Unique Practically, Not Technically (Spring 2003)

A topic on creating true rarities among the humanoids of the world and the effect of unique racial traits on racial diversity of classes.

Blizzard has said, it's not how many races you have, but how unique they are. But can races be too unique, to the extent that stereotypes are forced onto people? If a tauren is given massive strength to make his race unique, and that causes human warriors to be inferior, is that racial uniqueness more important than the limited racial diversity it will cause among warriors?

Or what of other classes? Making numerous races balanced yet unique as warriors is an easy task. Tauren are the strongest yet slowest, the elves the weakest but fastest, and so farth. But what about an archer? How about about a rifleman? Should orcs be allowed to train as rifleman? Does it limit the uniqueness of the dwarf race to allow an orc to train in a generally dwarven skill?

In my opinion, no, and I'll tell you why.

Firstly, dwarves can still have unique traits while not forcing decisions on people. Perhaps dwarves have far faster natural progression in marksmanship. They have easier access to superior rifles. A race can be made unique without limiting the options of other races.

What does Blizzard think of this? Well, let's look at a similar skill, Riding Mounts. Each race has a unique mount. Humans with horses, orcs with wolves. This is similar to ranged weapons. Elves have bows, dwarves have rifles. Now riding a wolf is considered practically unique to wolves by Blizzard. But it's not technically unique to orcs. [i]"With extensive training, riding specialists will be able to use mounts not generally available to their particular race, but this ability will be rare" - Blizzard.[/i] Now if a dwarf can spend extensive amount of time training to ride the unique orc mount, the wolf. Does it not make sense that an orc should be be able to spend an extensive amount of time training to use the unique dwarf ranged weapon, the rifle?

Unique Practically, Not Technically.

Practically such items or skills may be unique to a race. But technically, through extra hard work, other races may be able to learn to use such skills or items.

What does this create? Vast majority of rifleman will be dwarf and they will ride horses. But there still may be a few dwarves that invest the extra hard work to ride a wolf and wield a bow. The system will keep things realistic to the tone of the world. Most orcs will ride wolves, most dwarves will use rifles instead of bows. That's how things are in the world of Warcraft. But the options are still there, for you to strive out and be different. The potential for diversity among classes is there, rifleman are not forced to be dwarves. You're given a choice.

This achieves something unique. A good example is the Forgotten Realm's character, Drizzt Do'Urden. A needle in the hay stack, he's a one in a billion. A lawful Drow elf part of a civilization and race of evil. Now in past online worlds, there was potential for many "Drizzt"s. Everyone wanted to be the cool, unique Drow elf. But everyone was, so he was no longer cool and unique. But following such a mantra, "Unique Practically, Not Technically". The number of Drizzt's would decrease severely. Why? Because the system would be designed so that such a unique character is not practically possible, only technically possible.

Star Wars Galaxies faced this problem with Jedi. They wanted them to exist, but still be very unique. The took a chance, and in my opinion their plan will succeed. Jedi will be rare because of such a system that is quite similar in goal to the above described systems. They could of easily took the easy route, and assigned jedi to certian characters. They actually use that a little in their Force sensitive feature. But once you get that, you've given a choice, you're given freedom.

In all these mentioned games, both systems would acheived the desired effect.
Keeping "rare" characters "rare".
The major difference is:
-One system is policed by the developers.
-The other is policed by the gamers.
"Unique practically, Not Technically"
Rare characters are kept rare not because the developers force it to be so. Rare characters are kept rare because the decisions of the players themselves. And that's very important in my opinion. The freedom is still there to be Drizzt, to be a Jedi, to be a wolf riding dwarven archer-shaman. Even though the vast majority will never choose to do so, the freedom is still there.

Why is such freedom important?

It's hard to put into words. It's like having a forest level in a video game and it having traditional "unpassable" steep mountain walls around it. Even if you never want to venture over there, simply knowing that yer limited and not allowed can really limit how immersed you are. Then the "unpassable" walls are removed, and it makes the world just that much more alive and expansive, knowing that you have the freedom to go where you want, which makes the immersive experience of the (roleplaying) game just that much better.

As I said, hard to describe and some people may just not understand. It's just about having complete freedom, however unpractically hard it is to overcome whatever barriers are in place. As long as the -freedom and options- are there, even if their only purpose is for you to know about, and not even get around to using. It's all about making a more immersive, realistic, and enjoyable MMO Roleplaying Game.