A problem in many pre-WoW MMORPGs is the lack of priests and healers. They are the most essential part of a group yet in most games they are played by the very few. Try to find a white mage to group with in FFXI, getting the right group takes longer than the quests you’ll go on. The reason no one plays healers in MMOs other than WoW? They suck at combat Essentially, to create the healer that focuses solely on healing, he must be with a group, always. Without anyone to heal the healer is useless. WoW gave the priests a good set of combat skills and all of a sudden priests/druids have better numbers (although priest is still the least played class on most WoW servers).

Sadly I think you may be in the minority Vermouth.

However, if your priest is low level just wait. After the initial 15 levels or so when everyone fights alone you will have to be grouped constantly. Blizzard made the talents so you can play a straight healer or a ’shadow priest’ which is more for combat and PvP. Put your points into healing and you’ll have many friends and get by purely by being a beneficial presence in groups.

Why don’t priests just get straight up exp for every healing spell they cast? Easy, it would be impossible to stop exploiters. The monster death = exp system allows all classes to use their strengths in a group without creating easily exploited inbalances in the game world. Someone could easily take a guild mate out and have the guildmate fight a low level mob and not attack back. Priest just macros a heal on his friend for hours/days until he is level 60 for doing jack.

To do this properly you would have to overhaul the entire leveling system. Warriors would have to get exp per-successful hit. Mages for successful damage spells and such. It would end up being very much like Ultima Online. Actually… I would dig that UO’s system of “use a skill and get better in it” seems far more suiting than allocating points to skills you may have not even used in combat/exp gaining. Your character should be made of your experiences rather than your template.

However, there is hope. I can’t believe this didn’t spring to others’ minds. Battlefield 2. In Battlefield 2 a medic can be the top on the scoreboard of his team without ever shooting his gun. Healing and reviving is the name of the game. Because the points for reviving an incapacitated character are quite substantial you will see medics risking life and limb to save comrades. Most medics are very focused on the soldier’s around them rather than the battle at hand. It is quite refreshing.

Also the engineer class and support class function the same way. Support hands out ammo and gets rewarded for it. Engies get points for repairing tanks and structures vital to the commander. Spec Ops will (next patch) get points for sabotaging enemy equipment. BF2 has a very well implemented reward system, whatever class you choose.

What I’ve found is that there is a large market for non-lethal class-types. The priests in my guild are priests because they want to be healers and enjoy it. One specifically told me he rolled a warrior alt just because he wanted a change of pace, but that he loves his priest more.

Unfortunately, no developer seems to realize that this market exists. They develop their games based around the mentality that the only people playing are the people who want to kill things.

A refreshing change of pace would be if you received experience points for healing things. Or if you gained weapon profeciency by using that weapon to heal. It isn’t a brand new, novel concept. White Mages and Chemists in Final Fantasy Tactics receive experience for healing, why not in World of Warcraft?

I would like to add that there is a low-level Druid mission where the goal is to cure X number of gazelle in the Barrens of a pox. That was pretty cool. I was hoping for more missions like that for the Druid. I didn’t roll a Druid to be a glorified Priest, but I thought it would be great if the missions revolved around healing the land from the Burning Legion and protecting it from, whatever really.

It would be an interesting change of pace and really differentiate the various classes from one another.

An idea I had for missions for priests would be to follow a group of NPCs (soldiers) as they went out and did stuff (killed things). You’d be their primary healer and the mission would be completed when everyone came home. This kind of mission would be expecially useful in the point in teh game when the developers felt it necessary that you learn your job while grouping. I’ve also heard of a mission for a human priest in WoW where you go out and find a wounded soldier. You have to heal and buff him. A nice change of pace, but it is only one in many kill/collect missions.