This topic is about some observations that can be cautionary tales to Pantheon: Rise of The Fallen. It is not off-topic nor about another game - the experiences are used as anecdotes.
I am playing on the 20th anniversary slow progression server of EQ1 and currently in Classic (1999) everquest.
There are a *TON* of people playing and discussions about looking forward to PRF seem to be the norm.
I am playing an Enchanter which is, of course, the ultimate grouping character. It is a little discouraging however that I can't go hunt where I want. I wanted to go to Xorb but there were only 2 other players in the zone. I wanted to go to KFC but it was all singles and duos playing. I went around the world: Gfay-->BB-->FP-->Commonlands-->Kith-->HPH-->EK-->NK-->SK-->Lake Rathe-->Rathe-->Innothule. I didn't get to kill one mob. It was discouraging. Although I am looking for a grouping game, there are times when I want to kill something in particular (maybe very slowly or with more risk).
The travel didn't bother me at all. The inability to do something *I* wanted to do was a real discouragement and reminded me of the disappointment that is very real at times. So I rolled a Mage.
Looking at the LFG window, it's a ton of Druids, Shaman and DPS-ers, especially mages and wizards. I've literally seen *ONE* cleric on LFG since I started playing on the release date. One! That means there aren't enough of them and they are in high demand. It seems like everyone rolled a class that's more "fun" to play. So making each class fun is going to be a real challenge. My groups literally sat around trying to hybrid heal while hoping a cleric pops up.
So there is a definite issue with the fun associated with various classes and the ability to play what/when you want.
The other thing was the micro transactions were rampant. People selling Kronos (which is their way of selling plat for real world money) and the ability to buy plat (via Kronos) and immediately buy healing potions, clarity potions etc. Pure pay-to-win even on a classic progression server.
So, lessons I would like learned:
I would specifically like to address making a healer "fun". Don't imo. I've seen games try to make healers more DPS centric in an effort to entice people to play them. Don't. Some people like playing whack-a-mole healing, most people don't. Don't redesign the class so that people who enjoy DPS feel the desire to play it.
Some people don't find healing fun, some people don't find CC fun. They find the numbers popping up while doing DPS fun. I prefer CC and Healing. I prefer it the way its done in older games.
I totally agree with your complaint though and something needs to be done to address it... but please don't redesign support classes.
EppE said:I would specifically like to address making a healer "fun". Don't imo. I've seen games try to make healers more DPS centric in an effort to entice people to play them. Don't. Some people like playing whack-a-mole healing, most people don't. Don't redesign the class so that people who enjoy DPS feel the desire to play it.
Some people don't find healing fun, some people don't find CC fun. They find the numbers popping up while doing DPS fun. I prefer CC and Healing. I prefer it the way its done in older games.
please don't redesign support classes.
Truth.
Fun = "I have something interesting to do in more than just one or two situations"
Enchanter - Not fun = "I'm only useful in a group and only when that group is really fighting more than one thing at a time. Otherwise I'm just a buffbot and a poor DPS"
Enchanter - More fun = "I'm all about CC when it's needed, but even if we're just fighting one mob, I have some cool abilities I can use to really help the group with that fight"
Enchanter - Most fun = "If I don't have a group, I can go charm something and use it to kill its friends. It's not super-fast experience but it lets me use most of my abilities and at least do something when I don't have a group.
Cleric - Not fun = "I'm basically just a heal and buffbot. If my group's not taking damage, or if I don't have a group, I have nothing to do"
Cleric - More fun = "I can stand back and heal when I need to, but I also can run in and smack the monster in the face if my group's not taking much damage, and I have a few offensive spells I can toss in as well."
Cleric - Most fun = "People think of clerics as healers, but when I want to, I can set up an almost totally offense-oriented loadout, and smite enemies with righteous fury! It even helps me to solo a little bit when I don't have a group"
Personally, I don't see why there is a conflict between having strong, diverse class definitions, and making sure that each class can be "fun" to play. Although I do suppose that "fun" is a very subjective term and means different things to different people.
Pantheon is not EQ. If we can make the class concepts for Pantheon more enjoyable while still insuring that they have real uniqueness and flair, and without compromising class interdependence, why not do so?
Trying to establish a meaning of what people are arguing for here as it concerns EQ by basing it off playing a "modern" version of EQ is not an accurate understanding or comparisong of experience.
That is, todays EQ is in NO WAY shape or form the EQ that many of us experienced in the past. They can put a label of "old school", "slowed exp", etc... but it is not EQ, nowhere near EQ. So trying to make assessments on "Mainstream EQ" packaged as an "Old School EQ" is useless.
I tried out those progression servers, they are... well.. laughable. I call them "WoWQ" servers as they are closer to WoW than they are original EQ. /shrug
Nephele said:Most fun = "People think of clerics as healers, but when I want to, I can set up an almost totally offense-oriented loadout, and smite enemies with righteous fury! It even helps me to solo a little bit when I don't have a group"
This is the kind of thinking I don't want designing support classes. You view the most fun healer class as not being a healer. That's what you enjoy, that's fine, but they have classes that do that and they are called DPS.
EppE said:Nephele said:Most fun = "People think of clerics as healers, but when I want to, I can set up an almost totally offense-oriented loadout, and smite enemies with righteous fury! It even helps me to solo a little bit when I don't have a group"
This is the kind of thinking I don't want designing support classes. You view the most fun healer class as not being a healer. That's what you enjoy, that's fine, but they have classes that do that and they are called DPS.
I think you misread my statements EppE. I am not arguing that "healers should not be healers". I am arguing that "healers are more fun for players (in the context of the OP) when they have something that they can do beyond simply standing there and watching health bars. That does not turn them into a "DPS". It simply allows them to play, instead of sitting around endlessly hoping that some spot in a group will open up.
I do understand your concern about diluting the identity of the class. You will find no more passionate defender of class distinctiveness than me. But class distinctiveness does NOT mean that we have to shove people into tiny boxes, and they can only do that one thing.
@Nephele
That's fair. A Healer is more fun to someone who doesn't like healing when they are doing alternate roles. Healing is stressful and a bad healer can often cause a group to wipe. During raids DPS only have to worry about the boss and their location in the raid as it pertains to movement. They can forgoe their DPS rotation at any moment in order to stay alive by moving out of the fire. A healer does not get that luxury. A healer has to track the boss, everyone's health, their location in the room, and often times the location of the DPS and Tank to anticipate incoming damage. A healer can't cancel a spell sometimes in order to move out of the fire or the tank will die... the healer has to anticpate movment. Please don't make me try to squeeze in DPS too.
Ironically one of my favorite healers in a MMO was the Warrior Priest in Warhammer. The ability to do damage and heal from it was fun. The problem was that they didn't heal enough to solo heal PvE content and was probably OP in PvP situations due to its AE healing and its 1v1 capabilities.
azaya said:
But the mobs remember you
So you pulled a mob and feel you need to lose it, and you manage to break line of sight long enough to have it wander back to spawn point. But memory of your encounter remains, so if line of sight happens again, within some reasonable distance to be able to identify you, and this could be pretty far away, then the chase is on again. Only zoning will reset the memory of your encounter on whatever mobs you are remembered by within a given zone.
Optionally I suppose some boss mobs could have long memories that span days, reguardless of your online or zone status, but would only attack if line of sight is achieved of course; thus getting into the realm of soft lockout timers..but thats another subject I suppose.
Memories can lead to story telling
So you wander back near the spawn point; maybe this time however the mob was telling his buddies back at the spawn point about you and they come too, assuming the mob type can communicate such things. The mob might yell, "Hey I remember you, comon guys lets get him!!"
Perhaps the enchanter could be useful here by casting a memblur on the mob(s) before the puller returns to line of sight again.
In more interesting situations, such as a castle with a hierarchy of command, if you pester them enough without losing memory, word of you may spread and get search parties organized by these types of mobs to come find you. I could see doing this on purpose to have groups of mobs I need to outsmart and kill, moving around hiding attacking etc. could be pretty fun pull tactic.
I mentioned something about this earlier, but the problem here is this creates a massive issue in practicality of play. Is it realistic? Absolutely, but... it would open up a can of worms that even some of the most "hardcore" players would be objecting to.
Just to give a minor example, in EQ before they did the first major iteration revamp of FD, a mob could remember you at a later point. So, for example, you could FD the mob... in most cases it would forget instantly (making FD pulling pre-Velious stupidly easy) allowing you to split and tag the mobs as you saw fit. The mobs would walk all the way back to their spawn point and sit there like nothing occurred, but, there was a very serious issue;
At any point the mob could remember the person who FD'd. It could be a few minutes or it could be over and hour or more later, but a mob "could" all of a sudden remember it was chasing you and then rush off back to chasing you (as long as you were still present in the zone and did not log out) along the way proximity agroing every mob on its direct path trying to get to you. The result were MASSIVE TRAINS of such size and legend that it would make even the hardest player shudder in fear (I am exaggerating bit, but the trains were flipping huge). This was a huge problem that led them to eventually changing the code to deal with the issues (and attempt to actually curb FD pulling in Velious as it was not generally accepted by Verant fully at the time, ie it was still considered a bit of an exploit).
I like your idea, it has merit and with some very careful implementation (you would have to get rid of proximity agro for these mobs when they are in tracking mode), but this is a lot to put on a player. I like it, don't get me wrong, it is pretty cool and definitely an issue of consequence (though I think it might be a nightmare in debugging), but also consider the balance of it in play. Most people are accepting of an immediate reaction to a poor behavior (ie.. few are going to argue with fire burning them if they put their hand in the fire and it burns immediately), but not so much to a delayed consequence several minutes or hours later.
Lets say that there are no bugs, the system works perfectly as intended. Even then, you still have the issue of players having to correct a possible past action they may not fully know they created (ie they agro'd mobs, thought it was cleared, but hours later the mobs track them down and attack them during a key boss fight). This could be a nightmare on multiple levels and a punishment that may be more "risk" than the reward in play. I am all for difficulty in play, but I also think everything has to be balanced correctly. As I have said, I don't care about "realism" when it comes to game play as I think game play should ALWAYS win out in this area. So, the risk always has to be balanced to the reward in play. I think having players several hours later paying for a mistake they may or may not know they made, without a means to correct or pay for it instantly could lead to an imbalance here.
Interesting "realistic" idea, though I am unsure if there is a practical implementation to it in an MMO (I do think this has extreme merit in a single player game).
Nephele said:
EppE said:
Nephele said:
Most fun = "People think of clerics as healers, but when I want to, I can set up an almost totally offense-oriented loadout, and smite enemies with righteous fury! It even helps me to solo a little bit when I don't have a group"
This is the kind of thinking I don't want designing support classes. You view the most fun healer class as not being a healer. That's what you enjoy, that's fine, but they have classes that do that and they are called DPS.
I think you misread my statements EppE. I am not arguing that "healers should not be healers". I am arguing that "healers are more fun for players (in the context of the OP) when they have something that they can do beyond simply standing there and watching health bars. That does not turn them into a "DPS". It simply allows them to play, instead of sitting around endlessly hoping that some spot in a group will open up.
I do understand your concern about diluting the identity of the class. You will find no more passionate defender of class distinctiveness than me. But class distinctiveness does NOT mean that we have to shove people into tiny boxes, and they can only do that one thing.
One of my guild mates was a druid. He designed his druid in a way that was not "min/maxing" of the class (which was understandable because back when EQ started, not everyone knew what was best for every class). So, he made a half-elf druid, and put his points in a stat that was not efficient to the base focus of the class. He also played his class in a different manner, being more focused on damage spells, what in some ways would be akin to the "fury druid" of EQ 2. This however was not the most efficient style of playing that class if you were a min/max number cruncher.
That said, while he was not "ideal" in that of what became the expected "role" of a druid (ie a healer), he did have more power and ability in areas of damage spells. This allowed him to excel in certain situations within the group, providing damage, but also healing support. Was he competing with the mages/wizards? Nope... but.. he did do quite a bit more damage than the healing "role" druids out there. This made him much more valuable in certain play styles and focuses.
Point is, I think no class should be pigeonholed to a role, but I do think there should be "limitations" to what they can do based on their core concept of design and this goes for races and classes. I think there should be "enough" room to allow a player to think outside the box and provide useful solutions outside of a base intention, but I also think there should be limitations as well. I think this is important for "emergent" game play, which is why I have always and will always be adamantly opposed to designing classes via "roles" (ie you are the healer) instead of that of basic functionaries (You have some healing abilities).
EppE said:@Nephele
That's fair. A Healer is more fun to someone who doesn't like healing when they are doing alternate roles. Healing is stressful and a bad healer can often cause a group to wipe. During raids DPS only have to worry about the boss and their location in the raid as it pertains to movement. They can forgoe their DPS rotation at any moment in order to stay alive by moving out of the fire. A healer does not get that luxury. A healer has to track the boss, everyone's health, their location in the room, and often times the location of the DPS and Tank to anticipate incoming damage. A healer can't cancel a spell sometimes in order to move out of the fire or the tank will die... the healer has to anticpate movment. Please don't make me try to squeeze in DPS too.
Ironically one of my favorite healers in a MMO was the Warrior Priest in Warhammer. The ability to do damage and heal from it was fun. The problem was that they didn't heal enough to solo heal PvE content and was probably OP in PvP situations due to its AE healing and its 1v1 capabilities.
I was a big fan of Vanguard's cleric, as an evolution of what we had in EQ. Best direct healer in the game, but they were still able to get into melee and mix it up too when they didn't need to use their big heals. At least, that was my experience :) So, I'm hoping for something similar with Pantheon clerics.
This topic reminds me of what went wrong in modern MMORPGs actually. Everybody wants to solo, everybody wants to dps. Guess what happens? Your healers won't heal and your tanks will not tank. I've seen it in GW1, GW2, and WoW. Especially WoW though. The LFG tool in WoW supposedly still takes 30 minutes for DPS to get a group according to the WoW forums (I haven't played WoW since 2010). Back when I still played it was 20-30 minutes for DPS. So no...the idea of making enchanters and clerics great soloers and dpsers will not help make the game more fun if your goal is group content.
Nephele your statement about shoving people into tiny boxes is exactly how player interdependency works. The warrior cannot heal himself, the cleric cannot tank very well, etc. The debate is in my eyes more about what size should the boxes be? I think I can agree that healers should do more than watch health bars. But even in EQ a cleric could use anti undead nukes and shamans could slow/DoT/nuke, druids could snare/nuke, etc. The other part of the debate is should all tanks, dps, and healers be equally effective? Usually classes with a lot of utility/versatility end up being masters of none in RPGs. But I've seen some utility type abilities listed from several 'pure' classes in Pantheon so I'm not certain how all that is going to play out.
Ziegfried said:Nephele your statement about shoving people into tiny boxes is exactly how player interdependency works. The warrior cannot heal himself, the cleric cannot tank very well, etc. The debate is in my eyes more about what size should the boxes be? I think I can agree that healers should do more than watch health bars. But even in EQ a cleric could use anti undead nukes and shamans could slow/DoT/nuke, druids could snare/nuke, etc. The other part of the debate is should all tanks, dps, and healers be equally effective? Usually classes with a lot of utility/versatility end up being masters of none in RPGs. But I've seen some utility type abilities listed from several 'pure' classes in Pantheon so I'm not certain how all that is going to play out.
I think there's a danger in making the "boxes" too small, or too large. If you make classes too specialized, then players only really get to actually do anything when they're fulfilling that very specific role - and only when that role is needed. On the other hand, if you let everyone do everything, then no one feels unique or special in terms of what they can do.
As far as where Pantheon is at right now, based on what we've seen for the class ability lists, I think it's generally in the right spot. Each class has a clearly defined thing that it does best, and some small ability to operate outside of that role when needed. Obviously, this is all on paper, and we won't really know how things work out until alpha/beta when there's a lot more testing done, but at least as an initial design it seems solid.
My biggest concern for Pantheon is that we don't put ourselves in a situation where people have to have a "perfect" group in order to succeed at things. When you've got a warrior tanking and a cleric healing and an enchanter doing CC, you've should have a pretty solid group, and I don't think anyone would question that. But when you can't find a cleric (as an example), you should be able to work with a druid or a shaman healing, even if that means that other members of the group might need to adjust the abilities they're using slightly. Likewise, if you end up with two warriors, then that second warrior should be able to "go offensive" and contribute something, even if they're not able to do as much as a "full" dps would. I want to enable people to play together even if they don't have perfect group makeups. Someone shouldn't have to make an alt just to have a chance at being able to participate in things. If we overspecialize classes, there is a risk that will happen, and so what I'm looking for is an intelligent design for each class that insures that as few people get left out of the fun as possible.
I realize that's all really squishy language of course, but I think it's important that we look at the area of class distinctiveness and interdependency from both sides, rather than only one. That ultimately leads to the best solution for everyone.
Nephele said:My biggest concern for Pantheon is that we don't put ourselves in a situation where people have to have a "perfect" group in order to succeed at things.
This will happen regardless if it is true or not. In EQ, when players began to hand down a majority mandate on where each class was to be, what they were to do and who was the best at doing it, as well as what the most efficient design for a group was, people started demanding it. Not everyone, I scoffed at it (many in my guild did as well) and even black listed players who demanded such as they were people looking for easy outs, to which many I ran into were not very good at the game, so they spent all their time trying to build the perfect group rather than learning how to play.
The point is, you can design classes with all your best intentions, and yet.. the mob masses will come in, dictate and assign who is best, who should be what, and who should not.
As I said, in EQ, originally the manual stated no "roles", rather it talked of classes in basic abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Players, ie “the mob" decided to dictate which class was a "role" and pigeonholed players into it. Game companies, rather than waste effort on the complexities of systems where there is flexibility in design simply catered to “the mob" and designed "roles" as it was clear “the mob" was too shallow to understand the nuances of classes stepping outside of a designated role given a situation. And so... Modern dumb’d down "class role" based design game play was born.
My point is, design things any way you like, the "mob" will decide otherwise, so unfortunately the only solution is to "air tight" a role design or produce a flexible design and then scoff and mock the mob mentality when it goes to categorize a given role. So far, it looks as if VR has decided the former over the latter.
Tanix said:Syrif said:Nephele - while I see some of what you are saying, the part where you lost me is ‘clerics getting in and doing melee dps too.’
Seems like what we would call a "Paladin". A melee focused class who has some cleric abilities.
To me, the Cleric and Paladin should be inverses of each other.
The Paladin; a Tank who can still do some healing.
The Cleric; a Healer who can still wear armor and hit things.
If a Cleric can't do that, them you've just got a priest with the wrong name.
Leachim said:Tanix said:Syrif said:Nephele - while I see some of what you are saying, the part where you lost me is ‘clerics getting in and doing melee dps too.’
Seems like what we would call a "Paladin". A melee focused class who has some cleric abilities.
To me, the Cleric and Paladin should be inverses of each other.
The Paladin; a Tank who can still do some healing.
The Cleric; a Healer who can still wear armor and hit things.
If a Cleric can't do that, them you've just got a priest with the wrong name.
See, I tend to think of the classes outside of MMO modern norms, more akin to their AD&D origins. To be honest, I think your expectations are within lines of that as well.
A cleric, is as per 2nd addition AD&D, a sub class of the preist class...
The cleric is a generic priest (of any mythos) who tends to the needs of a community. He is both protector and healer. He is not purely defensive, however. When evil threatens, the cleric is well-suited to seek it out on its own ground and destroy it
Then the Paladin from AD&D 2nd edition:
The paladin is a warrior bold and pure, the exemplar of everything good and true. Like the fighter, the paladin is a man of combat. However, the paladin lives for the ideals of righteousness, justice, honesty, piety, and chivalry. He strives to be a living example of these virtues so that others might learn from him as well as gain by his actions.
One is caster based, healer focused, more oriented to that line. They are still "soldiers" (often referred to as knights), combat trained (this is explained in the players handbook), but such combat advantage is religous focused, specifically to the combat of evil alignments.
The paladin on the the other hand is a bit of the opposite, more melee focused, a soldier first, combat oriented, but... with elements of religous aid (spells of a cleric) and constrained to a very specific code of conduct (knight code). In fact, the whole point of a paladins play concept is centered around the concept of its code and conduct within the world, something modern games ignore. That is, in modern games, a paladin is simply a melee focused cleric which is really a misunderstanding of this classes origin. That is understandable though as a paladins obstacles in play are socially contrived, not that of combat systems.
Ultimately, I think a paladin is a bit redundant as a class (as per AD&D) as a cleric is more suited as a "tank" class if you look to the specifics and a "Warrior" is more of an offensive damage class if you follow AD&D, but then the concept of a "Tank, healer, CC, DPS" structure of play is counter to the original concepts of AD&D (which would explain why Verant didn't define such when EQ was made).
A lot of this is subjective and depends on the core concepts you pull from, but I always saw a cleric as a holy warrior focused more to the attention of healing, a warrior class restricted (ie only blunt and lacking specialist combat focused ablities) while a paladin was always more of a warrior who took a solem oath to uphold the church, and by such gained some abillites (ie spells) to aid them. Both a paladin and a cleric are strong enemies aginst the undead, but neither is relegated to a "role" of "tank" or "healer" as we know it today. Their abilities themselves lend them to the situation, which may be more of less in a given direction.
I prefer AD&D's class design, not that of modern MMOs where every class is put into a special box where they are told EXACTLY what they can and can't do. AD&D never looked at classes that way, I don't think MMOs should either.
I am playing on the TLP slow progression server also. I don't have trouble playing with groups of people because I made some friends. Last night I went to the hole when I was 38 with a group just to do the entrance mobs and maybe a golem or two. Worked out well. We went there insanely under leveled and still managed to survive. The RMT store does suck. If you couldn't get Krono in the progression servers then it would be free from the 6 box botters and actually more fun imo. But you know, there is also no CRs anymore and the leveling is much faster. So you can't really compare. Also, enchanters, clerics, and tanks in general are the first to go in lfg.
As for enchanters not being able to solo. They are insane soloers. Look up some p1999 guides on enchanter soloing and you will see some pretty good guides of 1-50 playing alone.
I think the ability to do other than your primary role is a testament to quality of the group.
Yes, clerics and casters should not melee- at the basic level. But if the group is tight enough or able to handle suprises smoothly the ability to step outside the basic level and test abilities is kind of cool. Being approved by the group if a caster asks to practice some hand-to-hand on a named? means all the other members have shifted their play slightly to allow this, for a little time.
I could punch a fire beetle into next week. Actually stunned a SK once on a duel, lucky punch.
That's interesting. Not because it's a reason for many to argue over the death of MMO's, but because it was already the case in EQ.
The cleric had nuke, Yaulp for melee (and later, a magic proc that was dealing a hefty good magical damage on swings), and very good nukes against undeads. The fact is : The cleric was already a class with more versatility than when pidgeonholed into CH bot. If you had more than a cleric in a group (either for safety or because you couldn't find something else), the second one would no be sitting on his mana but ensure he remains around 80% mana while helping the group on anything that would NOT be overhealing just for the sake of healing.
It's not beeing a bad player or sinking MMO's to their death to use your arsinal with efficiency. It's just common sense and mana usage. You don't get faster experience if you make two clerics OOM because you try to pull two or three mobs in a row with no CC, cleaving wasn't a thing. But it was faster to chain pull faster with a cleric nuking from time to time.
The only difference is that mana was a long term ressource, while now in games it's a short term one with at least one cooldown to regen, which is considered as "mandatory to use as soon as avaliable so nuke the **** out of ennemies".
One of the rewards of reaching soft spots in mp regen / spell deranking, is to minimize overheal, useless mana spent, and use it for something else.
I've only very rarely ever sat around on any of my tank or healer characters waiting for a group to need me. More often than not, simply logging in results in an insta-invite and a summons, often at the expense of the tank or healer the group already had. And once other players learned my alts' names logging in on any of them would result in a "hurry, log into your tank/healer" message waiting for me when the screen rendered. Same was always true on my EQ enchanter, too.
I'm not saying I'm an awesome healer or tank. I'm just not a douchebag and play my class (of the moment) as well as I can. Also, always be prepared for a group, i.e. show up with bandages, potions, reagents, food, drinks or whatever you might need for a day of adventure.
The classes I always felt were the most 1-dimensional were DPS. They do only 1 thing and there are a bajillion of them in every game. That leaves a lot of them sitting on the sidelines waiting a chance to do something other than spring cleaning in their bank vault. If you want to add "fun" to some of the classes I'd focus on DPS. Tanks, healers and even enchanters seem plenty fun to me just as they are.
Tanix said:Syrif said:Nephele - while I see some of what you are saying, the part where you lost me is ‘clerics getting in and doing melee dps too.’
Seems like what we would call a "Paladin". A melee focused class who has some cleric abilities.
Ah yes. Paladin fits the role. Not a cleric.
I don't think the OP is arguing for classes to be something that they're not, or arguing that the classes that make up the support roles should be able to solo. If I'm reading correctly, the OP wants to be able to actually do something if/when groups aren't available, and that's fair. There's nothing worse than being a 'needed' class that isn't needed and you spend all day/night LFG with no results. I'm really hoping there will be plenty horizontal progression options to help with that. And, lest ye scoff and look down your noses, druids, necros and wizards kiting came out of this in EQ. Three classes that figured out that it was slower than grouping, but it was doable and they could make gains. Based on what I've seen as far as class abilities go, there will be alternate offerings for each class. So, if a group is single pulling, an enchanter will still have something to do. How VR handles giving classes more viability and not having them pigeonholed into a single role with a certain gearset and playstyle will say a lot about the design and have a huge impact on how many of each class we have on the servers.