Quote:
Originally Posted by JurisDictum
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Monks are based on the Shaolin warrior monks of China...Also known as Shaolin warriors. Due to various Confucian and Buddhist ideals, they learned to fight with blunt weapons and fists instead of swords and pikes. Likewise, armor and shields never caught on in a land with few pikes or swords.
Basically from a lore perspective -- unless we are going to add a dozen specific Asian classes -- it would make more sense just to let warriors be Asian and use Asian weapons. They do this in most games even EQ -- Katanas etc. Just add in bow staffs and katas or whatever.
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While I'm for allowing Asian-themed Warriors, I feel like you're looking at this from a very historic perspective, and I'd argue that's the wrong perspective. MMOGs aren't medieval times simulators, they're elf simulators, ie. fantasy world simulators. And fantasy worlds have a long tradition of bare-handed fighters. They started out as Asian in origin, but now they're part of the
Western fantasy model. As proof I submit that the original (advanced) dungeons and dragons had a monk class, and so did the very first Final Fantasy game (well, it was called "black belt", but same diff).
So whether monks came from Asia or not originally (and they clearly did), there is now an archetype in
western fantasy game worlds of the bare-handed fighter, and I don't see that going away.