Blizzcon 2007: Video coverage by GGL Wire
Today a panel of four Blizzard game designers discussed character classes in World of Warcraft; where they were, where they are, and where they are going. I typed away as fast as my little fingers could move, and here are the facts.
Game Balance
Rob Pardo, V.P. of game design and original lead designer on WoW (and one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time – suck it, Bono), talked about general issues of game balance in the history of WoW.
Rather than have a ton of classes for diversity, have a lower number of very cool, very unique classes that can be customized.
In the beginning of the design process, WoW character classes were inspired by two sources; traditional pen & paper RPGs (read: Dungeons & Dragons), and Warcraft III. For instance, the Mage was an amalgam of the WC3 Archmage and Sorceress; while the Hunter combined the WC3 Headhunter, Huntress and Ranger.
Never heard of the Ranger class? It was cut from the final game. So were the Necromancer, Blademaster, and… Death Knight.
Pardo kept coming back to what he calls “concentrated coolness.” Rather than have a ton of classes for diversity, have a lower number of very cool, very unique classes that can be customized. Each class should have unique spells, abilities, and mechanics. Too many classes, and the game becomes difficult to balance.
The designers at Blizzard are eager to prevent classes from overlapping or resembling each other too much. For instance, the decision to allow Horde Paladins and Alliance Shamans has been rather unpopular. But the thinking was to avoid creating a Horde class that overlapped with Paladin, or an Alliance class that was too much like the Shaman.
Pardo believes that class balance comes from five factors:
- A character in each class must be able to solo to maximum level.
- Each class must play its own role in a 5-person group.
- Each class must play its own role in a raid.
- Each class must be competitive in PvP.
- Each class must be fun to play!
What’s not important to Pardo is balancing every class against every other class in 1v1 PvP. Each class is meant to have strengths and weaknesses. If an imbalance currently exists between two classes, it most likely makes up for another imbalance elsewhere.
Balancing Talents
Tom Chilton, WoW’s lead game designer, spoke about balancing talents. He described the evolution of talents, from the simple stat points system in beta, to the current tiered talent trees.
Game balance changes constantly even when the game itself does not, because the players themselves adapt their strategies and discover new ones.
Talents were designed to allow customization of characters within a class. The system was inspired by Diablo 2. Most talents are passive, but players can earn-up to “gold” active talents.
Some players have wondered why talent pool points are limited. Once they max out levels, why can’t players continue to collect talents until they have them all? The answer is simple; because then eventually, all characters in a class would be the same, with the same set of (all) talents. Hence, no customization.
The concern at this time, as far as talents are concerned, is balancing classes across activities like raiding, soloing, grouping and PvP.
But not every talent will be optimized for every play type – it’s all about character differentiation. Choosing a talent is an important choice, and may affect what activities you will excel at. You don’t want a talent to be viable for only one activity; but it should not be useful for all activities, either.
Some players have suggested (and I was one of them) that the rules for talents and abilities should change between PvE and PvP, as the balance issues in these two realms are quite different. But Chilton went out of his way to shoot this down. WoW, he said, must be a cohesive whole. Playing a class should feel the same whether in an instance or in the arena.
Game balance changes constantly, he explained, even when the game itself does not. This is because the players themselves adapt their strategies, and discover new ones. Blizzard will hold off on fixing an imbalance, to see if the players will solve the problem themselves.
And players don’t like sudden, sweeping changes to their characters. That’s when you get accusations of nerfing.
Existing Classes
Class designer Kevin Jordan discussed balance issues for each of the existing classes. I took notes from this, bit it’s a lot of very specific detail. If folks in the comments call for it, I’ll put this in a separate post.
Hero Classes
Finally, level designer Cory Stockton presented more details about the new Hero Classes.
These characters must keep the epic feel from the RTS game – they are not ordinary characters.
Hero Classes are the classic Warcraft III characters, imported into WoW. These characters must keep the epic feel from the RTS game – they are not ordinary characters.
In developing Hero Classes, the designers went through four possible concepts:
1. Forking classes or talent trees for existing classes. This would have created too many possible sub-classes, violating the principle of “concentrated coolness.”
2. Multi-classes, a la AD&D. This would water down the original classes, and would create combinations that don’t feel right — what would a Druid-Death Knight be like?
3. Class morphing: start as one class, change into the Hero Class. This was seriously considered. A player would level a standard character to 80, run the Death Knight quest chain, and turn their character into a Death Knight. It was feared that players would not want to lose a beloved character to gain a strange lower-level character.
4. Class unlocking: this is what they went with.
It was certainly an informative panel, that revealed not just character class details, but how the designers think as they create and balance classes.
