Nothing gets the blood of an altoholic pumping like the idea of a new class. New abilities, new specs, new visuals, new flavor - a new perspective on Azeroth. As I'm sure anyone who reads this blog is aware, I am often happy to speculate on new classes (it's usually Demon Hunters, but not always.) Usually, I look at the lore and try to figure out what's missing from there. Adding a new class is, of course, a much bigger project than a new race. Blizzard basically just had to build new models and a couple of zones, and bam: playable Goblins are just part of the game now. But the Death Knight, introduced nearly six years ago, needs the same kind of care and maintenance that any class requires.
Lore's an important part in adding to the game. DKs were a well-established presence in Warcraft, going back as far as WCII, though the modern, Scourge DK came with WCIII (along with about 75% of the stuff in WoW.) Monks were a bit more of a stretch, but we did have the Brewmaster character in the Frozen Throne, and it wasn't a huge leap to extrapolate on that, making Brewmasters essentially the "drunken boxing" style of Kung Fu monk.
But beyond lore, there's also just flavor - filling archetypes that transcend Warcraft. Death Knights filled a niche that hadn't been filled - they were the first class to be able to apply diseases to enemies (at the time, only some Priests, depending on race, got Devouring Plague, and Infected Wounds didn't exist yet.) More importantly, it was also the first heavily-armored, tanking-capable class to have a "dark" theme, with Paladins and Druids as clear "good guy" classes and Warriors being strictly neutral.
Likewise, Monks finally filled the niche of the unarmed-fighter, and the flavor thankfully allowed us to get all three major group roles out of the class.
So what little niches need to be explored for a new class? In some areas, there might be already something that fills that niche, but is strange in its isolation. Ultimately, we have a pretty good spread already, but there are a few places in which to expand.
1. Ranged Weapon Classes
Before Mists of Pandaria, Guns, Bows, and Crossbows were all available to Rogues and Warriors (technically I think you can still equip them, but you have to put away your melee weapons to do so, making them useless.) There were four kinds of ranged weapons - those previous three and Thrown weapons. Everyone had a ranged slot, which meant that those classes would take along their ranged weapons for the stats and Hunters would carry around some melee weapons as well.
In the interest of simplifying, the ranged weapon was gotten rid of. Everyone basically just has the weapons they actually use, and Hunter get to equip their ranged weapons in the main-hand slot. Wands (which were the one thing cloth classes put in their ranged slot) became melee weapons and Relics (which were used by Paladins, Shamans, Druids, and Death Knights) were gotten rid of as well. Overall, this simplification has been a good thing for the game, and has made gearing up slightly less onerous.
The weird consequence, however, is that Hunters now have three entire weapon types all to themselves. There's not a single class other than them that actually uses these weapons.
The lore problem is that just about every potential class that is seen using ranged weapons is funneled into the "hunter" category. The Farstrider rangers clearly are Hunters, as are the Ironforge Riflemen. Beastmasters are Hunters (even though you never see Rexxar wielding a bow.) Shadow Hunters are, I suppose, Hunters. The point here is that you could probably find a different niche for a class that uses ranged weapons.
With Hunters using Focus (for quite some time now, actually,) the idea of Hunters as being magical has kind of faded away. In Warlords, if I recall correctly, "Arcane Shot," which was there sort of to justify the use of Mana, is going to be only for Survival. Hunters are being focused more on the physical and mundane. This then seems like a great opportunity to open up a class that focuses more on magic while shooting arrows, bolts, or bullets.
2. More Ranged/Melee Hybrids
One of the oddities of WoW is that there are tons of tank/dps, heal/dps, or tank/heal/dps hybrids, but there are only two classes that can be both melee DPS and ranged DPS. Shamans can sort of shift around their priorities to serve either function - both Enhancement and Elemental use Lightning Bolt and Shocks, and they have a signature lava spell, but they play very differently. Druids became almost entirely different classes, with Feral functioning somewhat like a Rogue and Balance using a totally unique Eclipse mechanic.
Admittedly, I think the best place to expand these options would be if we got fourth specs for the various classes (other than Druids, who are obviously all right already.) Ranged specs for pretty much all the melee classes could work (perhaps not Monks.) Rogues and Warriors could use "hunter weapons," while Paladins and DKs could become spell casters (the latter fulfilling the "Necromancer" archetype by focusing far more on summoning undead minions - like a cross between Beast Mastery and Demonology.)
Hunter also flirted with the idea of having a melee spec back in vanilla, but it never really materialized, even though it seems like something that could work.
Either way, this might be something to bear in mind when designing a new class as well - providing a variety of options, which would of course then appeal to a wider group of players.
3. Pure DPS: Never Again
WoW launched with four classes that could only be DPS. They're lovely classes, but they're also kind of a pain. With Pure DPS you have a couple problems:
The first is that if it's a new class, you can be assured that a lot of players leveling up during that expansion are going to be playing that class. If it's pure DPS, getting a dungeon group together will be a nightmare. Even the DK, who was a Tank/DPS hybrid, caused problems here, because you'd have groups forming without healers.
The second is that when you have three specs that all do the same basic thing, it becomes very hard to design them with any distinction. Mages have an elemental theme that thankfully leads naturally to different mechanics, though it took them a while to figure out what to do with Arcane. Warlocks needed a huge overhaul in order to bring some spec identity - previously every spec would basically revolve around Immolate, Corruption, and your Curse/Bane, then filler. Hunters are getting differentiated a bit more in Warlords, largely by cutting some shared abilities. Rogues are still very similar across the specs, though in fairness I haven't yet tried out Combat on the beta (because yuck! Combat!)
4. Spreading around the classic wizard magic
There's really only one class in the game that does magic in the classic "white hair, pointy hat with stars on it, has a talking owl friend" way. The only class that comes anywhere near the Mage in terms of wizardry is the Warlock, which then of course is also in the same niche - in fact, no two classes are closer together - cloth-wearing pure DPS casters who use literally the exact same gear. It's no wonder that there's such a rivalry.
Many "power archetypes" have a light-armored/heavy-armored, ranged/melee variant. Priest and Paladins are both practitioners of Holy magic. Shamans and Druids are both nature-based, even if they are pleasantly distinct visions of nature. Warlocks and Death Knights both tap into dark powers to use Shadow magic against their foes. And Rogues, Warriors, and Hunters are all somewhat practical, using good old steel and wood to fight their fights.
There's not really any other "Arcane" based class. Yes, Balance druids use Arcane magic, but flavor-wise, it's a very different thing, and is more like they're drawing on the Holy/Natural power of the stars, instead of manipulating the underlying energy of the universe.
5. Figuring out a new Role
This one's a real dangerous idea that threatens to take us down the rabbit hole. Many RPGs have more than just three group roles. A common addition is the "Support" role. This is the type of class that is less about their own performance, and is more about enhancing the performance of others. The classic example here is the Bard.
The thing is, I'm not sure this role would really fit, mechanically. First off, I think there's a lot of overlap with healers, as a role that has you focusing on your allies rather than your enemies. Additionally, Blizzard sort of tried that in vanilla. Paladins and Shamans were really brought more for their buffs than anything else. Paladins would basically spend most of their time refreshing Blessings on other players (the Blessings used to be very complicated - there were like seven of them, and they had a five-minute duration, and at least in vanilla, you had to cast them each individually per player. There were add ons to help you coordinate with other paladins.) Mechanically it was just not very compelling.
The other issue is that the culture of the game will make things rough for buffers. So much of the way players judge each other is in damage and healing meters. If you're running a raid and there's a Bard who's only doing a third of the DPS as the Rogue next to him, some jerk will kick him, even though the reason that Rogue's DPS has been shooting so high is because the Bard has been channeling his "Song of Triumph" on him. Unfortunately, the culture of the game has a tendency to ignore nuance, which is also somewhat natural when you're in a group of 25 people. As a support class, you're volunteering to make your contribution harder to quantify and less visible.
So What Does That Leave Us With?
The game as it stands could probably stick with the classes it has and be ok. The way that raiding and dungeon-running and everything works is fine. But new features get people excited about the game, and there's no more exciting feature than a new class. It's a delicate move, fitting a new class into a ten-year-old game, but I think that it's in the best interests of the game makers, and the players, to get more options as time goes by. Certainly, it should be done with care. If you add too many too quickly, you risk throwing the game balance entirely off. But the current rate of about one every other expansion seems to be ok. The DK certainly had its hiccups, but by Cataclysm (or really even just late Wrath) it was pretty well-settled. The Monk was, surprisingly, in great shape once it went live (the only balance issue was perhaps the damage output while healing.) As long as they do it carefully and take it slow, Blizzard can certainly fit more classes into the game as time goes on. And I hope they do.
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