Leveling Up: Race/Class Appeal

Hi everyone,

You may not know me, but my name is Zarhym. And I'm here to tell you an important message. (Daxxarri made me say it. You should have heard his verbal deliverance of the line.)

Since I've taken to leveling alts a little more in Cataclysm than I had in the past, I started thinking more about what has drawn me to the characters I've created. For example, my first character ever -- the one I still consider my main -- is a gnome warlock. In fantasy settings I've always been compelled by the idea of deceivingly powerful magic users... especially those who use any sort of dark magic. So, a little gnome with Shadow magic and demon slaves sounded like the right choice.

Though they don't tend to captivate me as much, I have since warmed up more to melee classes. The first natural step for me from rolling a caster to rolling melee, was the death knight. I quickly took a gnome death knight up to the top, again loving the idea of a little guy tearing stuff up with dark power -- he has since become undead so I could play with a group of Horde friends. I quickly realized how fun melee can be as an alternative to ranged DPS, 'cause sometimes it's just way too fun to get in a target's face!

Lately I've also been toying around more with a worgen druid, troll hunter, human rogue, goblin shaman, blood elf mage, and draenei paladin.

So this got me wondering: what draws you to each race/class you play from a mechanical, gameplay, and lore standpoint? What kind of characters are you playing and what made you start?

I'm not particularly interested in turning this thread into a discussion about class balance, so I'd appreciate it if everyone stuck more to the topic of what compels you to choose the characters you do. In all honesty, I've never once considered the snapshot of class balance at any time when choosing to roll a new character. Class balance is an ever-evolving process, but the play style of each class is much more grounded.

P.S. I hope you all have a great weekend. :)

05/06/2011 03:45 PMPosted by Atlus

In any case, I like to play pretty much anything my cousin always told me not to when I first started out. He told me "I am gonna be so pissed at you if you roll an Alliance toon. For the Horde! Oh, and I'll disown you if you so much as look at a gnome."

Hahaha. :)

05/06/2011 03:56 PMPosted by Nyghtfall

All about the animations bro.

I definitely agree. Running and jumping animations are actually really important to me. I've always loved the gnome animations, and quickly fell in love with goblin ones too. ;)

I like the feeling of running at creatures with my draenei paladin as well. The male run feels very... manly.

Hello Zarhym, you may not know me, but my name is Nethaera and I play World of Warcraft...

During my paper game days, I found that I didn't do well playing healer or "good" characters and eventually found myself gravitating toward rogues. When I first stepped into the MMO space, it was with a rogue with a darker leaning race. As much as I've tried from time to time to play a "good" character, I can't help but want to delve a bit more into the darker side of things. I've RPd a variety of types of characters (AND PvPd), but always returned again to the more (what I see as ) interesting lawful evil leaning characters.

Thus, my first character was undead/forsaken within World of Warcraft (outside of beta that is.) As much as I wanted to start off as rogue, my guild asked me to play a priest, which I had experience with from beta, and so I did. (Hey she could kill ;) ) I've played each class to one degree or another and, for me, the class race combos I like are ones that have a bit of irony to them: A Blood Elf death knight, a Goblin rogue, Troll shaman. On the lighter side, I have a gnome mage that is fun to play as well. She likes to /dance and hates to get her robes dirty.

I'm drawn to races and classes that have a story to them that I like, and then from there, I like to meet other interesting characters, and kill them (<3 for PvP)... That's not a bad thing right?

Sticking with tradition:

Hello Zarhym, my name is Vaeflare and I play World of Warcraft...

While I have a sizable variety of alts on various servers, the character I consider my main is actually the first character I ever created many, many years ago: a night elf druid. I'd latched on to night elves and their lore way back in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and when I initially saw the early cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft, I knew from the first minute or so that I wanted to make my first character like the night elf in the cinematic. Turning into animals? Awesome! Gorgeous cool color-palette in the starting zone? Beautiful! But the unexpected joy and amusement coming from flippy-jumps upon logging in for the first time? Priceless. I was sold from the get-go.

While I came from a gaming background that was definitely very research heavy and focused on min-maxing into a particular niche, one of the things I really enjoyed then and now about playing a druid in World of Warcraft was its versatility. I like that I can vary my play-style by not only what is going on in game and where I am needed (including anything from solo play through to casual raiding, hard-core raiding, battlegrounds, and high-end arena), but also by what role I am interested in playing at any particular time. Tanking? Healing? Range DPS? Melee DPS? I love and continue to experiment and improve in all of them. I've also found it to be a ton of fun being able to switch up my play-style on the fly against an opponent when they least expect it (Gnomes make amusing noises when you bat them around).

I have definitely found it a sort of pleasant self-challenge to attempt to get as much out of one character as I possibly can (even though sometime my bag-space suffers as a result of it). Since I have multiple druids on both Horde-side and Alliance, it makes it a little a bit easier, at least. ;)

Speaking of which: something I found really cool from my early days playing was when I first entered Moonglade I saw the tauren druids and night elf druids side-by side. Something about their sort of mutual respect for nature really settled into me, and for years I would go out of my way to not pick fights with other druids on the opposing side. I found it a lot of fun emoting across the factions with one another in our various animal forms and being silly sometimes simply for the sake of being silly (or even helping each other with quests). That sort of camaraderie is something I've always loved about this community. There has been more than one druid or else-wise I've met this way and then became longtime friends with because of it.

The lore fanatic in me also adores my forsaken priest, troll rogue, worgen warrior, and goblin shaman. The starting areas really helped tie me in to their place and purpose in Azeroth's greater story, and for the forsaken in particular, I thought it was great being able to play a race with such a rich and tragic backstory (though certainly this can be said for multiple races).

Hello Nethaera, Zarhym, Vaeflare, everyone. You may not know me, but my name is Rygarius and I play World of Warcraft...

The first character to be considered my main was a Troll Priest. In choosing a class, Mind Control was a deciding factor initially because the spell description reminded me of my Lawful Evil characters in MMOs of yore. Picked a Troll because they have been awesome as far back as I can remember since Warcraft 2.

The mind control aspect was quickly overshadowed by how much I loved being a healer. Helping heal people is fun! Where else can you get a thanked by a stranger for helping them when outnumbered by a large group of Murlocs?

Fast forward through Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, to Cataclysm: Currently rerolled as a Worgen Druid tank. Found it ironic to turn my well honed healer survival instinct of "Taking damage, make it stop now!" on its head. Tanking has been a nice change of pace and helping me discover a whole new set of perspectives.

P.S. Bird is the word.