So, i've been thinking.
Is it possible for the GM's to open up the race/class combinations? I mean, every race from an in-game perspective can do everything that the new classes would need (gnomes can still shoot without being hunters, for instance) So would it be inpossible to potentially open up all classes for all races, and the players would then have to choose classes based around the chance of that combination ever happening (for example, undead paladin has absolutely no way to explain itself really)
Just curious to if this is possible, or if its just a heap of coding that can't be done.
Well, you kind of CAN be any class in game if you learn all the spells needed, but there would be no talents and such for you.
I'm going to go out on a limb as say that it'd be almost impossible to do that since being a class is much more than the spells and talents, it also has all those quests, how people react to you through other trainers, etc.
But what's so bad about parading as a gnome who knows how to shoot and claim you're a hunter?
My gnome Jarvi is actually a big game hunter. Sadly though, he lost his hand and in turn his ability to shoot a rifle. In any case, Jarvi was more of a hunter than most hunters are on this server.
EDIT: It's purely an IC sort of thing however... I do know that you can have a class changed by a GM, but I'm not sure if you can go out of your race's norm just because of the coding aspect.
My gnome Nizzel is a shaman.
Miah Wrote:Is it possible for the GM's to open up the race/class combinations?
Actually, I am in strong belief it's been suggested before, and that the answer has been no.
Azheron Wrote:Actually, I am in strong belief it's been suggested before, and that the answer has been no.
Fair enough.
Every race/class combination that is comfortable with Warcraft lore is already in place, or will be when Cataclysm is released (human hunters? I'm okay with this). Anything more is just unnecessary.
I say, create what you please! Aslong as it is not implausible or overpowered, it'll be ok.
Well, Just, I can see it being fairly plausable to make, for example, a troll warlock, but its not possible in game. If it were it would be interesting, but at the moment anyone considering it would have to make say, a shadow priest and try and improvise.
Red Wrote:Every race/class combination that is comfortable with Warcraft lore is already in place, or will be when Cataclysm is released (human hunters? I'm okay with this). Anything more is just unnecessary.
The roleplaying game approaches this question in a really good way: it says that
anything is possible, but certain species will sway towards one or two classes.
In fact, in regards to my favorite class (priests) and gnomes, a number of guides and articles and examples prove that gnomes do occasionally embrace worship of the Light and become practitioners, including as priests. There are even gnome
priests currently in game, even though we can't play them. In Gnomeregan, there are
Holdout Medics. Their
abilities include
Heal,
Power Word: Fortitude, and
Renew -- all of which are distinctly priestly spells!
The restrictions in-game occur for a number of reasons, primarily balancing issues. Remember the brouhaha surrounding blood elf paladins and draenei shaman? As much as people were decrying lore, the real concern was how the two classes were slowly becoming homogenized due to balancing issues (particularly in PvP, though there
were PvE concerns as well!) and how introduction of those two classes to both factions would level the playing field.
Remember, the game that we play doesn't necessarily reflect the entirerty of the Warcraft universe. We are constrained by balancing issues, coding restraints, and even size. I mean, it's unlikely that we can really travel the entire span of a continent on foot in a day and even more unlikely that we'd only encounter one or two settlements in that time.
Piroska Wrote:Red Wrote:Every race/class combination that is comfortable with Warcraft lore is already in place, or will be when Cataclysm is released (human hunters? I'm okay with this). Anything more is just unnecessary.
The roleplaying game approaches this question in a really good way: it says that anything is possible, but certain species will sway towards one or two classes.
In fact, in regards to my favorite class (priests) and gnomes, a number of guides and articles and examples prove that gnomes do occasionally embrace worship of the Light and become practitioners, including as priests. There are even gnome priests currently in game, even though we can't play them. In Gnomeregan, there are Holdout Medics. Their abilities include Heal, Power Word: Fortitude, and Renew -- all of which are distinctly priestly spells!
The restrictions in-game occur for a number of reasons, primarily balancing issues. Remember the brouhaha surrounding blood elf paladins and draenei shaman? As much as people were decrying lore, the real concern was how the two classes were slowly becoming homogenized due to balancing issues (particularly in PvP, though there were PvE concerns as well!) and how introduction of those two classes to both factions would level the playing field.
Remember, the game that we play doesn't necessarily reflect the entirerty of the Warcraft universe. We are constrained by balancing issues, coding restraints, and even size. I mean, it's unlikely that we can really travel the entire span of a continent on foot in a day and even more unlikely that we'd only encounter one or two settlements in that time.
Are the gryphon/wyvern/etc taxi's IC? Because those generally tend to get people places much faster than on foot or horse.
Yes and no. There would be constraints in-place in the actual world of Azeroth that aren't in the game. For example, a ship isn't going to make a roundtrip to Northrend and back in the span of a handful of minutes. And wywerns and gryphons would be limited as well, whether by weather or safe flying paths -- and I'm certain that it doesn't take seconds (or even minutes) to travel the entire distance from one place to another.
My comment, however, was in reference to
this study someone made or
this similar study someone else performed. Their results were rather interesting:
Quote:I called Kalimdor a continent. But at 41 square miles it doesn't really qualify. The island of Manhattan has 20 square miles, and somebody else compared it to Azeroth. He used a different method, but ended up with a similar result. The Isle of Wight, a small island in the channel between the UK and the European continent, is 146 square miles, and thus bigger than the World of Warcraft including Outland. Azeroth is a pretty small place.
The in-game reflection of the world (in which Kalimdor is 41 square miles and Manhattan is 20) isn't necessarily true. It's illogical to assume that, for example, in
all of Elwynn Forest there is a
single town of note. We know that this isn't true because earlier maps of the continent show more towns, hamlets, shires, and what-have-you.
Again, my point is to encourage people to think beyond the simple mechanics of the game. What we as players experience in World of Warcraft isn't necessarily the entire truth of the Warcraft universe. A substantially larger world (one that accurately reflects the actual size of Azeroth) would be more taxing on computers and potentially limit the amount of people who would be able to play. It would also unnecessarily increase the time to complete quests and potentially result in greater areas where nothing of note is happening -- unless they filled it with more content, thereby creating more stuff for our computers to process, blah blah blah.
I go by the only lore-given idea of size. It takes a messenger two weeks to alone travel on foot across the Barrens from North end to South.
Piroska Wrote:Yes and no. There would be constraints in-place in the actual world of Azeroth that aren't in the game. For example, a ship isn't going to make a roundtrip to Northrend and back in the span of a handful of minutes. And wywerns and gryphons would be limited as well, whether by weather or safe flying paths -- and I'm certain that it doesn't take seconds (or even minutes) to travel the entire distance from one place to another.
My comment, however, was in reference to this study someone made or this similar study someone else performed. Their results were rather interesting:
Quote:I called Kalimdor a continent. But at 41 square miles it doesn't really qualify. The island of Manhattan has 20 square miles, and somebody else compared it to Azeroth. He used a different method, but ended up with a similar result. The Isle of Wight, a small island in the channel between the UK and the European continent, is 146 square miles, and thus bigger than the World of Warcraft including Outland. Azeroth is a pretty small place.
The in-game reflection of the world (in which Kalimdor is 41 square miles and Manhattan is 20) isn't necessarily true. It's illogical to assume that, for example, in all of Elwynn Forest there is a single town of note. We know that this isn't true because earlier maps of the continent show more towns, hamlets, shires, and what-have-you.
Again, my point is to encourage people to think beyond the simple mechanics of the game. What we as players experience in World of Warcraft isn't necessarily the entire truth of the Warcraft universe. A substantially larger world (one that accurately reflects the actual size of Azeroth) would be more taxing on computers and potentially limit the amount of people who would be able to play. It would also unnecessarily increase the time to complete quests and potentially result in greater areas where nothing of note is happening -- unless they filled it with more content, thereby creating more stuff for our computers to process, blah blah blah.
Your own PC doesn't actually process that much. Your own PC only process stuff to a certain range, which I am not aware of. It is in no way keeping tabs on everything from Booty Bay to Silvermoon. A bigger world would not be out of the question because of restraints from user PC's. It would be Blizzard's servers that would take the toll of keeping tabs on the larger world, and I think they could, actually. They just don't because it would take to much time to travel.
On the topic itself, the answer has always been "no."
There's some technical issues that can cause game glitches when incompatible race/class combinations get mashed up. I can't recall whether we managed to work through that or not, but the end result has always been a combination of "it's not worth the amount of work" and "races are restricted to certain classes for a reason."