If a game’s gotta have classes, I say they need to sound awesome. I’m bored of Paladins and Assassins and Clerics and Warriors; I want to see Troubadors and Deadeyes and Tempests and Saboteurs and Disco Bandits. Some games, like Wakfu, have made class names into an artform: Foggernaut. Xelor’s Sandglass. Sram’s Shadow.
What I don’t get is why a Western game company would go to the trouble of implementing class names that sound like weird translations or just generic words mashed together. I’ll forgive Korean devs for the Sheath Knight. I’ll forgive sandboxes for mundane Bureaucrats and Beggars. But Neverwinter’s Great Weapon Fighter is just screaming for a rewrite. Or at least a hyphen.
What about you guys — what class name would you like to see stricken from the roster of your favorite MMO? And what names stand out as the most badass?
The word Cleric means a priest or religious leader. But when someone in a game says they are a cleric, it usually means something else entirely — that they channel magical powers that come from some deity or that they are a healer or buffer. When one performs magic, one does not ask from whence the powers come from, in order to determine that it is in fact magic. So why are magicians labeled as clerics? Furthermore, their purpose in games is NOT to either administer a church or religious locaiton nor to spread the religion, but to heal like a “Healer” or “Doctor”, or to Buff (ie. to cast a spell on someone, again, like a mage).
And yes, Clerics do sometimes bash in skulls of heretics like a common thug., but that makes them crusaders, not clerics. If they declare a crusade, then ironically, they are not crusaders but clerics. But if they fight in a crusade, they are not generally considered clerics, at least not according to their specific function. It’s one of the many bad terms that stem from old Paper and pencil games.