While We're Talking About Hero Classes...

I do have one gripe that honestly has nothing to do with the Death Knight class, but rather with other classes relative to the death knight.

Upon release, the Death Knights are going to have their own little quest hub, with their own special little quests and so forth that teach you the class and so on.

Essentially, playing the Death Knight will feel like you’re actually playing a Death Knight, as opposed to the majority of WoW, which plays like player character X killing mob Y for NPC Z.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing the formula, it works, and more often then not, is fun, and Blizzard does an excellent job of making the grind feel very non grind like. Well, I mean relative to something like, say, Half Life 2, it’s filled with grinding, but take something like Hello Kitty Island Adventure… you get what I mean.

What I’m getting to is that there are certain parts of WoW that feel so incredibly non-generic, it’s like a completely different game. Where you reach this kind of… epicness to the game where you can’t help but punch your fist into the air and shout “YESS!”

For me, the majority of these fist pumping moments came from PvP. Until very recently, I just assumed that it was a by-product of PvE being inferior to PvP in a number of raids… I mean, ways. *cough* As it turns out, it was simply a product of mage class quests being filled with suck.

Take the level ten mage quest for trolls:

The warlock Zalazane of the Echo Isles has disrupted the normal flow of magic in Durotar. He does this through tainted fetishes, ju-ju heaps, which he has placed among his huts on the main Echo Isle.

These heaps corrupt our wildlife and give power to the warlocks and infernal creatures that lurk in the land’s dark corners.

You must destroy the ju-ju heaps, <name>, before the flow of magic is forever altered.

Looks like it should be epic, doesn’t it?

Only it doesn’t feel like anything other than “go here, click on something, and then get a nice stick.”

The gnome one is pretty awesome, I mean, how often do you get the term “Mage-tastic” included in a quest name? I mean, c’mon…

We mages do more than just waggle our fingers and make pretty sparks!

How is that not cool?

To be perfectly honest, the only mage quest that even felt… well magey, was the quest pre-TBC where you had to go kill a water elemental in Dire Mall or something to learn Conjure Water rank thingummy. The quest name sucked (Arcane Refreshment? Oh c’mon…) but the idea of ripping apart this powerful and furious water elemental to make some water for a refreshing beverage… that was priceless.

Quests like that are… so few and far between. It’s rather disappointing.

How often are you on a quest that makes you feel like YOU? How often, as a retribution Paladin, do you get to do a quest that sceams “I AM RETRIBUTION! HAHAHAHAHA!! PREPARE TO BE SMOTE!”

How often as a Rogue do you get dispatched to do assassinations?

How often as a hunter do you get dispatched some darn tootin’ hunting?

How often as a mage do you get summoned to Thrall’s chambers, for a private request to “kill them. Kill them all. We have no need of subtlety; in fact, the more obvious you could make it, the better.”

To be blunt, I’d like there to be more quests. Quests that grab your face and toss you head first into “THIS IS YOUR CLASS.”

And they need to be long. None of this “Hey you’re a mage, go set that mountain on fire”. I mean, yeah, setting a mountain on fire would be damn cool, but there needs to be…

Ok, no. Setting a mountain on fire is the best idea ever.

Where was I? Ahh yes.

Anyone remember that old Hunter quest for that epic bow that had you running all over Azeroth to kill demons to get their heads (they had names like Franklin the Friendly), then you needed a drop from Onyxia, then you had to get an item from the second last boss in Molten Core… to be fair, the raiding part of it was a little “urgh” but that isn’t the point, really.

To quote Lorelander over at wowhead.com:

The quests require a hunter to go solo against four elite demons. A single buff, heal, point of damage or etc. from another player was enough to reset the encounter. Basically anything that put another player on the demon’s aggro table reset the encounter. These quests were custom created so that you and only you could defeat the demons. So if you have this bow it meant you learned how to play… There wasn’t much you could do to get around this shy of having someone else play our account.

Thus I consider this the closest thing in the game to graduating from college for a hunter. On a guild application the Rhock indicated this players can kite, dps hard, manage aggro, and etc. I can’t think of a single piece of hunter gear that indicates as much about a hunter’s skill than the Rhok.

Don’t confuse what I’m saying here, it isn’t the best bow DPS and stats wise, but rather the best bow for proving one’s merit as a epic hunter.

Exactly. This is exactly it.

This is exactly what the game needs more of.

Rhok’delar isn’t epic because it’s name happens to be purple.

A bow like that, carrying it around, screams to the people around you “I AM HUNTER. FEAR ME” and you would be more than deserving of it.

Another excellent example is the epic druid flight form quest. Sending you hither and thither, killing things in a very class specific way, and then the final fight…

You cease to be just some guy playing some character in some game. You become a druid. Something beyond mere pixels on a monitor.

I know you know what I’m talking about.

So the question is. Why aren’t there more quests like this? Even if it’s just for cosmetics, even if it’s just for a new cape with a really cool animation.

Quests that are blarghingly hard, but that get you a fancy item, are hit and miss at best. Very few of them are actually… well, fun. The Warrior one to get one of the Whirlwind weapons is an excellent example of one of the few that actually… stood out. That makes the warriors who completed it to still keep the thing in there bank, fondly tucked into a corner, still polished all these years later.

How about a quest for rogues at level 36 (or whatever level works for this), where you are contacted by an “anonymous benefactor” who wishes you to assassinate a certain priest in Scarlet Monastery, but where you are required to not kill any mob except the quest target, but he has two guards? Thus requiring you to sap one, blind the other, kill the target, and get out? The target is killed instantly by Backstab, so long as the dagger has Instant Poison on it.

And then of course it turns out the priest had nearly completed development of a potion that could cure Undeath… and the “anonymous benefactor” was Sylvanus… and you get paid handsomely for your “discretion” upon confronting Sylvanus… or if you refuse, without warning a couple hours later, you are suddenly attacked by several undead rogues… if you die. You die. If you survive, you are contacted by Varimathras with “a business proposal”.

Eh? Ehhhh?

Blizzard has all but admitted that the Death Knight thing will be a “test” to see how introducing multiple high level characters would impact servers.

Which means they plan on doing it again, which means more Hero classes to come.

And this has me somewhat concerned. If they concentrate on hero classes, they’ll all have special lore, special starting zones, the rest of us get shafted.

I don’t want to see a new hero class called “Archmage” introduced to the game, and reroll a new character. I want Euripedes to BECOME an archmage.

You know exactly what I mean.