Category Archives: Games

If StarCraft’s Co-op Commanders Were RPG Classes

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One of the things that gives StarCraft II’s co-op missions such enduring appeal is the wildly different playstyles offered by the many commanders. I’ve often compared to the different civilizations and god choices in the “Age of ____” games, but you could also compare them to RPG classes. In some cases, the similarity is very obvious, while others you have to squint a bit more, but most can find an equivalent in the RPG world.

A co-op mission in StarCraft II: Legacy of the VoidVorazun: Rogue

Vorazun is part of the inspiration for this post. I’ve been saying for months that she’s like the traditional rogue archetype ported to the RTS genre, focusing on cloaked units, burst damage, and crowd control. Generally playing Vorazun tends to entail a lot of stunlocking the enemy and then bursting them down before they have a chance to fight back. That’s a rogue if I ever saw one.

Artanis: Paladin

Artanis’ army is slow, with little mobility or fancy tricks, but they’re also incredibly tough and durable, making them the ideal frontline bruisers. He also boasts a number of helpful buffs that help add survivability to his ally’s forces.

Sounds like a prot pally to me.

Abathur: Death knight

Like Artanis, Abathur has a strong focus on very slow but very tanky units. In late game, his troops are virtually indestructible. But he also has a strong emphasis on feeding off the destruction of his enemies; his power comes from killing. That sounds like a death knight.

Stukov: Necromancer

Stukov's army in StarCraft II's co-opNot just because he has zombies, but because his playstyle is about overwhelming the enemy with endless floods of cheap and free units. He’s a summoner through and through.

Karax: Priest

More so than any other commander, Karax tends to focus on supporting his ally. He uses buffs, global abilities, and powerful defenses to turn the tide in his team’s favour, often taking little to no direct role in the battle himself. While that’s not exactly the same as being an RPG healer, the general principle of hanging back and supporting your allies remains intact.

Alarak: Warlock

Alarak’s playstyle can differ a little bit depending on whether you’re going for a Wrathwalker or Ascendant build, but either way you’re going to be using a lot of active abilities (Alarak’s and/or the Ascendants’) and pumping out huge damage numbers.

That seems like a spellcaster to me, and given Alarak has a habit of sacrificing his own units for power, warlock seems like the best fit.

Alarak in StarCraft II's co-op modeRaynor: Ranger

Raynor’s army tends to focus on mobility and high ranged DPS, which makes him a decent allegory for a ranger archetype. Furthermore, a common trait of ranger classes is that they are considered to be very newbie friendly but have a surprisingly high skill cap at higher levels of play, and that’s also true of Raynor.

Kerrigan: Battle mage

A lot of playing Kerrigan boils down to controlling Kerrigan herself, a hero unit with a variety of powerful abilities. This puts me in mind of a mage, but she’s also pretty hard to kill and tends to like getting into the thick of things, so I suppose that would make her more of a battle mage.

Swann: Warrior

Subtlety was never Swann’s strong suit. He likes to build an army of slow, tanky, powerful units and slog his way to victory with sheer brute force. This makes him a decent allegory for a warrior archetype.

Nova: Druid

This one’s a bit of a stretch, I grant, but she is probably the most versatile commander at the moment, able to adapt to any situation, and she can swap between two different stances with very different abilities, so that’s sort of like shape-shifting.

Co-op commander Nova in StarCraft IIZagara: ???

Okay, I’ll admit I can’t draw any clear RPG parallels with Zagara. What class does “hurl a bajillion suicide units at your enemy” translate to?

If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears, but maybe this thought experiment simply has its limits.

ESO: Home, Home on the Rift

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As mentioned previously, I’ve had my eye on the Autumn’s Gate house in Elder Scrolls Online, and I’ve now taken the next step by purchasing it and moving in.

My house in Elder Scrolls OnlineI’m far enough into the game that I don’t feel too bad about spending so much gold, but it’s definitely been an underwhelming experience.

Turns out furnishing your home is not as easy as I initially thought. Most in-game vendors only sell miscellaneous items like trees, rocks, random trophies, and the like. Basic housing stuff like beds and chairs are surprisingly hard to find.

Furniture crafting, meanwhile, straight up doesn’t make any sense.

Although each furniture recipe is tied to a specific profession, many of them still require skills in other professions, with no apparent rhyme or reason behind any of it. I have a bed recipe for my woodworking I can’t actually make because I don’t have skills in provisioning. Most of my blacksmithing recipes require skills and materials from enchanting. Let’s not forget the infamous Nickel Pie.

It seems the only way to make significant headway as a furniture crafter is to have maxed out every single tradeskill in the game on a single character, a task so Herculean I’m getting a headache just thinking about it. I nearly went mad just trying to train up three crafts on one character.

The drop rates for furniture materials aren’t exactly great, either, since we’re on the subject.

My house in Elder Scrolls OnlineThe best way to furnish your home is probably to just buy the essential items from the cash shops. The good news is that most of the furnishing prices are pretty reasonable (with some notable exceptions). But it’s not exactly great to have the best answer to a game problem be “cash shop.”

I suppose buying what you want off guild traders could also be an option — I haven’t looked into it, so I’m not sure what the prices are like. This does mean enduring the general awfulness of guild traders as a system, though.

It also turns out that the limit on how many furnishings you can have in a house is pretty shockingly low if you’re not a subscriber, so that doesn’t help matters. The interface for placing items is a long way from intuitive, too.

All that said, I’m still reasonably happy with how my house turned out. It’s a bit Spartan, but charming all the same.

With my options so limited, I decided to get creative. I used trees and shrubs to give the illusion that the house itself was alive, grown together from the local flora. Basically I took a Nord home and turned it into a Bosmer home.

Also, I love the yard, even if it’s tiny. The Rift is an absolutely gorgeous zone.

My house in Elder Scrolls OnlineThe real problem, in the end, is that after one day I’ve already run out of things to do with my home. There’s no gameplay associated with it, no reason to go there other than to see the sights, no practical benefit to it whatsoever. What few utilities you can add to homes in ESO require massive grind or a significant chunk of cash to unlock.

Times like this further my belief that I just don’t get player housing as a feature. ESO’s housing seems mostly well-received by the community so far. Meanwhile, SW:TOR’s housing is generally held as one of the worst implementations of the concept around, yet I would take SW:TOR’s system over ESO’s any day of the week and twice on Sunday.