Game Anatomy: Specailizations

I’ve played a lot of World of Warcraft in the past six years.  I mean, a lot.  In an hour to hour basis, I’ve probably played World of Warcraft more than any other game, ever.  It’s not my favorite game, by any means, it wouldn’t even break the top 20.  It’s not exactly a game that would show up in these articles.  Not to say that it’s a bad game, because like all Blizzard games, it’s quite good, but it doesn’t have anything that really stands out or makes it work that is specifically related to it.  An argument can be made for raids, I could do a whole article on Siege of Orgrimmar alone, but raids are more of a genre thing than a specific game thing, and I’m starting to think that maybe raids have long since exceeded the grasp of the game.  However, there is one thing that really makes World of Warcraft that stand out more than in any other game in the genre, and that’s the various specializations of each class.

Copyright Endgadget

That’s my specialization, the Demonology Warlock.  It defines everything about how I play, and it’s almost an entirely different class from my other specialization, the Destruction Warlock.  Stats, spells, demons and even the basic approach to combat is completely different from the two other specializations, making my character feel completely unique.  It’s a different approach to building characters, and classes, because it makes everything different.

In most RPGs, class determines everything about a character, from better or worse, and this is definitely true for World of Warcraft.  If there is a specialization in another game, it only changes a few things or alters how a few spells of abilities are used, but in WoW, it completely defines who you are and what you do, making class more of a theme  on an idea, which is actually really cool.  It allows the developers to play around with the classes and find ways to make sure each player has their own cool toys, and to allow each fight to be played a little bit differently.  It also allows the players to be unique, which is important in a multiplayer game, since every player needs their own identity in order to not feel faceless while they’re playing.

It is, in fact, one of the reasons I keep playing, even when I don’t actually like how the game is going at the time, since I can play the game differently and try something I didn’t previously see.  Like I said, I’ve been playing for several years, and there are whole classes I haven’t played before, let alone groups of specializations.

What’s interesting is where the impetus for specializations come from.  Since the game requires the Trinity (Tank, DPS and Healer) in order to do anything other than questing, it means that certain classes need to have different approaches to the game.  Early in the game’s life cycle, a lot of specs didn’t do anything, didn’t work, or only existed to add certain bonuses to spells that were basically the signature ability for the class.  However, as they began to add more classes, starting with the Death Knight, Blizzard was sure that each class needed to be different.  They would have four tanks when the Death Knight came out, and they were going to have to make them different from the others, which started to bleed into the other classes.  If the tank specs were going to be different, than it was important they were different from their other specs as well.  This was around the time a lot of the hybrid classes were beginning to see their DPS  and tanking specs become viable, and they had to have their non Healing specs be differentiated from their other ones.

This necessity led to some very interesting classes, since nearly everything began to get overhauled.  Classes got Limit Breaks or their own super powers and they became more than just the black mage who turns into a demon.  Now, the Demonology Warlock is all about summoning demons, rather than just having a few demons show up to supplement the blowing shit up.  Even transforming into a demon turned into something more than a DPS cooldown, it became like its own Limit Break.  It’s totally different from when I switch to Destruction, where I have completely different resources.

Not enough games are willing to experiment with class design.  Classes have to have some rigidity to them, but too many are limited to “well, in D&D, this guy gets a sword, so sword guy is a class now” which is not a good way for video games to develop classes.  They need to have an identity, which is something Blizzard really gets.