Are Hero Classes just totally off the radar now?

[Kasonic]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

I could not disagree more.

Why? You can plan and make expectations as much as you want, but no one on any MMO team ever would've expected their endgame would turn out like it did 2 years down the road, let alone the rest of the game.

Make hero classes a parallel path of alternate advancement. Let's say, two expansions from now, the level cap is 75. To become a hero class, you must be level 75, and you can begin an amazing epic quest, with small-group content and fun solo trials like the hunter bow quest, to allow you to advance to your class/race-specific hero class. So, say a level 75 orc warrior completes this quest. Now he's a level 75 warrior / level 1 blademaster.

The hero class would entail a fourth talent tree and some hero-class-specific skills. From that point onward, he can advance his hero class, not by killing mobs for experience or AA points or whatever, but rather by filling a bar by performing "feats." Grinding mobs wouldn't get you anywhere. These feats could range from partaking in your first kill of a major 40-man boss like Illidan, completing major outdoor quest chains (like a level 75 equivalent of the Razelikh line), achieving certain PvP ranks, and so forth. Tons and tons of parallel ways of filling that bar, catering to different playstyles, but all heroic in nature. By performing these feats or attaining these goals, you'd level up your hero class, gaining new talent points within that tree and new skills, but retaining the major combat stats of your primary class level. (So a 75war/6blademaster has the same base 5% missrate vs. a level 75 as does a 75war/2blademaster, but the former has a lot more tricks up his sleeve, to say the least.)

New expansions and new content patches would bring more hero-worthy feats and quests to be performed, allowing for further advancement along that parallel path. This progression would be entirely independent of the primary class. If Blizzard wanted, they could easily raise the primary class level cap to 80, or higher, without disturbing hero-class balance.

That's actually an excellent idea. Raid bosses and quests would fill the bar twice as fast as 10-man and 5-man dungeon quests, which would fill it twice as fast as solo content. Everyone gets there eventually. Of course, there should be maybe 5-6 difficult required quests along the way that you have to complete before the bar continues filling involving the latter two, so the raiders who log in twice a week to farm loot and that's it don't become Heroes by pure mooching. And each hero class could be particularly attuned to different content(Killing Kel'Thuzad gives you five times as much 'Hero rep' as a Grand Crusader as it would a Necromancer).

[Solmancer]

Best approach is simply have it based on the three class skills, though wtf would you do for a hero name for something like "Combat Rogue" or "Discipline Priest"? =p

[Qhue]

Light Priest, Shadow Priest, Grey Priest

Sword Rogue = Swashbuckler

Mace Rogue = Thug

Combat Rogue = Assassin

[Wodin]

Originally Posted by Solmancer

Best approach is simply have it based on the three class skills, though wtf would you do for a hero name for something like "Combat Rogue" or "Discipline Priest"? =p

Swashbuckler and Ascetic maybe? Not everything is going to have a WC3 hero parallel - there just aren't enough.

[Elerion]

Grey Priest

With a playerbase of 14-year olds? No thanks.

[Solmancer]

Originally Posted by Wodin

Swashbuckler and Ascetic maybe? Not everything is going to have a WC3 hero parallel - there just aren't enough.

Well, obviously, but have they (Blizzard Lore Department) ever defined exactly what those mean? I think the answer is, no! It doesn't take rocket science for some, but others.... ?????

PS - I like Praetor's idea.

[Kolle]

It would be silly to have thousands of heroes. When you played WC3 sure you had some uber classes, but you used thousands of 'grunts' and 'peons' so to speak.

It's kinda like with the PvP rank system. People think it would be cool to be a high warlord, but then reality sets in and they realize they are the peon not the hero of this story.

If there could only be a limited amount of heroes then fine. Otherwise forget it.

[leane]

Thats why me and somebody else here suggested tieing it to the epic raid encounters, natrually limits the number who can gain it to maybe 5% of a server population. Only problem would be mudflation trivializing those raid encounters (maybe tie it to having at least 4 out of like 6 top encounters so old encounters fall off and become ineligible and you have to keep pushing the envelope to maintain it)

[masteen]

I heard that hero classes are hidden in the same Iraqi bunker that the WMDs are!

[Kasonic]

With a system like what Praetor outlined, or how PvP is now, yes it's ATTAINABLE by everyone, but will everyone have the will to go through it all? Hell no. The only problem is that yes, 18-24 months down the line, pretty much everyone WILL be a hero.

[leane]

Originally Posted by masteen

I heard that hero classes are hidden in the same Iraqi bunker that the WMDs are!

You heard wrong, that is however where the programmer working on them stays, Vivendi gets a great deal on sub-leasing the space. They also have a dev team down there working on Duke nukem forever

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Kasonic

Why? You can plan and make expectations as much as you want, but no one on any MMO team ever would've expected their endgame would turn out like it did 2 years down the road, let alone the rest of the game.

This isn't the stock market. You have every possible control available to you and you are unable to stay on the path you want to stay on?

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by leane

They also have a dev team down there working on Duke nukem forever

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/01/du...ll-production/

[Soygen]

Originally Posted by Itzena

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/01/du...ll-production/

Yeah, I'll believe it when I'm playing it.

[Mippo]

The best thing for Blizzard to do is just to keep quiet about it.

One of the things Blizzard did right, is that they restricted the game to a few classes. People want their class and abilities to be unique and as soon as you start introducing more classes, balancing the classes becomes exponentially harder to do which im sure Blizzard has found out by now.

If you gave a Hunter some rogue qualities through the hero class, I guarantee you that the rogue class will bitch. People want their classes and abilities to be unique to said classes, and don't like other classes coming in on their 'territory' so to speak.

By keeping a few number of classes, it's significantly easier to balance because essentially, there are three key roles (DPS, Tank, Healer) and only so many ways you can fill those roles while keeping the classes unique from each other.

So expanding on the current class roles is pretty much out of the question if Blizzard is smart.

If you do something like the above poster mentioned, and give a hero bar and simply add new abilities to each class that are relevant to that classes roles, not impeding on other classes roles, then it simply becomes an expansion of the class. It would just be the next progression for that class but instead of increasing in level, you increase in hero status but it is essentially the same result. People would need it to be competitive at the end game. Just like you need to be 60 to raid now, everyone would have to be heroes to raid later.

If you think about it, it's the same shit. Your filling a bar, similiar to an experience bar, to gain more abilities and the only difference is that instead of going from 60-70 your going from current status -> hero.

Such a system would be good for the future, but I wouldn't put the Hero name to it. Blizzard created too much anticipation for the Hero class and people have formed their own opinion of what the Hero class should be, that almost any implementation at this point will end in a failure. If everyone eventually gets to Hero status, like the above would entail, then the people who think the Hero class should be relatively rare and unique would get pissed. Furthermore if the Hero class is unique or rare, the majority of casual players that were looking forward to ways to enhance their character past 60, would get pissed because now the Hero class is something only available to the "hardcore" players.

Basically right now, it's a lose/lose situation for Blizzard. It's something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that they have a bit more experience with the industry, it doesn't seem that good after all.

Blizzard's best bet is to just ignore it which they have been, and over time people will simply forget about it and that's the end of it.