What Makes the Healer Class Unpopular? Part 1

The History of the Hard to find Healer

Its a infallible rule in MMORPGs that the best healing class in the game will be the class rarely played. Since the beginning of the MMO market priests/clerics/medics have been in short supply and our game experience has suffered because of it. Early games in the market often forced social behavior by requiring players to group to make progress in the game. This was a great way to build friendships in the game and MMO developers liked how online friends stuck around longer in their virtual worlds. However, once developers forced people into groups it became obvious that those with healers were much more powerful. As a result developers designed all enemy encounters around the assumption that a group would have a healer.

This often made enemy encounters impossible for any group that did not have a healer and as a result introduced long wait times. Everquest was famous for this since most players would refuse to do anything without a specific type of healer called a cleric. The cleric had the ability to rez other players who died and gain back their experience, which often was equal to several hours of grinding. Though most modern MMORPGs don’t have harsh death penalties we still see this behavior today as sub-healing classes are made less effective then the main healer. However, even if you combine all the healing classes together it still becomes apparent that they are much less popular then any other class. Because of this rarity certain trends now exist in MMORPGs as a result of this healer shortage.

Trends caused by Healer Shortages:

1) The Dynamic Duo: Gamers started to get their significant others into their game of choice and set them up as a healing class. Thus many online games are filled with husband/wife teams with one of them being the healer. If you're smart you would make friends with couples who play together.

2) Two boxing: Gamers would buy another account and play a healer on it. Then they would use a computer setup to play both accounts at the same time. Not as effective as having another person play but it did allow you to advance in the game without waiting long periods for a healer to show up.

3) Guild Sneaking: Just as a group requires a healer to kill stuff so does a guild require many healers to kill stuff. Thus guilds are often lax on requirements for their priests. Raiders wishing to make it into a big guild would often apply as their priest then slowly but surely switch to their alts once in. This worked great but often forced a person to spend much more time to fully equip two characters.

As these trends started to form in online games it became apparent to developers that the rarity of people playing healing classes was affecting their games. Yet most high level decision makers saw these trends as encouraging more subscriptions and commitment to their games. Everquest began to make very hard encounters that not only required healers but also required other specific classes. Dark Age of Camelot saw the introduction of buff bots which were needed competitively to keep beneficial spells on players in realm versus realm combat. Other games also took advantage of this design flaw and to this day we still see specific and rare classes required for progression.

Tomorrow I am going to try express my exact thought on why healers are unpopular with most MMORPG fans.

Part 1 - The History of the Hard to find Healer
Part 2 - A Healer does not a Hero make
Part 3 - How to make a Happy Healer