Warrior feels like it’s a Fighter and a Barbarian smashed into a single class, and those two are constantly fighting with each other over which one they want the Warrior class to be.
Arms is trying to be a weapon master, Prot is more of a knight/gladiator, and Fury wants to go on a rampage.
RP is the real endgame, so long as you’re having fun and you like your character then who really needs to tank raids?
Damn, I’ve never had any character stories that hardcore for anyone who wasn’t a death knight. Though that’s pretty cool to think about, a Tauren born from a peaceful and noble tribe that goes on to become a gritty soldier of the Horde who’s seen it all.
Couldn’t have put it any better.
This was by design. Blizzard designed the classes to cast as wide a net as possible in regards to character choices. Warrior got Fighter and Barbarian. And when D&D added Monkey Grip, Fury Warriors similarly got Titan’s Grip.
This is a tough one, for me. I feel like Vanilla had a stronger class fantasy if only because the gameplay-narrative split was not nearly as wide as it is in retail. The class quests (including the epic class quests like Hunter’s Rok’Delar(?) and Priest’s Benediction/Anathema), the flavor abilities, etc.
Generally I’m drawn to the Hunter. Combined with Mining and specifically Engineering, it feels like a perfect mix of making your own guns, gadgets, and bullets and taking your trusty pet out into the world to hunt for treasure and hunt down murderous monsters.
I also like Mage. Unlike the Warlock, Priest/Paladin, Shaman or Druid the Mage doesn’t need to borrow, bargain, or enslave power. Through dedication of study and acquiring magical artifacts, the Mage can bend the Arcane to his/her will and not have their actions be swayed by any sort of natural or unnatural force. In terms of character, you get a lot of wiggle room about why your character does things and what opinions they have or what values they fight for.
I absolutely want to RP in Classic on an RP-PVE realm (or whatever unofficial server is selected by the community should there not be any RP tags) but I’m having trouble bouncing around between Dwarf, Troll and Tauren for race and Hunter, Mage, and (Dwarf) Priest for class. I wouldn’t mind a Druid as an alt, either.
You don’t want to experience that Warrior Class Fantasy? Every 10 levels you get to go to an island to learn a new stance, its awesome!
Turning rouges into dirty pirates was a really big letdown for me and beginning of the end of my interest in retail.
They added the Highwayman/Pirate class fantasy, but then bungled up the execution on the mechanic side. I didn’t think much of Combat, other than ‘thug’ who was good at hitting things.
Agreed to “most of the game,” but the critical pieces of the game that cannot be soloed (at least before LFR made them “soloable” in an anonymity sense or expacs made them literally soloable in the character power curve sense) are the central thing you’re talking about here, unless I’m mistaken. You never “soloed” Ragnaros or Onyxia. You were part of a fairly large team of 40 players plus a NPC or two thrown in for some raids.
Even in that sense, you can imagine today running across Bruce Collie in a bar, maybe buying him a drink and striking up a conversation without knowing he was one of the offensive guards who played for the 1990 Superbowl champion team (SF 49ers). He buys you a slice of pizza and you find out he actually owns the place you’re in, and even if you’re a football fan this nice guy who is, in a sense, completing “quests” for you, could be a part of a pantheon of cultural “gods” that – at this point – might as well be collecting the hind quarters of bears for you, and maybe they made it into the pizza you’re eating.
You wouldn’t get that kind of interaction with a John Elway, right? This is the critical piece that changed after Vanilla in future expansions and probably most-prominently in Legion: Vanilla made you into Bruce Collie (which I had to google and read a Wikipedia article about to write this comment) and Legion made you into John Elway (which I don’t even need to tell you who this is, most likely).
It doesn’t matter if you solo this content or not. It’s always written from a single-player perspective, pointed at the player’s character, regardless of whether. As far as any quest is concerned, it is written as if your character is the hero.
The Head of Nefarian, or the quest “The Lord of Blackrock” is from defeating Nefarian in Blackwing Lair. The head drops, and only one person can turn that in.
Afrasiabi yells: “Citizens of the Alliance, the Lord of Blackrock is slain! Nefarian has been subdued by the combined might of X and his/her allies!”
In cases of NPCs present, even then the player is lauded as a great hero, even if most of the credit is given to the NPC.
Here’s the difference in how this is being viewed. You have your John Elway comparison, correct? He was the quarter back for the 1997 Denver Broncos, who won the superbowl that year. Everyone remembers John Elway - he was the quarterback. He’s the face of the team.
There’s a whole roster of players other than John Elway. Gary Zimmerman, Rod Smith, Flipper Andersen, etc. All were important to the success of that game, but few remember them as much as they remember Elway. Less remembered is the MVP for Superbowl 32, Terrell Davis.
Those raids from Vanilla to Cataclysm? You’re replaying that game until you become Terrell Davis. Elway always wins, he gets the recognition. Terrell Davis is then lauded as the MVP of that game. This happens with TBC, and Wrath, and even Cataclysm.
The difference is that in later expansions, after Cataclysm, there’s no more John Elway, there’s the player. And that’s fine. You, the player, have been present at the defeats of Illidan, Arthas, even Deathwing, and it’s now the player’s time to shine at the forefront. Most of the important NPCs step out of your way so you can take the spotlight.
I’m not sure we disagree on much, although the way you write your reply you seem to think there’s an important disagreement here.
I don’t agree, actually, that the “intention” of Vanilla raiding was for the player to replay the (by analogy) 1997 Superbowl in different capacities until they are recognized as the MVP Terrell Davis. I do agree with your point about Legion, but that is a critical difference, I think.
The level 1-60 quests are not written to Terrell Davis post-1997, but perhaps to Terrell Davis pre-1990 when he was still in high school.
Again, I think we’re both saying the same thing but you seem to think we have an important disagreement so I’m interested to know what I’m missing.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Vanilla is a section of a career - specifically, the first section, not the entirety of it. That would be like saying that one chapter of a book is the only part of the story, or only the first season of Game of Thrones is the only important one.
Vanilla is the story of a single character rising from nothing to becoming a great hero. That is what is being discussed. The viewpoint is what that player becomes by the end of Vanilla.
They are a hero by the end, they are on the threshold to become the Savior of Azeroth. Call it the Hero’s Journey, and there’s plenty of narratives that follow that blueprint, and WoW is written as a Hero’s Journey. A -single- hero’s journey, mind you, that happens to involve a lot of other people.
What people here are saying is that the Vanilla PCs aren’t ever the hero, they are forever a grunt, just some guy, and that just isn’t the case. By the end of Vanilla, the story is that your lowly level 1 noob becomes MVP of the big games.
Gotcha, and agreed.
Right, but at the same time in context of class fantasy and the ability to RP, Vanilla offers (in a way not offered in any of the expansions) a greater “sandbox” ability to roleplay a character who may or may not be destined to be the MVP of the big game.
Yes, if you get into raiding and do all the quests in that context, then you become that hero (or pre-hero, on the threshold to be Azeroth’s savior), but until you do so you are free to be “forever a grunt” if you so choose. It’s a luxury you are not afforded in later expansions, especially in Legion which pre-supposes you’ve done all of the greatest things in the previous expacs as a starting point.
A lot of people, myself included, are looking forward to that sandbox-feel, whatever was “intended” by how the quests themselves were written by the Terrell Davis’s of WoW game development. 
ETA: It is also important to point out that Classic, unlike Vanilla, may not actually have an “end” to it and go right into Burning Crusade. The lack of an ending in this sense could change, significantly, the feel of the whole project and give it even more of a “sandbox” feel than the original Vanilla. Food for thought, anyway.
Rogue. I have always loved the sneaky guy in the back of the room altering global politics while taking zero credit lore. Not so much the thief side of the fantasy but the espionage side of it all. That’s why I have loved what they did with Shaw. In other games I have always played the sneaky class, snipers in FPS, Smuggler in SWG. Even in Elder Scrolls Moorowind I successfully stole a full set of glass armor off the shelf when the merchant and guard were standing in the room.
Hunter. For the pure and unadulterated I can do this on my own and survive lore. The living in the wild and taming beasts to do my bidding because they a loyal not enslaved was always something that I liked. Again another hey I’m here to help and take no credit type of person.
To the topic of the OP, this Wrath baby has always favored the class fantasy of… the death knight.
Before you dismiss this as “wrong forum, Wrath baby!” hear me out. The original death knight, Arthas Menethil, was front and center in Warcraft III and Azeroth as we find it in Vanilla is still shuddering in his wake. All of the players, in both factions, are candidates to become death knights in the future. So, if I do want to get into RP during Classic (and I’m certainly warming to this idea), my “backstory” will be – somewhat ironically – intrinsically tied to my future destiny when I forsake my faction for the pull of the power of death and the compulsion of the Lich King.
I’m thinking, moreover, that paladins lend themselves quite nicely to this sort of fantasy. It is their (annoying to many) self-righteousness and overconfidence in themselves that leads them to succumb to their own pride, and fall to the temptations of power, or vengeance disguised as justice, and to ignore the risks associated with curses because they think themselves strong enough to resist and to overcome the worst of what those curses bring with them.
I’m thinking of developing a character who is primed to fall to the Lich King, balancing out his youthful excesses in pride and self-confidence with his future destiny of a fall to the Lich King and a redemption arc that includes an atonement for the youthful pride and an embrace of the still-evil powers of death and corruption while still believing in the inherent goodness and incorruptibility of the power of the Light. That is, the fervent belief of this not-yet-corrupted youthful paladin will be the mechanism of tortured atonement of this future knight of death.
The only problem I have with this idea is that it would require me to play someone who is quite annoyingly self-righteous. I’m not sure I could pull that off for long…
Amen 1000x to this. I played my favorite rogue as a spy and scout, equally able to dress up as high society attending a ball, and slip into a military camp and pick up important information or even deposit false information to deceive. It’s even how I played my halfling rogue/thief in AD&D, with more curiosity to know the things that were kept secret than any desire to steal from others.
Whether you do or do not, that is not a concern in regards to the quests. The quests are there, whether you want to do them or not, the narrative is simply that you become the great hero in the story. You just haven’t done it yet.
If players say that they can choose not to be a great hero, that they are still just a grunt, that’s even more true of retail than it is of Vanilla. You don’t have to do any quests, you never have to kill any mobs, and still advance without becoming that great hero.
See the tale of Doubleagent, a max level Pandaren who has done nothing but mine and pick flowers - they’ve never done the quest to choose Horde or Alliance, and are still on the back of the Wandering Isle.
As far as any quests are concerned, Doubleagent just hasn’t done them yet, but they are there for a reason - and that’s to tell the story of how this character becomes the savior of Azeroth.
This is true – you can simply not read the quests (and skip/ignore the cutscenes because Blizzard doesn’t like it when you don’t read things so they throw cutscenes at you because, darnit, you are going to do the lore and enjoy it, young man!) and then transmog over the shards of Frostmourne you are now wielding and pretend that you are not a part of all that “Deathlord” nonsense.
If you are going to ignore the quests as they were “intended” in Vanilla, I suppose you are right and you are free to ignore everything else in any other expac.
It is, in my estimation, easier to do this in Vanilla/Classic than it is in Legion or BfA, but you are correct that it is possible to do in BfA as well.
But that said, Doubleagent could – if they so choose – go and one-shot Ragnaros inside of the Molten Core raid. That part is distracting, imo. A person more-talented at RP than myself could probably manage to pull it off without breaking character or letting the game itself over-influence their RP, but I still think Classic will be more RP-friendly to players like myself who lack the discipline and willpower to willfully ignore basically all of the story elements undergirding the seven expansions since Vanilla.
But I get what you’re saying.
That part is the reality of the fixed level-based system. Inevitably, the level-based gameplay allows for completely one-sided fights. It’s certainly not unique to expansions.
Afterall, even in Vanilla, people getting ‘run through’ a dungeon might have something like a level 60 in Tier 2 pulling the entirety of the Stockades in one go and kill everyone for lower levels. A prot pally could clear Scarlet Monstery Cathedral in 3 pulls.
Good conversation. Now I’m thinking that a successful RP would entail avoiding the temptations to let a level-60 carry me through a dungeon and then equipping the looted spoils of that carry as if I had “earned” it, unless I just wanted to extend the pretense of the RP and disconnect completely the gameplay from the RP, which of course is viable.
Also I was thinking about the whole, “Oh, have you heard? The heroes of the guild, ‘We Are L33ter Than U,’ have – just yesterday – destroyed Ragnaros in the depths of the Molten Core! Huzzah! Odinmar the Lightfound, of the ‘Hammers of Light’ guild, you were just last week telling me you would do this yourself, and yet you are still slaying boars here in Dun Morogh and are nowhere near ready to even make your way to the entrance of the Molten Core, within the depths of Blackrock Mountain, without being quickly dispatched by the guards at the gate. When is it you will make yourself ready for such adventure, to live up to what you say is your calling and your heroic destiny?”
Ima be all, “will you get off my back, serving wench? I’ll get to it next week. For sure…” and then go about my level 17 questing for a bit until I get bored and want to pretend I’m something else and roll a rogue, or break the 4th wall, or whatnot…
Shamans for sure, I’ve always loved the battle mage fantasy. Going around using different elemental imbued totems/abilities to straight up decimate my enemies. It may have something to do with me being OBSESSED with ATLA as a kid.