Quote:
Originally Posted by abacab-winner
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Idk bros.
It seems that Brad and crew are wanting static classes, so your warrior will do shit dps, your druid won't be able to do anything but patch heal, your shadowknight is only good for tanking.
Without dynamic classes, shit's going to get stale as fuck unless you got the time to roll a billion alts.
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World of Warcraft had static classes and had millions of subscriptions. In fact, the sum total of mmo's with static classes in the past 10 years would yield tens of millions of players.
I think these're the most important things to make an mmorpg popular:
1) Solo-play to max level for all classes with no penalty to experience versus group-play
2) Balance quest and combat experience to favor quests
3) Hand holding everywhere - in-game map/radar, glowing paths, hovering icons, quest markers, etc
4) No downtime or punishment for failure (failure, as in dying)
5) No exclusive content or locked content - all content can be completed on easy/hard
6) Fast travel and fast pickup groups for grouping games
7) Instanced content to reduce or eliminate competition for spawns and to tailor it to the player
8) Less crowd control and more action - crowd control is associated with downtime
9) Semi-dynamic content and sandbox features - becoming more popular
10) Battlegrounds-style PvP - NO open world PvP
11) Eliminate technical bloat - like excessive inventory management
Those're some things off top of my head that're more important than what you brought up. It does look to me like Brad is probably going to fudge many of those trying to make a more niche sort of game.
Besides, most games with static classes have deep classes, so players are occupied with learning them. I think the inclination with dynamic classes games is the classes will lose their depth and thus their distinctiveness. In the end, the developers will spend just as much developing it. It's just a different set of clothes.
Ideally developers would spend MORE time allowing for static classes to be dynamic, but that's not how it will be. They'll actually cut back on the class depth to make room for making them dynamic.
The question is not whether this game can get people playing, but whether it can get enough playing to pay for its planned budget. That to me is the most important part of all this. If Brad sets his expectations too high and the playerbase doesn't meet those expectations then he'll hit bottom and sell out.
My opinion is the kickstarter will fail. Brad will have to find another way or give up trying to revitalize EQ in the modern market. Maybe he should give up developing mmorpgs altogether, if he can't change.
EDIT: Tell ya what, I'll agree dynamic classes are better IF they spent extra time making the individual classes dynamic or combinable rather than cutting back on the classes to make time for it.