Evening tobold. I'm at a pretty big crossroads right now in what character I should play at the start of WOTLK.

Tomorrow I'm returning to WoW after a lengthy (3-4 month) break from the game. Had a old fashion case of raiders burn out. And honestly I was simply tired of Outland. There simply is too little content to properly sustain 2 years of contentious play. The time between major patches and expansions is far to protracted for my taste.

I currently have 4 level 70 characters. A Druid, Warlock, Hunter and Warrior. I played the majority of my TBC career playing a druid raid healer and while the concept of healing in WOTLK does sound interesting I'm not completely positive it's what I want to do.

I'm currently completely up in the air on what I should do. Should I play the role of DPS on my Warlock or Hunter? Or Tank on my warrior? Or should I heal on my Druid? It's a pretty big decision considering your first character to level cap is often your main for the remainder of the expansion.

I would likely play my Warrior if it wasn't for my major concern that the demand for 5 man and 10 man Warrior tanks when Death Knights start hitting the level cap will be greatly reduced. And after playing a healer I understand how enjoyable it is to be a highly desired arch-type.

So does anyone out there in the great wide internet have any advice on if I should take the tried and true path of healing? Or the easy yet unneeded path of DPS? Or should I risk falling out of demand and just play my warrior?
 

I could be wrong, but I honestly don't think things are gonna change too much. There will be a new class but I think whatever raid combinations that worked for you before will work for you again. So I would say, whatever you enjoyed the most in TBC, do that for WOTK. On my server, I see lots of people putting together raid groups for WOTK and are advertising for the various roles so I assume those people won't be playing DK right away.

Most people in my guild are pretty excited about the DK class but they are also excited about advancing their main. Do you want to level to 80 from 55 or 70? Hehe. The guild I'm in is pretty raid casual. We are all excited about people coming back for WOTK so we can finally do the TBC raid content lol. We were down to 5 regular guild members a month ago and now we are up to 25 or so in the last couple days. Can we say Login Queue?
 

@Grifo

In a world filled with DKs (both DPS and tanking), a resto shaman will probably be very popular. Chain heals for all that melee will go down well, I suspect.
 

Personally I'm going for my healer, but I *like* healing. If you are burned out of healing, playing your warrior might be a good idea. Even with protection spec he is much easier to solo now, and I don't think DKs will completely replace him as main tank. On the other hand, a healer will always have an easier time getting into a raid, if you plan to raid on.
 

Go with the one you like best. It'll be easy to level up the healer later but if you take it as your main, you will never get the chance to do anything except heal.
 

Hello Tobold,

I am wondering what you are thinking about Darkfall Online today.
Do you still consider it a waste of time?
 

Also interested in Darkfall...with the main reason being the infamous player hype around it again.

There is a dedicated following for this game, yet with it looking retro like WAR and overstepping it's bounds describing features like AoC...


Well, will we see another WAR, AoC hype meltdown?
 

People with many twinks should ask themselves what they want to do when reahcing level 80.

If you want PvP check your PvP skills of the individual skills.

When Raiding check what classes are needed most, usually tanks and healers. As tanks are becoming more versatile in classes (ie. Deathknights, Druids, Tanks etc.) I guess that healers are in demand in WolK.

Your personal fun element with the class should play a role but its useless if you are level 80 and not needed in your end game role.
 

(ie. Deathknights, Druids, Tanks etc.)

Did you mean warriors or paladin's here?
 

I caught a little bit of G4's infomercial on Guitar Hero. I think the one thing that caught my eye is how much more customizable it appeared than what we typically get for our MMO's. I think that our MMO developers could do a better job with the "look" of our toons. Certainly it's already being done in other games.
 

@sumdumguy
Have you tried AoC? How about heard of Spellborn? Or look at the vids for Aion and character creation.

We have games that you can really customize your look...just some games decide to take that feature away (WoW, WAR, LOTRO, L2, etc..)

I like customizing as well though...
 

Dear Tobold,

I've a great suggestion to help you finding new different introduction for the sunday open thread....

Just ask help to web spammers....
As they depredate other pages and make a new page using a thesaurus.... why you can't ask them to generate hundred of thousand variation of the same theme?

mmhhhh
better go to sleep :P
 

how far off do you imagine 'level 55 = the new level 1" is from being implemented?

I'm in the painful process of rerolling another alt of a class I'd already leveled to 70. It's such a huge pain in the ass to solo your way to outlands, and even then, you're pretty much stuck soling all the way to 70, because who in their right mind is running non heroic ramparts anymore?

With RAF making leveling trivial (grats to those with friends that will do this for them, but I already have an account, so am screwed out of 3x XP), and DKs starting at level 55, it only makes sense that eventually Blizzard will just cave and abandon the tiresome grind to the cap. Even making it quicker is still a huge turnoff for someone who's done it all 5 times over.

any thought on that?
 

In WAR most recently, I've been getting a little tired waiting for scenarios to pop on the server that I've been spending most of my time on. It could be an indication of people leaving the game, possibly. But the good news is that there are still other servers with plenty of people, and playing as Order seems to have even more RvR action than Destruction.

I transferred several toons (that I hadn't played much), to more populous servers, and for the most part, it seemed better.

But that got me thinking - perhaps, MMO's need to rethink their game design. Specifically, leveling and staying on a single server the entire time.

Perhaps, with WAR and with WoW, it would solve the problem of playing with no one else being around. It's a waste of servers and of content, to have all of these zones and tiers with no one to play them. I think it would make some sense both from a cost perspective of the company, and the play perspective of us, the paying subscribers, to consolidate zones/tiers.

So here's my radical thought - servers are assigned by your level/tier. Once you 'ding' to the next tier (or 10th level), you pick a new server.

Of course, you'd need to add new tools. Perhaps a friends list of your top 40 (or top 100, whatever is feasible), and a progress/status of what server they are playing on.

Or perhaps, they make the game such that you can constantly pick which server you want to play each night. It could certainly lessen wait queues as well as give you the best chance of having plenty of others to play with (and against).

This could cause problems with guilds, especially if you want to play an alt while waiting for your turn to join your guild. But it also means that you don't have to read guild chat about the fun they're having that you're missing out on. There were plenty of times when I've played in the past, when they were talking about a Raid that I couldn't attend cuz I was still leveling or more recently about a T3 RvR Warband, while I was still T1 or T2. It would mean that your guild will be more inline with what you currently are playing in the game. But it would mean that there would be significant disruptions as you advance to the next server.

I do like the idea of a single server like what EVE does. I question whether that would work on a scale as large as WoW (or even WAR). Plus, EVE's instancing and constant loading is a bit klunky for my tastes.
 

@openedge

Nope, haven't tried any of those. Perhaps (like Tobold's recent post about perception = your world), it's just a matter of time before I "get lucky" and end up trying a game that's got more to offer in regards to toon customization.
 

My comments on Darkfall are here and I haven't changed my mind about that game since. Either it will never come out, or it will come out and flop, being too hardcore PvP.
 

I tried WoW and just wasn't fond of it--whether it was a lack of open help from other players or the time of day when I played. The graphics didn't wow me either.

I have played GW for 3 years, and I have been with LotRO since beta. I took a long break form LotRO, but I have recently gone back and enjoy much more than I did early on...

Here is what I have "discovered:"

Your expectations/assumptions can make or break a gaming experience. If you open a game with little or no assumptions, you are much more likely to enjoy the experience.

How much of what we think of games is actually a failing of the game? Indeed, the "failing" that we feel could be resulting from the bad expectations we had to begin with...

With that said, I'd rather see some more discussions re: GW and LotRO :P

Counsel