remember when mmo groups had more than 3 functions?

just taking your thinking to its logical conclusion for you.

Not at all - but thanks for trying.

Simplification of a complex system that was originally meant for a specific audience (AD&D players) and they toned it down for the console players that wanted a new genre to show off their "leet skills".

Final Fantasy XI had 6 man parties, and I do miss the dedicated "support" classes like Bards, that were even more highly valued then tanks or healers.

That being said I think BW was right to reduce the party size. Makes getting people so much easier. Though it came at the cost of more specialization it was worth it in the long run. I do hope maybe they'll release a class committed to "Support" in the future though.

I do indeed...Fondly remember during DAoC launch around '01 playing a hibbie caster mezzer/dd/buff/offheal hybrid...mentalist was the class iirc...WoW changed all that preceeded it from UO to WoW release in '04...and not for the better IMO....but it is what it is...I still have hopes for GW2

EQ is still rolling. 14 years later. It is still by far the best designed game as far as character builds and roles, Raid progression system, and character alternative advancement system.

But when your game is 14 years old - your game engine, your graphics, are far far behind. I know they have updated it once, but it is just far behind new games technology wise - hard to get new players into a game that doesn't have all the sparkling graphics and animations of today's releases.

WoW can olny dream of still having an active player base 14 years after launch.

The idiot to player ratio goes up exponetially for every player you add to a group.

Remember when dedicated support classes had to twaddle their thumbs when their buddies weren't on? Remember how guilds had to baby sit mezzers to level cap for one piece of raid content? Remember when people sat on their asses for 2-4 hours in a MMO waiting for a an unguilded/grouped healer to log on? Remember the false sense of superiority group managers felt because they controlled powerful MMO guilds? Remember a time when you couldn't get past level 10 without a group? Remember the time when we an MMO player was openly mocked and ridiculed? I wonder if these elements where somehow connected.

But to the reality of game design. When MMOs first game out the idea was "You can be the hero in an epic world with other people" Soon game developers found out that people have an odd tendency to group up and blow through content, so content had to be geared to groups, but not every one liked to group, so they had to put in mechanics to make grouping mandatory, this included dedicated healers, dedicated mezzers, dedicated tanks, and while MMOs where nich markets where only people who accepted those roles as part of the cost of MMOs it was all well and good. Now MMOs are having to lower their entrance cost and one of the largest costs is unnecessary funneling of play style. This means less dedicated classes, less classes that need others to wipe their own noses, soon we may see a dismantling of the tank and spank through a more dynamic AI with a reactive driven combat system, perhaps even scaling AI so all content can be soloed or raided. Of course those MMO geeks will cry many tears, but this is the way the games are changing.

As to they made early MMOs to match D&D or other pen and paper games you are quite wrong, early D&D didn't have tank and spank, or dedicated classes in the way people think because player strategy and lack of AI encounters didn't mandate it. It is D&D which recently bowed down to the tank and spank game play.

This, thousand times this.

Yes i do and i'm glad it's gone.