I've been mulling over a pet theory of mine, perhaps others have been too. This theory is basically that certain classes, as a general rule, attract certain personality types, flaws and excellent traits both. I was wondering if others believed this or held similar views.
Examples:
Six months after WoW came out, 4 of the top 5 alliance guilds on my server (I think) were run by Mages. Coincidence? Mages, it seems to me (I'm a mage) to have more controlling (bad) and organizational (good) types in them.
Rogues. Rogues, it seems to me, tend to be singularly focussed types, as their class ends up being. We can see this from the 15000 threads (a new one posted every few days) entitled: "DPS with X Spec and Y Weapon" or "Garrote v. Riposte, News at 11!" Hunters seem to fall into this catagory as well, ocassionally. I think this comes with its good and bad as well.
I don't want to ruin all the examples people may have or beliefs, I just thought I'd get the ball rolling if people had experienced this or thought similar thoughts.
Another, related topic is that of female gamers. Not to be sexist at all (please don't think thats what I'm trying to do), but it seems like in my experiences, the vast majority of female MMO gamers are healers. Is there something about healing, being a female, the "fighting game" in general or some other phenomenon going on? I personally know female warlocks and mages as well, but of the 8 or so females I personally know in WoW, 5 or 6 are priests or druids. Additionally, wives and female significant others tend to run priests with their significant other and heal them, often a warrior. I personally know of four such combinations on my server alone. Why is that?
So, which came first: The personality or the class?
I've played a mage, druid and warrior basically to 60. Not sure if I fall into any of the mage stereotypes. Honestly haven't noticed it with mage. However I do have to agree with you on rogues. And especially agree with you on females in MMOs. Of about 8-10 woman I knew on my old server, they were nearly all priests or shamans, with a couple druids in there. The only other girls I knew were a mage and a couple locks. No rogues, no warriors, no hunters.
From my experience, rogues I've played with more often than not are the "twitch" type. While we're waiting around or discussing something, I often see like 3 or 4 people in the raid jumping around in circles, and 9/10 times it's the rogues.
I do it too, while not even realizing it. After a raid when I'm thinking about what to do next or talking on vent, I'm subconsciously doing jumping laps around the top of the bank in orgrimmar.
My wife initially levelled a warrior to 60 with my mage, but she found at 60 when we started to run some of the 40 person instances she disliked the pressure of tanking in those very early days.
She then rolled a shaman that levelled with my warrior, and she is now completely healing focused while my warrior is now the MT for our guild. I am also the GM for our guild for what it's worth.
An interesting topic indeed. Now that I think about it, I tend to have a peaceful, calm outlook towards most of the hunters in my guild. Furthermore, two of our three females were indeed healers.
I personally have a 60 shaman and a 60 rogue, and the way I play them, I feel like quite the Gemini. I play my shaman only as a pve healer and really enjoy helping the raid survive as I spam heals across fourty health bars. On the other hand, I enjoy the much narrower focus while playing my rogue. People would probably consider me more controling over the next, yet I feel it's from the fact that I feel "people need to step up" or nothing will get done, as opposed to simply being controling because of the need to be in control..
I've always associated warriors and healers with leaders. Probably a bit of personal experience and the fact that when trying to figure out what went wrong in an encounter the MT/OT and the designated healer spokesperson (who probably is working healing assignments) have the most to say.
I think the point about chicken vs egg is valid. I've never been particularly impatient or excitable, but I'm a rogue now with all the associated baggage. During downtime on a raid I often find myself jumping from side to side, especially on my AQ mount.
From my experience every single priest I know or have ever played with fits into 3 personality categories;
1. Quiet, super-healbot (robo-gamer). A few priests in my guild who are insanely good but basically are very quiet and generally great raiders, fit this category. Two of them even make quite a bit of money playing other games.
2. Type-A Leadership Know-It-All guys. They think they're the best, (sometimes know they're the best) but generally are very opinionated, talk a lot, and pretty much rolled a priest because they think they're the best and don't trust others to do the healing.
3. Rolled a priest to be wanted. Obviously since healers are pretty desirable in this game, people do this. They like being healers, but they essentially play the class to be wanted in groups / liked by the guild / needed by the guild.
Every priest I've ever met falls into one of those 3 categories, and every person who has heard my theory hasn't disagreed.
Druids - All somewhat crazy for playing druids.
Warriors - The really good ones are pretty much jerks and think everybody that isn't as good as them (which is about 5 people) sucks terribly at this game.
edit: As for the "twitch" comment, you'll never see me stop jumping around unless I'm AFK.
I think MMOs can attract a lot of players who normally aren't interested in video games through their social aspect. If I can make a sweeping generalization, that can be particularly attractive to women. Healing is group-based and social, thus accenting the part of the game that gets them there in the first place. (And your observation holds true for my guild. 5 or 6 female members, 3 priests, 2 druids, 1 rogue.)
Honestly, for me, though, it was control rather than social interaction that led me to healing.
I think it has more to do with personality types rather than gender.
The girls in my guild range through all classes, though the mom's and wives tend to play more healer roles in general.
The most aggressive of our guild is one of the Officers, Aiyanna, who will go out of her way to hunt down and kill any Alliance she finds, tracking them through zones if she has to. She plays a mage and is as competitive and vicious as any other. My friend's girlfrend, started as a Hunter (though this may be more due to the cute pet), but then moved on to a rogue when she re-rolled Horde because she enjoyed the fast killing pace and straight beat down ability.
I do it too, while not even realizing it. After a raid when I'm thinking about what to do next or talking on vent, I'm subconsciously doing jumping laps around the top of the bank in orgrimmar.
Oh god, that's exactly the same thing I do. I can just jump around in front of the Ironforge bank for hours (!) chatting or inspecting people.
Isn't genesis the druid T2.5 stuff that's typically considered 'more feral'? If blowing your DKP on feral stuff isn't your thing, I can see you not wanting it w/ T3 so close on the horizon. Speaking as a min/maxing rogue, the only thing I look at is stats - and given the choice, I'd probably make my character as ugly as possible for entertainment value.
Isn't genesis the druid T2.5 stuff that's typically considered 'more feral'? If blowing your DKP on feral stuff isn't your thing, I can see you not wanting it w/ T3 so close on the horizon. Speaking as a min/maxing rogue, the only thing I look at is stats - and given the choice, I'd probably make my character as ugly as possible for entertainment value.
a big part of the reason i decided not to honor grind for rank 12 to get the absurd +4% multishot gloves was becauase they wouldn't match any of my other gear.
They were threatened by my DKP horde. As somebody who's never specced out of 31 Rest short of the PTR, it's remarkable how many priests suddenly become hybrid evangelists when you pass them in the loot list.
Oh god, that's exactly the same thing I do. I can just jump around in front of the Ironforge bank for hours (!) chatting or inspecting people.
Same here, except behind the bank, before and after raid time. I jump around with all the rogues between pulls on learning nights, too. The funny thing is I'm a paladin, one of the more patient classes out there. I guess it must be pent up energy coming out after being extremely intent and focused during fights, or the energy i built up watching myself level up doing glorified autoattacking a year and a half ago.
Personally, I didn't have any intentions of raiding when I started playing WoW so I was sort of forced into healing in the sense that I didn't want to level up another character to get immediately in the raid game. I don't really see myself as a controlling person outside of WoW but I guess it sort of comes with the territory being a healer "responsible" for the whole raid. I used to be pretty intolerant of lower skilled players when I was in my old guild, but now that I'm in a more progression driven guild the average player skill is higher and raiding is much more relaxing.
On another note, the differences between how our Hunter raid leader, Rogue officer and Warrior (MT) officer handle wiping/learning/stupid mistakes versus how our Druid and Paladin officers handle it. DPS/Tank classes definitely seem to be more inward focused and tend to flip out more on wipes which healers see as a perfectly acceptable part of the learning process.
Sidenote: Women in our guild are 1 Priest, 1 Warlock, 1 Mage 1 Druid and a Paladin. The Mage used to raid as a druid but rerolled after a break from the game to fit our class needs. So i guess the women as healers stereotype fits us as well.
The rogue hyperactive-ness definietly applies. Warriors are 2nd behind us, though. I think this is very much a result of how you have to play the class. I remember a blizzard dev posting that they intended for rogues to be the most button spamming class even.
So, when we have to spam buttons to fulfil our role, and then we just sit there, we start hitting other buttons. I do it, and I don't remember being like that in EQ when I played a cleric, or in WoW beta when I played a priest.
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Off the top of my head we've got 6 girls in the guild who are active level 60s involved in our raiding. It's 50-50 on healers/non-healers... the GM's a resto-druid, and we've got one resto-shaman and one uber-priest (Who also has a warrior alt at 60). 3/6 healers. The other three girls are two hunters and the guild's MT. Out of those 6, GM, warrior class leader/MT, hunter class leader and if we didn't already have a priest CL, I'd put the girl on this list in for the job, she really is good.
My girlfriend started out a shaman, got to 60, felt she was getting pigeonholed as a healer on pick-ups and didn't really like healing, so re-rolled a warrior as our small family guild didn't actually have any at the time. She loves tanking now. Meanwhile, as her boyfriend, I just drifted into playing resto-druid healer, found I enjoyed it, and tend to end up as the MT's pet druid. I'm not sure how much of that is due to the fact I'm within punching distance and would get yelled at regardless of whether or not I was meant to be healing her, though.
not exactly a personality thing, but i had one of our priests comment on the difference between the way i make groups and the way our healer officers make groups in a raid. i aim to build the most efficient groups to maximize buffs like trueshot aura/battle shout/paladin auras, while priests making groups tend to focus on having secondary healers in groups with warriors to maximize group-contained survivability.
more on topic tho - our most explosive members tend to be healers. if you're getting yelled at, chances are it's by a priest!
From my experience every single priest I know or have ever played with fits into 3 personality categories;
1. Quiet, super-healbot (robo-gamer). A few priests in my guild who are insanely good but basically are very quiet and generally great raiders, fit this category. Two of them even make quite a bit of money playing other games.
2. Type-A Leadership Know-It-All guys. They think they're the best, (sometimes know they're the best) but generally are very opinionated, talk a lot, and pretty much rolled a priest because they think they're the best and don't trust others to do the healing.
3. Rolled a priest to be wanted. Obviously since healers are pretty desirable in this game, people do this. They like being healers, but they essentially play the class to be wanted in groups / liked by the guild / needed by the guild.
Every priest I've ever met falls into one of those 3 categories, and every person who has heard my theory hasn't disagreed.
Agreed. 100%... especially with the "dont trust others to do the healing" bit :P
You might wanna add that Type 2 Priests are usually alts that gradually become mains.
I internalize my rogue hyperactivity. If you look at our raid while nothing is happening, all the other rogues will be jumping around in circles and I'll be standing still. But if you could see my screen, you'd see I was compulsively inspecting people, rearranging things in my backpack, browsing through oddball stats in SW Stats, etc.
I think most of the females in EJ do play healer classes, actually, but there are some that play DPS classes, and I play a warrior. (For what it's worth, my boyfriend plays a warlock. Sometimes we get to tank Emps together~)
I originally picked a warrior because I've always liked tough, melee types for some reason. (Maybe because I'm a pretty passive person and it's nice to do the opposite of that in games.) But I ended up really getting into the tanking aspect of it. I kind of like the idea of protecting the squishy people from evil raid mobs and such, but moreso I like the attention and concentration it requires. I guess it's sort of mentally stimulating, depending on the situation.
07/13/06, 6:58 PM
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