class-choice
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Do you play multiple characters of the same class?
I'm currently at work on an interview with a player who has a complete account's worth of characters all up to last expansion's level cap –- that's right, five realms' worth of 85s. (Keep your eye on 15 Minutes of Fame to read the upcoming interview.) I can understand why he might have found multiple iterations of a class he enjoys to be a valuable strategy in filling up those empty character slots with easily leveled characters. But what about the rest of us? After a recent foray into the art of warlockery, I've turned back for the most part to my usual assortment of priests. I have Alliance priests and Horde priests, soloists and raiders, priests made to serve as partners in crime and priests made to dally about with during breaks from other action. I've made at least a serious attempt at most of the other classes (sorry, hunters, I'm just not feeling it), but the priest vibe is just where it's at for me in World of Warcraft. Then there are players like illustrious warrior Matt Rossi who seem to have a version of their favored class in every race, spec, and flavor. Of course, most WoW Insider staffers who write about a specific class have multiple iterations of that class in their lineup, with I believe a few exceptions. How many of you also play multiple versions of the same class? How many iterations of your favored class do you have? What sort of variety do you throw in there: faction, race, spec?
The Art of Wushu: The right martial arts school for you
Normally at Massively, we start off a column by linking to relevant community sites and information resources for a game. Things are a bit different with Age of Wushu, however. Aside from the main community site and the wiki currently under construction, there isn't much information about the game available in English. Running biweekly, The Art of Wushu will help you navigate the sprawling Wushu sandbox. This week, we'll be looking at the various martial arts schools in the game and which schools to select in order to fit your preferred playstyle. While we can't go over each school's intricacies in depth, we'll do our best to give you a brief primer on what you can expect as a member of a particular school.
Lichborne: Why I play a death knight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. You know, starting at level 55 and not being a vanilla WoW class, you arguably have to go through a unique process to decide to play this class. It's true that you make a conscious choice to play what class you play, but somehow, starting from level 1, it's as much a dabbling as anything, a solid start point that could branch off. With a death knight, you're already in the game. You make a solid choice to leap from one class to another. It's probably more true of those of us who started at the beginning of Wrath, deliberately choosing to leave our mains to start anew, but on some level I think it can apply to just about anyone who plays a main death knight. With this in mind, I thought it might fun this week to establish why we play our class, focusing on my own reasons for playing it and sticking with it. A storied history I will admit, I tend to be sort of a sap when it comes to stories. I like stories that are clashes between good and evil, with defined boundaries. I like my knights in shining armor fighting the forces of darkness. Some people find that too simple and tidy, but if I want shades of gray, I can find plenty of that in real life. Sometimes, I just want to kick some evil ass.
Breakfast Topic: What class will you never play?
We all have one. Some of us might have more -- two or even three, she says, whistling nonchalantly. You all know what I mean: the class you think you might have a go at yet never get out of the starting zone, or the class you look at time and time again and just can't quite bring yourself to try. These classes often look good on paper. I like tanking on my paladin. I know it's not exactly challenging, but I enjoy it -- so other tank classes should sound fun too, right? Wrong. I cannot bring myself to roll a warrior. I don't know why, exactly; I don't have a good reason for it. It's clearly a deeply personal thing, but I just can't find any appeal in that class. I have two healers already, a priest and a shaman, so adding a druid should be good. After all, they can tank, too! But druid is my #1 rolled and deleted class. If I had stats for that, I reckon I've rolled and deleted maybe five druids. Maybe six. Most of them don't make it out of the starting zone. For some reason, I just find them uninspiring. The spells seem dull, not exciting or engaging. I'm sure they're great if you give them a chance, but the sulky teenager in me doesn't want to! Of course, these tastes are incredibly subjective and personal, and I am under no illusions that there is a right answer or even a majority opinion! But I want to know what classes are the ones you will never play? What are the classes you roll and delete in their infancy? And, dear reader, why?
The Daily Grind: Have you ever had a last-minute change of heart?
People who know me know I'm a planner when it comes to video games. I'm always planning what type of character I'm going to roll, how I'm going to level, what my goals will be, and so on. It's fun to plan, which sometimes carries with it the benefit of removing stress from making impromptu decisions that can affect your long-term gaming career. That said, I've certainly not been immune to making last-minute changes. Maybe I'm totally dedicated to rolling a certain class, but once that character creation screen is up there, I trust my gut and go with something different. Or I'll spend months saying that I have absolutely no urge to play an upcoming MMO, but at the 11th hour I break down and buy it. Has this ever happened to you with MMOs? Have you ever had a last-minute change of heart when it came to a major (or even minor) decision? How did it turn out? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Breakfast Topic: How many rolls did it take to get your character right?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. A lot of players took a few swings to get their characters right. You might find that that first mage you rolled doesn't really synch with your desire to stab an Ogre with that sword. That Human might have been a bit bland for a game where you could be a goat with face tentacles from space, or a walking slab of USDA-approved beef. I know several people who started playing at the bequest of their friends, made a character, leveled it for a while, only to get the message: "I'm sorry, but your friends are on another server!" It can be a bit jarring, especially if you've leveled into the 40s or 50s when a sizable time investment has been made, but perhaps not enough to justify paying for a server or faction transfer. Mistaken class choices can only be rerolled. I lucked out. My friend who got me into WoW told me exactly which server and faction to start on before I downloaded the trial account. I picked a Human paladin because I loved paladins in Diablo 2 and started on my voyage. The ability to tank fed into my natural tendency to melee things, and sword and shield has always been my favorite aesthetic weapon choice. Others in my guild were less fortunate. Our mage, who played a paladin in beta, rolled a paladin on live servers, only to find that it was completely different than the class he fell in love with in the beta test. He traipsed through a rogue, priest, and hunter before he got around to maining his mage. Our Draenei enhance shaman started out as a Blood Elf paladin who didn't make it past level 40. How about you? Is your main your first toon?
MapleStory exclusive cartoon: New Leaf Saga
The goofy creators at Nexon have put together a video to help you noobs understand the mechanics of their side-scrolling MMO MapleStory. This third episode of the New Leaf Saga follows the adventures of a girl trying to find her place in the world. Where does she belong? What class should she play? Of course, the first place to turn for the answer would be her friends. Each friend wants the girl to play the same class he or she did -- well, except the thief; he wants to steal her purse. But we come to find out there are far more classes in MapleStory than she has friends. Our new adventurer asks a very important question: "How many classes are there?" For the answer to that question, step past the break and watch the Massively Exclusive video: Classy. (Let me know if you notice the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time sound effect, too.)
Breakfast Topic: What prompted your class choice?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. You're sitting at your character creation screen, starting a brand new game, maybe with no previous gaming experience at all. Or perhaps you're well-versed in the realms of MMOs, and you have a favorite character archetype already. No matter which applies, we all started at that screen, wondering: What class should I pick? What does class choice even mean? What are tanks? How come this class's armor is so hideous? What on earth is a paladin? For me, I was devouring the manual that came with vanilla WoW as it installed, trying to find a class I'd like. When I stumbled upon druids and the fact that they could turn into bears and kitties (and moonkin, although I didn't know that yet), I was instantly hooked. Later, in the 40-49 bracket of Warsong Gulch, after getting wrecked over and over by warlock DoTs, I thought, "Hey! Warlocks seem OP! I should make one!" And thus, the warlock was born. A guildmate of mine chose a rogue because she'd watch her husband play and he would always exclaim how annoying they were and how much he hated rogues. His anger amused her, so rogue she went! What influenced you? Death Grip looked awesome? You wanted to dispel Hunter's Mark because you hated that graphic (my priest!)? You wanted to shoot huge balls of fire at people? Tell us about it!
Breakfast Topic: Does gender influence class choice?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. A while back I ran a survey for a course I was taking and I enlisted the help of the WoW community. One of the more interesting results that came out of the survey was what classes the different genders played. From most played to least played, the classes were: Men paladin, druid, shaman, warrior, death knight, priest, mage, hunter, rogue, and then warlock Women druid, priest, paladin, shaman, hunter, mage, warlock, death knight, warrior, and then rogue What you might notice is that men prefer the three-role hybrids, then the two-role hybrids, then the pure DPS classes. For women, the order of popularity is classes that can heal, classes that do ranged DPS, then the pure melee classes. The results of the survey would seem to imply that women and men have entirely different ways of approaching class choice. Men seem to judge a class based upon how much utility it provides or how flexible it is, whereas women seem to be more focused on what they'll be doing and where they'll be doing it.
Breakfast Topic: Why aren't you playing ____?
All of the recent discussion surrounding what people are planning for their Worgen and Goblin characters got me to thinking about the ingame races that just don't get that kind of love. It's no secret that certain race/class combinations are underplayed (witness, for example, the ingame hell of finding a Dwarf or Orc rogue for Turkey Lurkey), but some races are just massively underplayed, period. If Warcraft Realms is at least ballpark accurate, then Humans are roughly 5 times as popular as Gnomes, Dwarves, and Trolls at 80. Draenei are twice as popular at 80 as Gnomes and Dwarves, and Blood Elves have a chokehold on the Hordeside population. Zardoz's Armory Data Mining (fast becoming one of my favorite WoW sites) did a breakdown on class, race, and gender populations as of November 4th, and the results are pretty illuminating. In case you're wondering, Dwarves, Orcs, and Tauren are the least likely to be female, and Draenei, Blood Elves, and Night Elves the most likely (although Draenei are the only race in the game to have a female majority). The most played combination in the game is the Blood Elf paladin, and the least-played are the Dwarf rogue (I for one am shocked) and the Troll warrior.
Aion: Picking your class by personality, not numbers
MMO players come in all shapes and sizes and boast a variety of personality traits. Picking a race, class, and faction combination in your favorite MMO can sometimes give an insightful look at the player behind the keyboard. At least, Paul Barnett thinks so: "Most of the people I've met who like Dwarfs basically look like Dwarfs."That may be true because I'm a pretty tall and lean person and I hate playing Dwarves. Then again, my MMO history includes playing a number of Kobolds in Dark Age of Camelot and Goblins in Warhammer Online, so I could just be really strange.While browsing the Aion community forums, we came across an interesting post. One of the board members has written up a quick and quirky guide for choosing one of the game's eight classes based on one's personality. Obviously, numbers and stats play a huge factor in making class decisions for many players, but this could be a more healthy approach. At the very least, you will gain a better understanding of the kinds of people playing these classes, which could give you a strategic advantage when you run into them on the battlefield.
Breakfast Topic: Class vs. content
Responding to a shared blogging topic over on Blog Azeroth, Aendi from the roleplaying blog Voodoo Ventures recently wrote an entry on how to choose a class. This is certainly a subject that's gotten a lot of play in the WoW community, but Aendi's is an unusually thoughtful look at the problem that results when a player's poured a lot of time and effort into a class that might be a bad choice given the player's goals in the endgame. In one of most succinct and painfully accurate points I've seen on the subject, Aendi asks -- is seeing endgame content so important to you that you're willing to play a class you enjoy less, or is the class you play so important that you're willing to sacrifice a possible shot at content?It's no secret that classes and specs are not the same when it comes to the likelihood of getting Gladiator or raiding all the way to Kil'Jaeden. You may love your Hunter, but arena's not that kind to them at present. Your Warlock might be endless fun to play, but the guilds on your realm are probably swimming in them. And if you've ever cruised past the recruitment forums, you've probably noticed that they all seem to want the same thing: healers (and lots of 'em). If you were the sort of person who sat down, looked at the content in the game that you wanted to see more than anything else, and picked your class and spec solely with that goal in mind, your path forward would be fairly clear...but you might also become one of those people who logs off their primary toon as fast as they can after raid, or after their 10 games for the week, and goes to play the alt they'd secretly love to be playing as a main.Ideally we get the perfect intersection of a class we love to play that's able to accomplish its goals in content we want to experience, but it doesn't always happen -- and if you have to choose, the decision is a pretty personal one. So I ask you: class or content?
