Blizzard and the Triumvirate of MMORPG

Let us take a few steps back and stop talking about the enslaving lure of World of Warcraft. For now, we will focus our discussion on the holy trinity. Nope, we didn’t suddenly become religious and had an attack of holiness. What we’re talking about is the holy trinity of MMORPG, or RPG for that matter when the word massive isn’t connected to online gaming yet.

Before, probably in the time of the original Dungeons and Dragons, there were originally only three class roles: tank, damage, and healing. The first role is the one who takes all the punishments while the second role is for dishing out, well, punishments. The last one, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the team alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake about it, but these three original roles are still very much present in WoW. The Warriors and the Fighters are obviously the tanks of the game. The Mage and the Rogue classes are obviously the DPS group, while Shamans and Paladins take care of the healing process.

Blizzard unmistakable tried to work around this trinity by coming up with hybrid classes than can perform various roles in different instances. Just look at the Druids, they can be any of the three depending on what their team requires of them. But when you really think about it, all of these are still based on the Tank/DPS/Healing triumvirate.

If you really want to know why, Blizzard pointed out that it wants to give every class the option to go all the way to 70 solo. Hunters could totally focus on crowd control duties but after some time, they will be forced back into one of the original roles. The truth is that the triumvirate of roles has worked fine since time immemorial and tinkering with it could prove to be disastrous or – if you insist – craptastic.

Let us take a few steps back and stop talking about the enslaving lure of World of Warcraft. For now, we will focus our discussion on the holy trinity. Nope, we didn’t suddenly become religious and had an attack of holiness. What we’re talking about is the holy trinity of MMORPG, or RPG for that matter when the word massive isn’t connected to online gaming yet.

Before, probably in the time of the original Dungeons and Dragons, there were originally only three class roles: tank, damage, and healing. The first role is the one who takes all the punishments while the second role is for dishing out, well, punishments. The last one, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the team alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake about it, but these three original roles are still very much present in WoW. The Warriors and the Fighters are obviously the tanks of the game. The Mage and the Rogue classes are obviously the DPS group, while Shamans and Paladins take care of the healing process.

Blizzard unmistakable tried to work around this trinity by coming up with hybrid classes than can perform various roles in different instances. Just look at the Druids, they can be any of the three depending on what their team requires of them. But when you really think about it, all of these are still based on the Tank/DPS/Healing triumvirate.

If you really want to know why, Blizzard pointed out that it wants to give every class the option to go all the way to 70 solo. Hunters could totally focus on crowd control duties but after some time, they will be forced back into one of the original roles. The truth is that the triumvirate of roles has worked fine since time immemorial and tinkering with it could prove to be disastrous or – if you insist – craptastic.