More classes?

A while ago I let my roommate start a character on my account and play a bit to see how he liked it. He went on to level his mage to 50 before he finally went and bought the game on his own. Now he has a level 70 warlock on his own account that he does PVP with, while I'm stuck with no characters at 70 still. We didn't talk about playing too much, tried to keep away from making WoW our topic of conversation, especially around other people, but he did mention to me how he would like more classes to be in the game, and I agreed with him at the time, with my habit of starting alts how could I not? I remember my other friend that got me started on WoW telling me about Everquest and how many more classes there were in that game than in WoW, so I went to check out what classes they had and how they were different from eachother.

Let me say first that I have changed my mind on WoW needing so many more classes. This is not to say that I don't welcome the addition of hero classes, it will be fun to have different abilities to play around with and come up with new strategies for killing things, but on a purely practical, group dynamic standpoint, WoW has just as many classes as any other MMO, they just make it seem like there aren't. What I mean is, while the number of classes isn't quite the same as some, with the different talent trees you can follow for each class, it's almost like having 3 classes per character, although more so with the hybrid classes.

While most RPG games tend to set the role you will play in a group when you initially choose your class, WoW gives you options later on that let you choose how you are going to play that character, and they let you redistribute points if you want so you can try something else out without having to play another character. I think this is shown best through the hybrid classes, namely the paladin, druid, and shaman. All of these classes can hold their own as healers, DPS (paladin somewhat lacking here), and pallies and druids can make great tanks. Now most MMOs will give you choice of character, then your fate is sealed from that point on, but as you can see, with WoW you can shape your character for your playstyle or your group's needs.

While the hybrid classes may have a bit more options, every other class can spec differently and play different roles as well. Priests can also be considered a sort of hybrid, as speccing shadow allows them to DPS, but maybe not as versatile as the true hybrid classes. Lets take a class that on the surface seems pure DPS, but can actually play very different roles in a group depending on spec. We are going to use a hunter for this, as they really have no way out of being a DPS class, but lets look a little deeper. Hunter talent trees specialize the hunter in a certain attribute they have that is unique to the class. What are those attributes? Pets, ranged damage, and trapping. If you've read any of BRK's stuff you know which attribute he likes best, but he also can tell you the advantages of the other attributes. The BM tree buffs your pet, making it a more essential part of your repertoire than the other specs and providing higher sustained damage output than the other specs can usually achieve. This comes at a price in difficulty though, as it is almost like playing two characters at once. Survivalists provide the ranged damage aspect of the hunter class, with the talents tending to buff the hunter and make his attacks hit harder and crit more often. Finally the survivalist class seems to be least used, and I think it has a lot to deal with being more of a utility spec than damage dealing. We all love to see ourselves deal huge amounts of damage, but the survivalist claim to fame is their ability to crowd control using traps, and that makes them just as important to a group. Now while all of those specs still play the DPS role, they are very different to play. Ask any hunter who has respecced and they will tell you they had to relearn many things to be able to play the new spec as effectively as possible.

So in my opinion WoW has plenty of classes, they are just hidden within the talent trees. If they were going to make too many more classes it would come to the point where they would just take some attributes of one class and combine them with other attributes from another class. We can see this in the humanoid mobs we fight. Shadowmages? Just combines warlock shadow magic and mage fire magic. Sorceresses? Just combines mage ice magic and priest holy magic. Probably ideas for classes that Blizzard decided didn't need to be playable for just that reason. I look forward to the hero classes they promised us, but I don't see them making any new starter classes for us, although if they did then I would definitely be making more alts.