really like - Berserker, Necromancer, Bruiser, Shadowknight. I also have most of the ones I quite like - Wizard, Inquisitor, Warlock, Fury. I even have some I really don't get on with very well that were added late to the game and which I felt duty-bound to try - Channeler, Beastlord.

Of those that remain, there are a lot of chain-wearing scouts, about whom I know really not very much. And I could use a chain-wearer if only because it would give me something to do with all the chain armor I get from quests and Overseer missions and as drops. I used to stuff it all in the bank but eventually I transmuted most of it because it obviously wasn't going to get used. 

Unfortunately, chain-wearers in EQII don't really suit me very well. There's the Ranger, who you'd think I might enjoy, seeing as how I have no fewer than three Hunters in WoW and three Rangers in Guild Wars 2. Only I played an EQII ranger once and it didn't go at all well. Can't remember why. I just know it didn't.

Anyone who has to position themselves to attack can forget it. I can't be doing with all that fiddliness. That used to rule out all the stealth types, the Troubadors and Brigands and their like. Only I have a vague suspicion that over the years many of the positional restrictions have been watered down or removed altogether. Except, since I always skip anything about classes I don't play when it comes up in patch notes, I can't be sure.

There are several chain healers. I played one, a Defiler, for quite a while. He was my main character for maybe a year or two back in the dawn of time. I enjoyed him a lot in a duo with Mrs Bhagpuss but he was excruciating to solo. I hear that's better now but I'm not willing to take the risk.

I've been thinking about it a fair bit and I still haven't made up my mind. Perhaps the obvious pick would be a Conjuror. It's a powerful pet class and while I have one in the nineties already, he's on a different account and anyway I never really got on with him very well - not as a class but as a character.

For some reason that entirely escapes me I chose to make him a human male with a handlebar mustache, which is not someone I can imagine ever wanting to play now. Then to compound the problem I named him after a writer I like, only to realize too late that I'd remembered his name wrong.

None of that relates to the class, which I seem to recall I enjoyed playing. They do have very ugly pets but that's what petamorph wands are for. (Note to self: remember that post on petamorph wands you keep meaning to write? Well, get on and write it, why don't you?).

The other option is one of those aforementioned scouts. Maybe I should do some research and find out just how they play. I do have a Dirge in her low thirties on Kaladim, the Time Limited Expansion server and she's fun but I'm not sure how that retro-fitted gameplay reflects the way the class plays at the upper levels of the current game.

Last but definitely not least would be another Shadowknight. Again, I have one in the 90s but he's on the wrong server. I really enjoy SK gameplay but it's perhaps too similar to the Berserker, minus those fantastic AEs. Being able to feign is a huge attraction but I fear any plate fighter is going to seem like a younger, weaker sibling compared to my berserker, who is by some margin my best-geared and most fully-upgraded character.

I was hoping putting all this down in white and blue might clarify matters but I can't say it's helped all that much. I do think I should go research the scouts, though. I know Mrs Bhagpuss used to play both a Swashbuckler and a Troubador to great effect. I'd ask her for advice but the game has changed so much in the eight years since she stopped playing I'm not sure her experiences would be all that relevant today.

I could log her account on and play them for myself, though. Now there's an idea...

It's Elemental: EverQuest

There's not an MMORPG out there that can touch EverQuest for putting the fear into you when you're trying to do something as simple as buy your new spells. Even in 2020, when death in Norrath has long lost its sting, just the thought of having to travel to an unknown zone to trade with an unfamiliar vendor is enough to bring the casual player out in a cold sweat.

I've been parsimonious with my purchases while I've been levelling up by way of the daily Overseer quests. In the comfort and safety in the Guild Lobby experience rolls in so fast, comparatively speaking, it seems wasteful to spend money on spells or gear I'll barely use.

Now I've started spending more and more time out hunting, though, I've been feeling increasingly sensitive about my under-developed abilities and my undercooked ambition. Mobs in the zones where I feel comfortable are drifting from light blue to green to grey. It doesn't really matter since the huge bulk of my xp comes from those Overseer quests and the weaker the mobs become, the easier it gets to bully them out of their dinner money.

Outgrowing a zone is still an uncomfortable feeling all the same. Even though the xp I'm missing is all but insignificant it still seems somehow wasteful not to be getting it. If I'm ever going to take the next step, I'll have to equip myself adequately for the adventure. Can't put it off forever.

I've already bought several batches of spells as I've gone along. I like to have the latest nukes and as a soloing mage I rely entirely on my elemental pet (well, that and my cleric mercenary, of course) so keeping up to date on summoning spells is crucial.

Magicians get four elemental pets, the traditional Earth, Air, Wind and Fire. At lower levels the usual choice is Earth, a tank with high hit points and the ability to root enemies to prevent them running away but somewhere in the fifties preference shifts to something that can also put out decent damage.

The fire pet, a ranged caster, is the go-to for magicians who group but soloists go for either air or water. Water has decent hit points and survivability and puts out very good damage. A lot of guides recommend it. Air, however, almost matches it in those departments but adds a frequent and effective stun. Stunning isn't quite as effective as rooting when it comes to stopping runners but it comes close. Air has been my choice for as long as I can remember.

The four pet spells cycle round in a regular five-level pattern, with the spare level being taken up by a generally useless spell called Monster Summoning that calls up a weak pet using the model of a random creature from the zone you happen to be in at the time. It's fun to play with but you learn pretty quickly not to trust that pet to do anything more challenging than follow you around and make heads turn.

The air pet, by chance or design, happens to be first in the cycle. At level 96 I took another trip to Shard's Landing. The first time I made that journey was an adventure in itself.  This time I made sure to pay the fee and take the simple, safe port from my Guild Hall.

I picked up the pet but the timing was a little unfortunate, co-inciding with a bonus xp weekend. Overseer xp rolled in faster than ever and the new pet didn't last me as long as I'd thought it would. A week or so later, in another deja vu journey, I was off again to Katta Castellum: Deluge.

I'd made all my mistakes the first time around so those expeditions went as uneventfully as you'd wish. I bought the next air pet, along with some my key spells for several levels ahead while I was there. Then I ported  back and spent the next couple of weeks enjoying the fruits of my minimal labors.

Inbetween hunts I idled in the lobby soaking up buffs and since I had nothing better to do I spent some time researching upgrades. There seemed to be plenty to choose from. I almost bought several different sets of gear, any of which would have been a major improvement on the increasingly level-inappropriate choices my mage had been making do with for longer than I care to admit.

Several expansions in a row employed a system of upgradeable armor, the raw pieces of which dropped commonly from mobs, were tradeable and could be improved with items bought from an NPC when combined in a device purchased for the purpose. Those pieces often sell relatively cheaply in the Bazaar. All that's needed is a pocketful of platinum and yet another exciting trip to some far-flung, long-forgotten quest hub in unfamiliar zone to purchase the requisite reagent.

I was on the cusp of making a choice, mostly based on what I could afford, when it occured to me that level 106 marked something of a watershed. Whereas all the preceding sets had focus effects that decayed after five levels, built-in obsolesence to ensure their replacement with each new expansion, by the time 2017's Ring of Scale expansion rolled around the developers had tired of the process.

Conflagrant armor returns to the traditional upgrade route of having a player-crafter make gear for adventurers using items dropped by mobs. As a result it's significantly more expensive to buy in the Bazaar but it's very much worth the investment. The stats are very good for a solo player but most importantly the focus effects operate at full efficiency all the way to the current level cap of 115.

Almar's excellent, if outdated, guide says "Conflagrant Armor ... is the best non-prestige armor you can get for players 106 - 110 and the second best non-prestige armor at 110". A set of that will do you proud for a long while. All you need to do is make enough money to buy it.

106 is also the level the next air pet appears. For that I had to find my way to yet another new zone, albeit one that sounded eerily familiar: The Overthere. Ring of Scale is one of several expansions that re-uses older zones, in this case those originally introduced in the much-earlier Ruins of Kunark.

I remember The Overthere as the foothold of Norrath's evil races. Back at the turn of the millennium its only settlement was well-known to players as the Evil Outpost. Given its reputation, I was understandably nervous when I ported in, having bought my Miniature Worker's Sledge Mallet from the guild hall functionary and handed it imediately back to him to activate the portal.

The docks and the buildings beyond looked very familiar. I carefully conned every NPC I could see. I couldn't see many. It was too dark. Well, it was night-time, of course. Isn't it always?

Everyone seemed to be either apprehensive or indifferent. Safe enough. Although most of them also conned red. Not so re-assuring. I took a deep breath and headed into town.

It was fine. I found my vendor, bought my new air pet and all the other level 106 spells she had. Then I backed out, took a few quick screenshots and gated home. Didn't even hang around to scribe the spells into my book. Why take chances?

Back in the safety of the Lobby I had more decisions to make. I'd already researched pet focus items for my new level, the ones that let you summon pets at a higher level than the base spell affords. For the first time in pretty much the entire game there were none. No tradeable ones, at least. No affordable tradeable ones. There is one super-rare tradeable focus, the Golden Sage's Earring, which I've seen quoted at ten million plat. I have a hundred thousand to my name.

Lack of a suitable focus being a moot point, I saw no reason not to summon my pet there and then. No reason except that I already had a fully raid-buffed pet and it seemed a waste to dismiss it. I had a spare pet stashed in my invisble pet pocket courtesy of the Suspend Companion AA so I thought I'd swap those two over, dismiss the lower-level one, suspend the buffed one and summnon a shiny, new level 105 pet. Then we could loaf around for a few hours until he got buffed, too.

Only it turns out you can't swap current and suspended pets until you have all eight grades of the AA and I only had seven. Which is a problem, because as a free player I can't earn any more AAs.

Next time I'll explain exactly how I fixed that. Hint: it cost me. Although not as much as I expected.

Seventeen Days : WoW Classic

So... WoW Classic. Soon to be upon us like a speeding locomotive in just a couple of weeks plus change. Will it drive all before it or crash spectacularly into the buffers?

As reported by Massively:OP, subs are up: "Subscribers in World of Warcraft® increased since mid-May, following the release date announcement and beta for World of WarcraftClassic and the Rise of Azshara™ content update.". And as Bree observes "...wouldn’t it be worrisome if they weren’t?".

Well, yes it would, although maybe not quite yet. True, you have to have a subscription to join in the revivalist fun. On the other hand, if all you want to do is party like it's 2004, it's bit early to pull the switch. What are you going to do for the next two weeks? Money wasted, isn't it?

Makes a lot more sense to re-sub just before the launch date. That way you get a full month of Classic play, which I'm guessing is going to be a week or two more than a lot of people are going to need before they discover that subbing hasn't made them fifteen years younger after all.

That's what I'm going to do. I had already decided to do it purely based on the blogging opportunities it's sure to afford but last night I asked Mrs Bhagpuss (in guild chat in Guild Wars 2 because why get up and walk into the next room?) whether she was interested in re-subbing for Classic and she replied with an unequivocal "Yes".

I wasn't sure she even knew WoW Classic was a thing. I don't think we've talked about it before. She's also not much for going back to MMORPGs she's stopped playing. She did return to EverQuest, EQII and Vanguard but all of those were more than a decade ago.

But then, Mrs Bhagpuss did like WoW when we played, possibly more than I did. She made it to a slightly higher level and carried on playing for a few weeks longer. Conversely, I've been back many times to futz about at low levels, whereas she's never played a session since she stopped about a decade ago.

This is where it all begins. Well, after a bit of a jog. Get your snowshoes ready.

The thing is, we both missed out on World of Warcraft when it was a cultural phenomenon and an unstoppable force in the genre. By the time we got around to trying it, sometime around 2009, WoW was mid-WotLK, considered by some to be the zenith of the game. 

I found that version very enjoyable. There was still plenty of granularity. Mobs didn't fall over from a hard stare. Leveling took a while. The world felt open, connected and real.

On the other hand, a lot of the more interesting mechanics I'd read up about had already left the game. I was particularly disappointed to find that pet management for hunters was no longer a thing.

Because of the way I came to WoW, a great deal of my interest in Classic relies not on nostalgia but on a desire to experience something I missed out on first time around. I'm aware it's going to be a recreation but I'm expecting it to be a convincing one.

As we get closer to launch a few questions arise. With Mrs Bhagpuss signed up I know I won't be playing entirely alone but I'd quite like to have a few other contacts, not least so we can do some dungeons. WoW dungeons are quite good fun.

There will, of course, be a huge number of guilds recruiting and Mrs Bhagpuss, who is a lot more social in games than I am, will quite likely end up in one. That said, she's nowhere near as game-social as she used to be. I don't think any of us are, The games themselves have largely removed the need to make that effort. Whether the old social skills will return remains to be seen.

No pandas, space goats or jolly green goblins in 2004 2019!

I'd be interested in joining a guild made up of bloggers from the local blogosphere but so far I haven't heard of anyone planning to start such a thing. Even if someone does, it will either be a European guild on an EU server, where I won't be playing, or an American guild on a US server, where I will play, but mostly when everyone is asleep.

I prefer U.S. servers for a number of reasons. I've played on many EU servers over the years and they tend to be really bad-tempered compared to US or Global servers. U.S. players just seem generally more cheerful. 

More importantly, though, I really don't like playing MMORPGs in their prime time. I like a busy environment but prime time in a successful game isn't just busy, it's heaving. Playing prime time  is like choosing to go and do your weekly shop at lunchtime on Saturday, when you can't get around the aisles for families shooting the breeze with their friends and neighbors and every checkout has a line ten deep.

Much better to play shoulder hours. As a UK resident, I'm five hours behind the East Coast, nine behind the West. That means things are beginning to liven up around the time I get home from work and just starting to get really busy when I log off to go to bed. Weekends are generally comfortably populated from lunchtime onwards and weekdays I have the place to myself, unless the game has a lot of Australian players, which many do.

Blizzard just released their initial list of server names. Most of them are... odd. TAGN has the full list. I'm inclined towards Bloodsail Buccaneers, which has the virtue of a memorable name, almost the only US server that can make that claim, and a PvE-RP ruleset. It's also physically located on the East Coast, which, by dint of the transatlantic cable, generally gives me at least as good a ping as most EU servers.

I don't do a lot of RP (sorry, Psychochild) but I am very much "RP compatible" as Wilhelm describes it. I'm happy to be around people who roleplay, I pick character names that don't offend the lore and I like to talk "in character" if the opportunity arises. Mostly, though, I find that my playstyle just slides by unnoticed on an RP server.

After choosing a server comes faction, race and class. I really don't think there's much of a decision to be made here. I tend to prefer Alliance to Horde. Goblins are a huge draw but there are no goblins in Classic so Alliance it's going to be.

Wrong. Just wrong.

For race I strongly prefer the short of stature. That means Dwarves or Gnomes. My general preference is for Gnomes but WoW Gnomes are a bit creepy, at least the male ones. I think it's the mustaches. That means it's most likely going to be a Dwarf.

Actually, it has to be a Dwarf because my class of first preference is Hunter. As I mentioned, I was somewhat disappointed to miss out on the pet management aspect of the class and I'm very keen to explore that. Also I really like having to manage arrows as  a resource rather than having a magic bow that never runs out of ammunition.

If I end up hanging around for a while I'll almost certainly make a Gnome Warlock. I like the class and it suits a Gnome. I'd entertain the idea of playing a Druid but the only Alliance race that can be one is Night Elf and I'd uninstall rather than play one of those. I might try a Tauren Druid for the Horde if Classic sticks.

That about covers everything, I think. It's tempting to re-sub now but if I did I'd just end up boring myself with the dull Legion content my Hunter is lumbered with or, more likely, not log in at all. I'll have to exercise restraint and wait until sometime around the 25th or 26th.

Nice to have something to look forward to in MMORPGs for once, even if it is a decade and a half out of date!

A Secret Understanding: Why Faction Matters

Following Friday's post and the comments it provoked, I've been thinking some more about faction in MMORPGs. It's clear that the word has two very different meanings, which I confusingly conflated, both in the piece and in my replies.

The original spur for the post was Blizzard's rumored retrenchment on the long-established bi-partisan structure of World of Warcraft, wherein players choose sides at character creation like children in a playground, then spend the next however many years thumbing their noses at the opposition while sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting "La la la not listening!". I am very much not in favor of that approach - at least not in most kinds of PvE setting.

It works well enough for PvP, provided players can be induced to split into roughly equal numbers. I prefer having regular sides rather than being assigned a team at random. It gives what can often be a somewhat artificial enterprise at least a veneer of purpose.

Gnome Magician

Being a sensitive little flower, I actually prefer PvP environments where opponents are prevented from trash-talking each other, so the imposed rule of silence works for me. There's also an argument for it in competitive PvE, such as EverQuest II's Proving Grounds. (Does anyone still do those? I only tried a couple and I hadn't thought about it for years until I started writing this)

Even there I don't think it's strictly necessary. The crucial factor is that the restrictions only apply while you're doing that content, not across the entire game. The rest of the time, you can make your choices about who to group or talk with for all the usual bigoted, prejudiced and irrational reasons without having to delegate your snap judgments to software.

The other kind of faction is far more interesting. I was surprised to see someone as well-versed in the genre as Tyler Edwards express what seemed to me to be surprise after my lengthy reply to his original comment, in which I waxed somewhat lyrical about the good old days of EverQuest. Not, I should hasten to clarify, that he seemed surprised to find me banging on yet again about how everything in EQ was better - god knows that's a record I broke years ago.

What did suprise me was that he seemed to be unaware of the complex network of NPC factions that formed the engine that drove much of EQ's original content. It hadn't really occured to me to what extent that concept, once a key driver in the genre, had fallen into disuse.

Half-elf Ranger

To clarify for anyone who hasn't experienced the way those factions worked - and for that matter still do work, in modified form, in some of the current game - we are not talking about what I believe is known in WoW as "rep grind". EverQuest had that as well and the two things are closely inter-related but they aren't the same.

Your journey in Classic EQ, as in most MMORPGs, began with your choice of race, class, gender and deity. Gender was purely cosmetic. It had no effect of any kind on gameplay, although if you chose to play a female troll it might have a big effect on your EQ social life.

Class had the same obvious gameplay connotations of any rpg, compounded both by the fact that classes were race-locked and that their distribution did not follow strict lines of Good vs Evil. Most classes were effectively neutral (a warrior is a warrior is a warrior, after all). Some were inherently one or the other - there's no such thing as a neutral Necromancer, for example - and a few cleaved to their own rules, which stood outside of morality altogether .

If you wanted to be a Shaman, for example, you had to choose one of the races considered to be more primitive. In the original game this meant Ogre, Troll or Barbarian. Ogres and Trolls were evil. Barbarians were good.

Some races could only be Evil. Some could only be Good. Some could be either and some were Neutral. But picking an alignment didn't in itself dictate how others would see you. Just how "Good", "Evil" or "Neutral" you were was itself nuanced by your race, which God you followed, what class you were.

The Gypsy camp in Oasis. Oasis was a popular zone because it was handily-placed between Freeport and Oggok and Grobb and the gypsies would trade with anyone.

"Good" in Norrath always seemed a more monolthic concept than "Evil". Choosing between wood elf and high elf or Tunare or Karana did have consequences, but they tended more along the lines of which shopkeepers wanted your trade than who would race out of a nearby building and try to cleave you in two with a greatsword.

Gnome Rogue

If you were "Evil" it made a big difference just how evil. Trolls lived down at the very bottom of the pit. Even Ogres couldn't stomach them. Good races generally didn't see much difference between trolls and ogres but an Ogre who chose to be a warrior and follow the God of War, Rallos Zek, could scrape by in a Neutral city like Freeport. Well, the bad parts of it, anyway.

On the other hand, going gnome and calling yourself "Neutral" didn't cut much with slack with the good guys if you took up Necromancy in the name of Bertoxxolous. Evil is as Evil does - and as it worships. Most gnomes followed The Duke of Below, Brell Serillis, who generally didn't get many people's hackles up, but If you wanted to be truly neutral you had to go with Agnostic, which fortunately was an option.

To players used to the more straightforward choices of modern MMORPGs this is probably already looking over-complicated but it's just the start of how faction could affect your life in old Norrath. Every NPC you would ever meet, from the lowliest moss snake to the King of Ak'Anon, (possibly not the best example since the gnomes actually built themselves a clockwork king so they wouldn't have to keep changing him when he died)  would weigh you in an exceeding detailed set of invisible scales before deciding how to react.

The Goddess Tunare

The NPCs would have some of the same criteria as a player character. Everything had a race (with species being the same thing for the purpose of the game). Animals and monsters presumably had a class under the hood, so to speak, although it wasn't always made plain. Humanoids and/or sentients also had deities and guild affiliations.

Oh yes, NPCs had guilds and they mattered. Every NPC had some kind of allegiance to a city-state or similar legislature plus membership of one or more professional, trade or specialist organizations. Certain cities didn't get on with others. Certain guilds were in commercial competition, professional rivalry or were just implacably opposed on ethical, religious or philosophical grounds. And all of them expected you to fit in with their prejudices if you wanted to trade with them, learn from them, quest for them or simply walk past them without getting your head ripped off.

If this sounds astoundingly complex that's because it was. And it still wasn't everything. In the very early game there were wild cards, creatures that would usually leave you alone but occasionally might take against you for no apparent reason. Elephants in West Karana were a famous example. Other species, like Aviaks, were so easy-going most of the time that almost everyone thought they were harmless - until you happened to add someone playing a Troll to your group.

Players were also given a wide range of tools to modify their faction and that of others. Enchanters, for example, could illusion themselves as other races, gaining the benefits or disadvantages that came with the appearance, but they couldn't hide their own religious beliefs. It's all very well looking for all the world like a high elf but the guards outside Felwithe can smell a follower of Innoruuk from a hundred paces.

A magician's pet pretending to be a grimling. Pets started out carrying the player's hate list (I believe) but never had specific faction of their own (again, I think...). Grimlings hate everything except other grimlings.

Some of the options were counter-intuitive in the extreme. As a druid I spent a lot of time in wolf form because everyone likes a puppy, apparently. Going wolf allowed my druid, a human worshiper of Karana, free access to the Ogre capital, Oggok. Provided I kept clear of one specific guild, that is. I forget which but I think it might have been the Warriors.

All of this was more than enough to keep your mind busy when soloing or simply moving from place to place. Imagine the situation when there were six of you in a full group. Because EverQuest put absolutely no restrictions on who could group with whom, you might easily find your Barbarian Shaman grouped with an Ogre Warrior, a Dark Elf enchanter, a Halfling Rogue, an Erudite Wizard and some random Half-Elven ranger who you'd invited out of pity.

That combo could give your group half a dozen races, deities and classes, any and all of which could have theoretically predictable but practically unfathomable effects on just about any NPC you might meet. And it didn't stop there.

Good guards doing their job. Because everything has faction, NPCs and mobs know who to fight and who to ignore. They fight among themselves all the time, something a smart player can readily use to their advantage.

Oh, no. Not hardly. While certain aspects of who your character was were hard-wired, many were mutable. EQ's version of rep grind meant that you could, if you put the hours in, make NPCs who hated you start to take a more moderate view. If that Ogre tank had done what my Shadowknight did and spent countless hours skulking around the back streets of Freeport, luring bad guards to their deaths and handing in their helmets to the good ones as proof, he might be able to wander past the Knights of Truth and swagger into the bank just like a regular citizen.

Oh, didn't I mention the "good guard/bad guard" thing? Just because an NPC looked and dressed exactly like all the other ones nearby and had the same name under his portrait didn't mean he was the same as them. Looks can be deceiving.

All in all it was a lot to take in. I loved it. I thought then and think now that it was a huge part of what made EQ the runaway success it was. We hear a lot now about how slow the old MMORPGs were, how much grind there was, how hard it was to do anything on your own. What we hear far less about was how much they made you think.

Felwithe gate guards, always mindful of sneaky dark elven enchanters trying to weasel their way in.

When today's players wonder how we old ones could stand it, all that sitting and medding and camping and shouting /lfg and basically not playing for half or three-quarters of the time, what they're missing is the thinking. I was always thinking about the implications of everything I did, everything I was planning on doing. I had to. If I didn't the consequences, well they wouldn't bear thinking about.

If I had to put my finger on a single difference between the original wave of MMORPGs, EverQuest in particular, and what came later it would be that the old games were more cerebral. Faction was a big part of that, although by no means all.

EverQuest itself eventually moved towards a much simpler set of coded relationships within the game, as this informative thread explains. That was the right choice in the commercial environment of the time, but in the years since then I feel the pendulum has swung too far, not just for EQ but for the genre itself.

All of the above are NPCs. Mr Fizzle is going to win.

There's room in all our MMOs for more complexity. Not more button-pushing or fancier combos but for in-game systems and mechanics that make us think. That's why, I believe, The Secret World was such a hit with a certain segment of the audience, one that's been badly served for years.

We're overdue for some MMORPGs that recognize there's more to virtual life than flashier animations and bigger hats (although I never say no to a good hat). Complexity doesn't have to be limited to ever more challenging dance moves.

I can't imagine we'll ever see the like of EQ's original conception of faction again but we can surely do a lot better than the schoolyard name-calling of Horde vs Alliance. Let's consign player factions to history and put the hate back where it belongs - in the imaginary hearts and minds of our NPCs.