Why play a Warlock?
Tags character, good vs. evil, warlocks
Warlocks start out as fairly generic characters, killing monsters with Shadow Bolt. But even the trainer in Northshire Abbey, Drusilla La Salle, emphasizes the themes of temptation and corruption. It’s kind of funny, because most of the trainers themselves have given in to some degree, but become petty thugs rather than occult tyrants, a negative example which might help PC warlocks stay relatively untainted!
You meet some interesting and somewhat pathetic warlock NPCs in the tavern basements that Alliance warlocks prefer, including a Twilight Hammer stooge in IF. A later quest chain, starting with “A Noble Brew”, involves Alliance warlocks in fairly nasty cloak-and-dagger activity to protect the outcast warlock community in Stormwind. It was an interesting counterpoint to the other undercover quest chains that I was working on at the same time on behalf of Stormwind: “A Missing Diplomat” and “An Unsent Letter”. Despite everything my warlock was doing to save Stormwind (from some of its own people), he still had to save his own kind from Stormwind in turn.
I also like the gruesome magic of warlocks, especially once I trained Corruption. I just like the idea of casting an apparently innocuous spell that ends up being more serious that the more obvious one, just making the enemy bleed on the inside while he worries about getting Shadow Bolted to the face. Warlock spells also tend to be costly and risky. Life Tap literally has warlocks paying for spells with their own blood, but our life-draining abilities help us adjust for this. Spells like Fear and Inferno have the potential to make a situation go horribly, horribly wrong, giving warlocks incentive to come up with contingency plants.
Sadly, with raiding, cost and risk need to be minimized, so we play shadow mages (a.k.a. 0/21/40), and healing must be taken from our inefficient hands and turned over to professionals, including obsessive-compulsive tree druids. These days, I must console myself with going to the BGs and setting blood elves on fire as they run around screaming and glowing purple.
I actually like the complexity of warlocks: keeping up DoTs, choosing appropriate debuffs, even using weird, obscure spells like Unending Breath, Detect Invisibility, etc. Pet management is fun too. We’re not like hunters because we generally rely on our pets for their special abilities, like Seduction or Dark Pact, rather than for their DPS or purely for tanking.
So, I’d advise class designers who want to keep particular chunks of their customer base from being lured away to Warhammer Online to work out why people play warlocks or Horde in WoW, and to encourage them to keep doing it in WoW rather than in Warhammer, where the orcs are scarier and the Dark Powers have a lot to offer. In the case of WoW warlocks, how about more lore or spells or abilities with consequences and strategic potential rather than “moar DPS, plz”?
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Comments
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"Work out why people play warlocks or Horde"? Seriously Warpy? It isn't all that hard to figure out really.
Not everyone is into playing the guy in the white hat. I may be mistaken because I dindn't play a lot of warcraft before WOW (watched a friend play once to be honest), but weren't the orcs portrayed as the bad guys? A lot of folks want the chance to be the bad guy. Being the good guy is boring, save the girl, be a hero to children and small puppies everywhere? Bah Sometimes folks just want to be bad, and rolling horde, and even more so locks gives them that chance. If not being out right bad then rolling horde is like being a good guy with a dark history, you never know when you'll snap and go back to being bad again.
If you are moved by lore than warlocks offer lots of it. Horde also offers a great amount of lore, I can't speak for the alliance side (my only alliance toon was my first toon, a NE druid that didn't make it to 25) but from what I have read on other sites the lore is not exactly overwhelming (I could be wrong, it happens all the time). The only other class I have seen that have more lorewise in game would be druids, shaman should have tons of it for the horde, but I don't know if they do or not as I've never played one.
One more part of it would be that people play a game like WOW as a bit of an escape from the normal day to day. Alliance are (with one exception) normal. Humans are humans, Dwarves are short humans with big beards and drinking problems, gnomes are even shorter humans with pink hair that have a propensity to blow themselves up from time to time, Night Elves are humans with a funky tan and strange ears. The exception is the Draenei, with goat hoves for feet and squids on faces. Horde on the other hand are more of an escape from normal. Tauren - walking longhorn steers that act like native american indians, Trolls - Tusk faced, strangly proportioned islanders with wild hair, Orcs - Awww, they are like little mini hulks with the same attitude, Forsaken - zombies! Really evil friggin' zombies! Blood Elves are the exception on the horde side, dainty humans with pointy ears, crazy eyebrows, and glowing eyes, mana addiction in lieu of crack addiction free of charge.
In fact if you look around here at the den we are all obviously locks of one rank or another, but most of us seem to be horde locks. You feed a little of your dark side by being a lock, if you're horde you just admit that your darkside is a little more hungry than our alliance brethern.
Wow, after that wall of text I guess it could be that hard to figure out, but the crux of the issue is that girls just want to have fun, and people just like to be bad...sometimes.Posted September 23, 2008 at 04:52 AM by nitromoose
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Nitro, you are pointing out many of the strengths of Warhammer. Part of their target market overlaps with WoW's: the part that loves PvP and the part that likes darker fantasy, and definitely those that go in for both. You (and much of the Den) are the kind of player that Blizzard should be worried about keeping.
Many or most of us are heavily invested in our characters or WoW, but I hate to see Blizzard giving us a good "jumping off" point, a period of time in between patches when our warlocks are unappealing to play, so we take a break from WoW. During the break, we may try other games, and if Warhammer delivers on its promises, we may end up invested there.Posted September 23, 2008 at 12:55 PM by Warpy
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Good point Warpy, I've always been more of a D&D guy and never got into warhammer so I don't know much of the lore behind it. I have not been following it much as I have only just started playing WOW (just got my first toon to 62 after 11 days played) Most of what I have heard about war is that the PVP is more "pure", I'm not really a PVP guy so it kind of went past me.
It's interesting how the timing has worked out for warhammer, launching when most of the player base is in kind of a bla mood due to the expansion. Then added to that is the pre-wrath patch that is in PTR now, possiably out next week from what I have read. Blizzard trying to stem the tide before it gets bad maybe? Wonder if EA sat on the launch for the timing to be right (they aren't looking for this to make or break them so they could hold it back), or had to rush things a bit to come on line at just this time, or if Blizzard is pushing the 3.0 patch early to hold us were we are.
I was not around for 2.0 so I'm not sure about this, but isn't 1.5 to 2 months a little early for a patch that builds to wrath? Unless maybe the patch brings along some world event that your relm will need to meet before the ships sail to northrend?
I need to stop the wall o' text here before I get carried away. Thanks for the reply Warpy
*editied because I misquoted my /played time while sleep deprived*Posted September 24, 2008 at 05:06 AM by nitromoose
Updated September 25, 2008 at 03:34 AM by nitromoose
