Z & Cinder’s Blog Challenge: Class Fantasy, Yay or Nay?

Tell us how you are finding the fantasy of the class and the world we live in. Has Blizzard nailed it on the head, or is it just leaving you cold and wanting to re-write the way your toon’s class is portrayed.

Legion encourages us to play every class in the game – which I do. My range of toons is exactly 12, one for each class, delivering every possible experience. So let me crawl one by one.

Legion has also presented a very distinctive view upon classes, so I would talk of how it played out in my case.

Warrior 

You could play any warrior type possible. Could it be the guys craving for PvP – especially arena type – a berserk? A decent good-hearted defender of his village/town from wild beasts and thugs? A knight in shining armor which forms the ranks of regular army? Name it.

Legion f*cked it all up imo. The vrykul business hit us as a truck, including a complete zone and its subzone, world quests, two dungeons and a raid. Not that Valhalla is bad for warriors, it just didn’t leave us any options but be a bloodthirsty, selfish berserk which cares about personal glory only and ready to die. Besides, the repetition sucked: all the same shit about valor all over and over.

My warrior Bons ranges from being a decorated Alliance soldier to a sort of a ravager type you find in highwayman hideouts in the forest (depending on transmog). Anyways, she cares much about her community – saving her local settlement, fighting for Gnomes, Alliance, Khaz Modan and Azeroth rather than waiting for dying in battle and getting a praise from some bearded Santa she never heard of.

Mage

Blizzard loves mages, so there’s little option it could have been failed. We got an Order Hall in Dalaran, heavily inflicted by arcane stuff. Not a total fan of arcane version of mages (Micromantica is an ice adept like her mentor, Jaina), I can’t help but acknowledge that this is perfect.

Paladin

Actually paladins have so little options when exploring their class fantasy, so no wonder it was done perfectly. We got an Order Hall in Eastern Kingdoms, where paladins were initially created, and in the most iconic place ever which even managed to repel even the Lich King himself – so holy it is (see Death Knight 55-60 starting questline).

The Order Hall is awesome, it’s basically a cathedral, which also serves as a training ground and base of operations. It’s a war camp, but also very serene and suitable for a prayer and divine moments. I can’t think of how could it be done any better.

Priest

Blizzard really did it well introducing some inter-dimensional temple of enormous size. It’s nice having enclaves both for Shadow and Light, although most of the space in the temple is not really used, so it doesn’t feel any cozy and at the same time doesn’t bring this feeling of being in a sacred place.

Also priests are bound to pray the naaru – as good as it could have been for draenei players, I don’t feel too much devotion to them from every other priest race. Moreover, my Gnome Aurinko uses the Light very practically – she’s simply a battle medic like all Gnomes.

Shaman 

What could have been cooler for a shaman than returning back to the Cataclysm times when Earthen Ring ruled out the whole business of elements?

The Maelstrom porch is rumbling with raw energies, and you really feel the power of elements. This is awesome.

Again, I don’t feel too enthralled by this all – but due to race choice only. Schlitzchen is a goblin, so her approach to the elements is very practical. She’s not your normal cash-by-all-means type of goblins, she got into the whole elements business as she saw Thrall mastering them when goblins fled from Kezan. So she saw the shaman path as a powerful thing to help and save her kin. But her good heart draws the line exactly here: balance the elements powers to protect herself and her people, but not to save the whole world. So the Earthen Ring to her is like: eh, whatever.

Druid

It’s very easy to nail the druid experience: throw in a lush location and wooden huts carved in trees – there, you have it. Still, Blizzard went even farther than that. We learned that Broken Isles was the initial Malfurion’s training grounds, we got ourselves a piece of Emerald Dream, an ability to travel the long forgotten portals (finally!), and there’s also a whole druidic location – Val’sharah – and with druid-specific storyline (Xavius).

Works perfectly for night elves and worgen (who also got a nod in Val’sharah with Brandensbrook village). Maybe not that perfect for trolls and tauren. Trolls are a jungle type. And my druid – Tauren Helu – is obviously a Sun druid, all about steppes and lush meadows of Mulgore. She’s not much into the thickets and groves. Although she doesn’t feel any bad in Val’sharah.

Hunter

I don’t know if you noticed, but hunter’s class lodge has exactly the same model as a Night Elven training building in Warcraft 3. So thanks for a nod to the past :)

Otherwise, it’s a nice spot. I like how Blizzard address every hunter’s aspect: beast pens, target practice grounds, different things for hunting. It’s always been a class of loners, trappers, pioneers, survivalists. They just needed a place to hang out – nothing to pompous, but very homely. I think it’s very good what they did to hunter fantasy here.

Yet again, if you’re roleplaying a rank archer/steamgunner/musketeer from Alliance or the Horde, it’s not your place to be. But I guess these players are few.

Rogue

Rogues, like Warriors, have big diversity in roleplay. You can be an assassin, a pickpocket, a spy, a ninja, or a pirate.

Despite what every rogue asked – a Ravenholdt manor for the class order hall – I think that Blizzard managed to create a class order hall very good. It fits every role you could possibly pick for yourself. Besides, they managed to deliver the Ravenholdt’s elitist, noble style too in order hall meeting room and give ravens as class mounts. They gave you assassin training grounds, black market corridors, a bar to discuss deals, a goblin managed treasury, a noble-manor type of dining room for negotiations… what else would you want?

What people who asked for a manor don’t understand is that EVERY rogue role is acting in shadows. But to act in shadows… there must be a proper “light” world nearby. Where would you train you skills – spying, pickpocketing, brawling, assassinating – surely not among your fellow rogues? So giving a shadow world as an upside of the major city is awesome. And we also have three access points to our hideout in the city. What pleases me most, one of them is cheese traders, the family with very dark bandit history ever since the earliest Stormwind leveling times.

The only bad thing about rogues was basically introducing a proper pirate spec in the expansion – and your pirate representative in the order hall is a damn annoying idiot admiral Tethys. Would prefer a Barbossa-type character of course.

Warlock 

Getting an outlandish world for an order hall is not so fun. I can’t come up with an alternative solution… I just don’t like being there with so many demons around – even if enslaved. I guess I’m just fed up with demons. Yes, nailed it and all, but not a place to have fun at.

Those candle clusters though.

Death Knight

Acherus is an obvious choice for Death Knights, it’s a perfect keep addresssing whatever spec you play. It’s a chill, cozy necropolis – harsh, brutal base of operations for undead warriors. Not many options to vary your class fantasy in the whole death knight business, but still there’s a gory altar for Blood vampiric knights, Ice quarter for lich-type cold-blooded warriors and corpse resurrection sickly ground for plague bearers, as well as forges and training grounds. I don’t know… It’s all good.

Monk

There were just two options to settle monks: either it be Kun Lai Summit or Wandering Isle. Both are viable, although Wandering Isle is of course more fun. It has villages, cool nature (Kun Lai is snow-covered mountainside), and it has this temple in the middle. It’s good to be back here and recycle the Pandaren starting zone.

Pandaria-heavy in every aspect, it’s easily fitting the only monk roleplay option. Whatever race you are playing, if you’re choosing a way of the monk, you’re a fan of dumplings, thick ropes, sakura blossoms and all the corresponding stuff.

Finally,

Demon Hunter

Blizzard went with an obvious decision as to stealing a battleship off Legion. I don’t like it at all. They’re nailing the class fantasy of course, but to my liking it lacks any lighter options than go around frowning and being tortured with demon inside. Basically you are settled in a demon base, surrounded by demons, and with no hope for the best. Not that it’s not fitting the demon hunter fantasy, but it’s very depressing.

Besides, they are all in awe with Illidan – which I’m not. Surely there could be at least some demon hunters who see him as a failure? Walking like that around, I feel kind of traitor :)

This is it for class fantasy for tonight!

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