Over on Syp's blog today he talks about making multiclass just a natural part of your character's journey in MMOs. It's a great read and I totally understand where he's coming from. I too have a twisting life path that I don't think is entirely finished myself! If I was to look at my personal journey it would twist and turn as I transitioned from Drummer to Songwriter to Dishwasher to Delivery Driver to Poet to Technical Editor to Columnist to Blogger to Community Manager to Game Designer to who knows what comes next . . . all the while, each step along my journey has added a new skill set to who I am.
Syp mentions three great games (DDO, FFXIV, and Realm of the Mad God) as examples. For myself, I've often envisioned Wizard101 as having a sort of going back to school quest line where you can play the game again as a different class of wizard, and indeed, the game already allows you to dip into other school's cards from their trainers, but nothing as drastic as taking my Death Wizard and going back through the quest line again as a Fire Wizard.
It could work. Wizard101 even has a time traveler in it ala the Five BOXES quest, so . . . it might not be entirely out of the question if you work some lore into it so that you could "correct" a few unknown-to-you-but-accidentally-critical errors you made along your journey the first time. And those moments could then award you with special cross-class spells that aren't available anywhere else.
Imagine if you will that because I time traveled and went back to school as a Fire Wizard that now I have access to certain Death/Fire crossover spells, like a hybrid meteor storm spell where the impact also causes skeletal hands to sprout underneath your opponents and now they're also taking damage over time for the next 3 rounds, or a Skeletal Dragon that breathes fire. It sounds super cool on paper! It might even make that crafted multi-class armor you can make just that much better!
Wizard101 has the concept of cross-over spells but they are cross-over spells from the same class, not multiclass.
It's also part of what I'm loving about Runes of Magic right now. I'm a 63 Mage / 61 Rogue / 30 Knight. I can only play as two of those at one time, but the different combinations give me different abilities. The Mage/Rogue crossover gives me Vampire abilities. The Rogue/Mage crossover gives me Telekinetic abilities. The Knight/Mage crossover gives me Wizard Knight abilities. The Rogue/Knight crossover gives me Bodyguard abilities. The Knight/Rogue crossover gives me Lion Guard abilities. It's just such a cool way of envisioning a multiclass system.
Again, great post from Syp. If you've got some fun Wizard101 multiclass ideas or examples of other games where this is done well, would love to hear from you.
Happy Dueling!
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