BlizzCon 2007: World of Warcraft Classes


With Rob Pardo, Tom Chilton, Kevin Jordon and Cory Stockton speaking about the various classes of World of Warcraft, it was safe to assume some great information was on its way from the quartet.

We were right.

The panel started off rather slowly as the speakers discussed the core classes and how they came to be, as they looked towards traditional role playing games and Warcraft heroes for inspiration for what we know now. Their basis for the current class lineup was a compilation of several different classes, which created classes that were fully featured, helping create a better game. Some original classes including the necromancer, blade master and death knight didn't didnt fit into the game, so they were cut from WoW's class lineup. As we can see in the case of the death knight, just because some of these classes are currently unavailable, it doesn't mean that they will be unavailable forever.

Discussing the core classes, the team went over the creation of every class and the various tweaks that were performed to get them to what we're now familiar with. The team also touched on the original planning phases for the classes, recalling how they initially decided which classes needed to stay and which ones needed to go. Eventually, Blizzard decided that the original classes are the ones to stick with, as more didn't always mean better. In the case of hero classes, the original idea was to include them at launch, as they were envisioned to become available from the main classes, resulting in 27 to 30 classes. This idea was scrapped because with the high number of unique classes, it would create a conflict when finding a role in the game for every class, acting as a detriment as it would throw off the balance of the experience.

For the hero classes, the classic Warcraft III characters are used as a basis, and Blizzard would love to bring in other hero classes from the RTS down the road. The most important thing with these classes is that they need to convey an epic feel, so there will be a lot of work involved when unlocking them at level 80 and it's also why they'll start off at a higher level. Before they came to this, there were a lot of brainstorming sessions before the decided system was put in place.

One idea was to use forking classes or multiple talent trees, allowing players to select a hero class once they reach a certain level. That means when you level up a warrior to become a hero class such as a blademaster or a demon hunter, which would make more of a specialized character. The downside of that method is that it would mean a sudden increase of various classes, tripling or quadrupling the amount of classes in the game, which is something that the game isn't ready to handle.

The multi class hero was considered, allowing a character to reach level 80, then forking off to a level 1 hero class (a level 80 warrior, level 1 blademaster), which didnt sound too bad, but it was scrapped anyways. Another idea discussed was the class morphing model, which had players hit level 80 and unlocking a quest line to morph your character into a death knight. The problem with this is that you'd be losing your original character, so it would be a huge hit against the player, so it was scrapped in favor of the current system. As the speakers mentioned that balance was a concern with class creation, they brought up the issue of the balance of the death knight. They felt this particular hero class would fit rather well into the grand scheme of things because there was room for another tanking class, and since it's also a dps class, players could potentially have a lot of fun with it.

With the death knight comes a lot of implications to all of the classes, as they will all see new abilities while progressing from levels 71 to 80. The new abilities will be comparable to what was found in The Burning Crusade, giving players new tools to tackle the various challenges in their paths. The talent trees will be extended to accommodate the higher level cap, with the addition of a 51 point talent at the end of a given tree, with the death knight seeing three new talent trees. All of the core classes are planned to remain viable throughout the game's lifespan, so though new classes may be introduced down the road, it wont hurt the roles of the currently existing classes.

Balance and incentive to play are both key motives behind the future of World of Warcraft, and with these constant updates and the potential of more character classes on the way, it's sounding like fans will have a lot to be pleased with.

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