MMORPG Developers Shouldn’t Worry About Balance

Should classes in MMORPGs
like Fighter, Mage, Thief and Archer be balanced? Well, balance is
important, but know what’s more important? Having LOTS of somewhat
balanced classes. Example. I prefer games like EverQuest II and Vanguard from Sony Online Entertainment which each have over 15 playable classes to more “balanced” MMORPGs like Florensia from Alaplaya and Fiesta Online from Outspark
which have 4-5 classes. Sure balance is good, but again, I’d rather
play a game that gives me more choice. This is ESPECIALLY true for PvE
MMORPGs like MapleStory and Cloud Nine
which have very limited PvP options. When a game isn’t too PvP
intensive, why should you or I even care if say a Warrior is over
powered a Mage is a bit weaker? It’s not like it’s a competition or
anything. I can see a need for balance in highly competitive PvP MMORPGs like Aika Online, Metin 2 and 4Story.

I’m not saying that MMORPG developers should TOTALLY ignore MMO class balances,
as that would be stupid. I’m suggesting that game designers try to
make the classes as balanced as possible, but instead of trying to
achieve “perfect balance” through time consuming and expensive testing,
they should simply let the dice fall where they may – even if one or
two classes are a bit more powerful than others. If any class is TOO
weak, they can get buffed in future patches. The point is to make all
the classes “somewhat” balanced, while focusing on introducing new
classes to the game regularly. The only two games that takes this
approach, I feel, is League of Legends and Avalon Heroes
– two aion of strife MMOs which each have 30+ playable characters.
Sure, they aren’t all balanced, but who cares? Both games are fun, and
their respective game designers are tweaking the classes as they go
while also introducing new ones regularly. I think League of Legends is
actually up to 40+ heroes now.

What I want from a game is constant variety, which is why one MMORPG just isn’t enough for me. After I play through all of the archetypes in a game, I move on to the next. Perfect World only has like 8 classes, so after trying each class and leveling them all up to 20 or so, I went ahead and downloaded Battle of the Immortals and played that for a while. Then I moved on to Heroes of Three Kingdoms.
MapleStory kept me occupied for over a year because it has 15+ classes
and many different job advancements. By the time I got done with fully
trying out one character, Nexon would release another one! Which is why I love Nexon games. They’re on the ball with updates. I only played Valkyrie Sky for a short period of time, as it only has a handful of classes, though I loved it. It’s an original MMO.

Anyway. Anyone here agreew with me on the whole “wanting more classes” thing? Or is that just me?