Playing the group game
An interesting post from Treebound Cat left me thinking about how people see themselves in the interaction of the group in WoW. maerdred remarks:
…healers step up and offer to roll a new character to help the guild. We need more Holy Paladins! The Druids step up and offer to level a pally. We need more Rogues! “Hey, I’ll level a rogue.”
In both guilds, no matter what the need is, the healers are stepping up and offering to help. The DPS kind of flounder and offer to search the Guild Recruitment forum. The tanks, well they’re tanks.
I wonder how many people, when they first unwrapped the shrink-wrap on their copy of WoW, really thought to themselves, "Ooooh, I really want to play a healer; stand at the back of the group, click little green bars and buttons and not have to actually look at any of these pretty graphics the designers made for us. And as an extra, added bonus, I will have a heck of a time soloing!" I doubt many people opted for that course off the bat. Some did; a lot of those were probably people who played with groups from the beginning or were carrying over traits from another game. But so many players of WoW were coming to this from friends and coworkers, not from the MMO culture, and when they had to choose, I bet most people chose something fun like a pet-taming hunter or a fireball throwing mage. Maybe a dark, evil (but cute and innocent looking) Gnome warlock.
Over the course of playing the first few levels some people inevitably shifted their characters around and we end up with, roughly, the balance we have now. Classes that are fun all the time become the most populous, and people who like more niche rolls fill those rolls. When faced with the reroll question, most people are going to continue with the slots they fill because it is comfortable, the most habitual. And people are creatures of habit.
Is it that healers are generally more giving? Are they more Team oriented than the others? Is there a specific personality that draws people to healing classes? I’ve never once seen a hunter offer to put down his bow and roll a Paladin Tank. I’ve never seen a Fury Warrior drop his swords and offer to roll a Priest to heal.
There is a lot to this idea. When playing, I think you can divide the focus between the playstyle of the individual and the playstyle of the group. If you play in a group at all, you inherently weight those two issues. The mage loses dps time to polymorph, the hunter drops traps instead of steady shots, the shadow priest tosses a power word: shield here or there to help the group. In more extreme cases, some people will respec to fill a group need because they weigh the group success more than individual playstyle. Some people are just groupers. And some people just do their thing and everyone else can deal.
I have, however, seen fury warriors roll holy paladins, resto druids roll paladin tanks, warlocks roll both holy paladins and holy priests.
We have 5 resto druids, and only need 3. Two of them inevitably offer to roll something else to help the whole. We have 6 Rogues and only need 1. They all bitch and moan about why they didn’t get picked to run Kara. Why did he go instead of me? Me Me ME!
The thing about healing is that you can’t do it unless you have someone to heal. And no amount of healing alone is going to finish quests. WoW as a game is based on killing things. Being a healer is saying to the game "I want to be part of team," and I think people drawn to that playstyle are more likely to be the ones deriving enjoyment from the group playstyle. Some people just can’t do it, just can’t get into any playstyle other than the individual.
It’s part of WoW that we get into groups and go kill things together that none of us could alone. Each of us has to respect the group playstyle at least a little bit for that to work. I know the officers in my guild do- most have a handful of raiding alts of varying classes and roles and are pretty willing to respec, if need be, to help the group.
As a long term strategy, this is good. It’s nice to have enough variety that a lot of situations can be accounted for. Short a mage, no problem, I’ll switch. Oh, need a tank, no problem I’ll grab my paladin. Short term, the rogues have it right: if you need a holy paladin now, your best bet is not rerolling, but finding one that already exists.
Are healers predisposed to be generous and giving, is that why we’re healers in the first place?
I’ve met some very not generous and not giving healers. Often they’re progression whores. I will say that most of the really nice people I’ve met in WoW played healers. There may be something to that. I wonder if the Daedalous Project has any real info on this: how does personality affect playstyle? I would wager that there are so many reasons people play their classes and roles that the answer is so complicated as to be meaningless. But, then again, I, well, I’m a tank (whatever that was supposed to mean).
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