Multi classes

Community General Discussion
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So, with 9.1 still being months apart, I got into other games, mainly FF14 and ESO.
Playing FF14 the most, I got hooked on the class system, change weapons -> new class.
What do you think about a similar feature in WoW, I know it’s just daydreaming and it will most likely never happen, but I’m curious about how others feel about this.
I know most people have alts, however, while I make some sometimes and enjoy the leveling, I just can’t stand playing everything again, losing all rep, having currency spread across more characters and having to farm everything again.

The class/race lock would still stand, as I void elf I wouldn’t be able to become a paladin, but I see no reason why a mage couldn’t learn to control light and shadow magic as well, or get a pair of daggers and become a stabby boy.

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I don’t like it. What generally happens with such systems is that a certain weapon is better, and then you are in fact even more limited. Besides, class identity goes out the window imo. I prefer how WoW does classes. In fact, there is hardly anything I like more in FF14 or ESO compared to WoW, if there was I’d play those instead of WoW.

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Let WoW be WoW.

If Blizzard think something is a good idea, They will steal it and put it into WoW.

Also dosen’t FF14 only allow you 1 character? Would suck to never be able to play alts.

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It’s one character per server if you pay £7 a month. However you can have 25 characters if you pay a little extra, I think it’s like £2 extra but also comes with more benefits. I don’t think alts is a good idea on Final fantasy online though as it takes so long to persue things, we’re talking 100 of hours worth of content before you reach that.

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Being able to play any class on one character doesn’t magically make said classes lack identity. Would you say the same if you could swap from a Paladin into a Shaman using the same character here in WoW? Of course not.

Unlike WoW, you have ample means to get equivalent gear for any class you play. The grunt work is in leveling them up, which doesn’t take long seeing as systems exist to cater for that. Swapping between jobs is easy, and so is pushing your new job to a similar or same level of gear as whatever you did before. It’s basically just a case of having the freedom to swap to whatever you like whenever the mood takes you. Sure, there’s still the process of gearing up said jobs (gear-wise), but it’s not nearly as restrictive.

This wouldn’t be such a stark contrast if there wasn’t so much gate-keeping in WoW for all alts.

Aside from various things like account-wide achievements, pets, mounts, etc, the vast majority of others have to be generated per character.

In SL alone – you start with a tiresome and unskippable Maw intro, eventually followed by Soul Ash, Legendary crafting, Reputation, Valor, Conquest, Reknown, Conduits, your weekly vault reward (and the content required to reach the number of reward options you desire for that character), Memories, constantly repeated covenant daily quests per alt… the list goes on – making it become more and more sluggish to manage multiple characters in modern WoW because more time is spent working through tedium rather than getting to dig in to the content you actually want to do.

Having all classes/jobs on a single character means all that tedium (if any) is done once. Not saying WoW should adopt this system, but let’s not go making up fake reasons why it’s bad compared to managing individual characters. There are not many downsides to the all-in-one approach compared to the individual approach. Having said that, Blizzard will never take that approach as they absolutely want you playing/logging in as much as possible, and there’s no easier way to do this than to add hoops.

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100 hours is shorter than 1-70 in TBC tho, and plenty of people had alts in TBC

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Alts simply aren’t needed in FFXIV. You can have them if you really, really want them, but there’s no point. Retainers can serve as your mules, everything you generate can go towards any class you wish, the presence of NG+ means you can re-enjoy the story on the same character if you wish, etc.

Despite that, yes, there are people out there who do play alts - either to play on different data centres or just to be a different race without using Fantasia - but there’s really no benefit except for very specific/niche reasons related to the individual alone.

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Actually WoW has already somewhat the Multiclasssystem of FF XIV. I mean in FF XIV a Druid is only a healer and nothing more. If you want to be a spellcastingdamager you need to change class and then lvl it too. In WoW as Druid you have the option to either play as a tank, spellcasting Damager, Meleedamager or Healer and need in Retail nothing to pay for switching.

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One class having multiple roles =/= multiclass. It’s still one class.

By your own analogy, you’d then have to gear/conduit/legendary (etc) for those specs. The only reason I’m not playing Enhance now and then is because then I have to work on a another legendary, farm (and lug around) agility gear, consider other conduit tress, etc.

A fellow guildy of mine was locked out of swapping to Tank to help out because they had already been swapping between Tank/DPS on Monk and ran out of Conduit energy.

Again, swapping to a different role on a single class is not comparable to multi-classing.

In FFXIV, I can choose between 2/3 of my levelled healers, 3/4 of my levelled tanks, and about 5 different DPS choices. You can level up the one’s you feel you might want or enjoy, or just stick to one if you really, really want to. I do not feel punished because I want to play, say, a Tank – who can’t also swap ‘spec’ to a Healer, because I can just, you know, swap to an actual Healer — with any and all progress tied to that character being applied no matter what job I choose to play.

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You’re obviously free to think so, but I don’t find what you claim convincing at all. I prefer WoW to keep having class development according to the broad ideas that were already used since the beginning.

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It kind of is comparable however though, because clearly “class” means different things across the games. You’re using “class” in a way in FF in that it represents the same thing as it does in WoW, and it doesn’t.

In WoW, class means a character’s chosen mode of play that is capable of potentially performing many different roles, but at the very least has multiple ways of executing a single role.

In FF class/job means “a particular way of doing a aprticular role”. FF’s class/job is the same thing as WoW’s “spec”, not wow’s class.

So in WoW, you pick a class and swap specs.

In FF there is no such thing as class, you play as a “single class” with unlimited specs.

So spec swapping is kinda similar, the difference is that FF has more potential specs with no locks. But in no way shape or form is a “healing job” in FF similar to a “healing class” in wow, because a healing class in wow can choose to be a damage dealing specialisation if they want, whereas a healing job in FF cannot do that, a healing job is equivalent to a spec like restoration, holy, discipline, mistweaver and nothing more.

I won’t say one is better or worse (I can imagine ahving all potential on one is handy) but I don’t mind WoW’s way of doing it. I like the fact my char “can’t do everything” and I need a distinct character, a distinct entity, to be able to do “different things”. It makes it feel more believable to me.

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I haven’t claimed anything. That is exactly how it is. You can flit between different tanks, healers and DPS - all of which would be desired for different reasons - without having to log into different characters who have their own weekly grinds and individual workload to worry about.

This is not secret or hidden information - you’re free to check any kind of available resource if you want to learn more. I recommend Larryzaur’s fun videos about “Which Job” seeing as he lightheartedly explains all of them, though are borderline outdated now that Endwalker is bringing yet another Healer and DPS into the mix - neither of which play like the others (outside of light concepts like ‘shield healing’ vs ‘health-healing’). Another common example is how Dark Knights generally excel at magic mitigation whereas Paladins excel at physical mitigation, with the other two (Gunbreaker/Warrior) often more suiting of the off-tank position, one of which is a very versatile and utility-filled tank while the other is all about providing more DPS.

The list goes on and on.

Until then, I can only assume you’ve not played it and are forming a cautionary view of it and/or making up reasons why you might not like it (which don’t exist), such as lost class identity.

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I’d say that it was Legion the last time when WoW “did classes”. Class-content is non-existent, and what little is left from vanilla skills quests is no longer meaningful. Also, the classes had been heavily streamlined, so that everyone could do almost everything. We’re not at the point where a class is diminished to cosmetics\flavouring, but I’d say that we’re like half-way there.

FF class system does not make sense, it’s pure metagaming stuff. A warlock who had picked up a sword does not become a paladin, and a rogue can’t turn into a druid all of a sudden.

How so? A lv40 warrior does not turn into lv40 caster in FF, they start from lv1, and same true for crafting and gathering profs. It’s only possible to get xp for the current class\prof. This system essentially provides the all-in-one-alt system, but I don’t see how it’s any better. Especially considering that main zone content can only be done once, which makes leveling the alt spec kinda awkward - you don’t have much of a low-lv stuff left (class quests, dailies, world events), and you can’t do lv40 quests as a lv3, obviously. So, you need to do your high-lv content and switch to your alt spec before getting the reward exp. What kind of fun is that?

FF has good things to borrow, though. Like scaled dungeons and coherent storylines, which are impossible to miss (unless you’re really-really trying hard to).

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I’d say Legion was when WoW didn’t actually do classes, it did specs, and it dumbed down everything to ridiculous levels.

Sorry, but I have 0 interest in FF14, I cba to watch videos about it. No offense intended.

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I dont think that multiclassing would be an good idea or fit into WoW. Other mmos that have this,or have a class / combat system built into their game had it from the get go.

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Daily roulette within Dungeons, Raids, Alliance Raids, PvP, (etc), repeatable Leves, optional sub-quests (if you’re that way inclined), Palace of the Dead (and its sister variation), Eureka, Bozja, Hunts – etc – not to mention every single job having their very own story-chain of quests. The list goes on.

MSQ is the main bulk and the only relevant one-time-only content. It is the easiest method of boosting a chosen job to max in one go, or you can spread it around multiple jobs if you wish as there’s an infinite source of daily XP for whatever else you may feel like playing.

There is no zone-specific content to speak of except for one-time sub-quests of no real import. The actual important stuff is either daily or repeatable. It is infinitely easier to level sub-jobs because merely having a higher level job provides a boost. You’ll also be part of the grand companies by the time you’re looking to level other jobs. If in a guild (FC), another boost. Not to mention the equivalent of heirlooms (for those with certain expansion purchases). Hell, even something as simple as just eating any type of food provides a flat +3% XP gain.

There isn’t much difference. I can’t heal a dungeon as a Warrior, just like I can’t tank a dungeon on my Shaman. I can level a Warrior & Shaman, or I can level a Tank & Healer in FFXIV (without the obscene gatekeeping or restrictions by comparison), with relative freedom to swap on a whim and maintain static progress.

I’m not saying one is better than the other, just pointing out that multi-role is not the same as multi-class. Saying that X class in WoW can play as a Tank, Healer or DPS does not translate to WoW having multiclassing.

A) You can’t do that as taking most types of quest as X job means the reward will be tied to X.
B) You don’t even need to. Far from it.

It actually gets easier to level alt-jobs due to the inherent systems, whereas WoW essentially bogs you down by doing so due to the restrictions associated with the individual aspects listed in my first post.

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Exactly this.

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Pretty much the same as leveling a WoW alt via dailies, WQs, LFG, PvP, and gathering. Which is not my cup of tea, but some people do that, yes. The only difference would be that in FF you don’t have to relog. All I’m saying is that the “Freedom of Classes” in FF is overrated.

That’s THE content, actually. All those storylines and sidestories. And it can only be done once per char. Yeah, it’s technically possible to split that total amount of xp, if you’re really into building an under-leveled “multiclasser” which is going to need grinding more lvs for the basic progression through the zones.

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Sorry, but I have 0 interest in FF14

I’m pretty sure that each of those MMOs have a different player base, so that’s only natural. I like them all, and while I am the type of player that wants everything on one character, I do think that FF14’s system wouldn’t work in WoW…
I mean class identity aside, there are a lot of issues like how would you change classes, how would you level them and what would happen with older content such as Legion Class Halls or Artifact Weapons (yeah, those are dead now but still gives you those sweet transmogs)

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Yeah but having an alt has a purpose in TBC. Also it is defo longer than TBC to level. Imagine if you put 100s of hours into another character just to be a different race that does the same thing as your main.