World of Huntercraft - or, Why WoW Needs Henchmen

This goes out to all the World of Warcraft players out there who prefer doing their own thing but still wish they had the support to handle tougher areas and quests... in other words people like myself who want to have their cake and eat it.

Personally I mostly do solo/PVE gaming; it’s not so much that my (uninterrupted) wow-time is limited; it is kinda, but I could still group a lot more than I do – it’s more that my negative group experiences far outweigh the positive ones. Whether it’s the time spent recruiting enough people for an instance, mediating the bickering over loot distribution, armor repair bills from too many wipes (ok that sounds wrong – a “wipe” in WoW is when a bunch of players’ in-game characters all get overrun and killed, just ya know, for the record and stuff), or even just tough instance runs that end in someone switching to his level 70 alt and running everyone through on EZ mode, I’ve just grown a bit weary of grouping.

Of all the classes in WoW, hunters seem to best suit this play style, and I know from sites like Petopia that I’m definitely not an isolated case here – not positive which class in WoW is THE most popular but if it’s not hunters then I’d be surprised if they were lower than 2nd or 3rd place.

Some people play them for the RP element, or because they are animal lovers, or because they like having tracking, or because they like "collecting" cool pets (guilty), or because “pet casters” have kind of a “cruise control” element in the form of a fast healing, semi-autonomous bodyguard, but I think the deeper attraction of the class is that it’s really a miniature group all on its own.

The hunter relegates tanking to his pet, and handles the long range support (DPS and healing). This by itself is nothing that warlocks don’t also have; “locks” are after all the other pet caster class in the game, and certainly don’t lack for killpower. And it isn’t that I haven’t tried the other classes either; other than priests and druids I have characters belonging to at least 1 of every class in the game, ranging in level from low 40s up to lvl 70. I still play them from time to time, but I have trouble maintaining as much interest in them - meanwhile I have something like 6-7 hunters.

The stuff that most distinguishes hunters from locks is their ability to fine tune their pets according to their needs rather than being restricted to a few rigid choices (to be fair to locks it could also be argued that their pets are lower maintenance, which can mean everything or nothing depending on how you feel about pet maintenance); it goes beyond just the simple mechanics of having a “main” unit and a subservient “tank” unit for hunters; their pets have a wide range of species to choose from, each with its own little innate differences (stats, pet skills, etc) as well as a number of different models and skins, some of which being “rare” and therefore something of a collector’s item.

The whole process of taming, training and caring for your pet is really almost a meta-game in itself, you get to name your pet, and you can even keep a spare pet in the stable for times when you want a different skillset or even just a change of pace.

This all combines to add a whole new dimension to your character, and this brings me to the other half of this post’s title.

Henchmen.

I'm not really predisposed to playing a shooty type with an animal friend per se; what I'm really after is being able to form a group of my own, where everyone does exactly what I want, doesn't argue with me or log off in the middle of an instance because they have to do their homework, their wife is yelling at them to get off the 'puter, etc.

I would be psyched to play a mage - with a warrior "pet" out in front holding aggro, or for that matter to play a warrior with a priest in tow to keep me healed and pop off the occasional damage spell or etc.

This goes back to the Rexxar mini-game that came with Warcraft III all those years ago, when we got a little preview of the upcoming MMORPG as well as a look at the “original” hunter. Rexxar not only had two different pets (Misha the bear and whatever his boar was called), but also a couple of companions in the form of Chen the drunken panda guy and Rokhan the troll shaman, and I think there may have been a couple times when you could even hire 2-3 mercenaries to further bulk out your numbers. That game was a blast and remains one of my all time faves, and most recently I’ve gotten to thinking “what if they had a new WoW server built along those lines – same WoW world, same WoW quests, same basic WoW game engine in fact but with the ability to acquire NPC companions?”

It would work something like this: you roll a character to be your “main” exactly as you would now, except that you can now acquire up to 2 followers.

Each time you gain a follower, a new “pet bar” appears in the lower left part of your screen; these are the same things you see now on hunters and warlocks when they summon a pet, with the basic commands and up to 4 “custom” skills that you can configure as needed and these followers would behave in much the same manner is hunter or lock pets in that they could be commanded/summoned/dismissed as needed.

Standardly, these would take the form of humanoid mercenaries, essentially mimicking the existing PC classes but in a much more simplified state; you would get to customize them about as much as hunters do now with their pets, maybe a bit more but not to the point that actual player characters would be outclassed – a PC warrior would still tank better than a henchman “fighter”, etc. Furthermore henchmen despite being less powerful 1v1 than a PC class, would still consume an equal share of XP - ; much as I like my idea I do recognize there should be some compensation for people who just don’t feel like managing the extra bodies, i.e. people who just play their “main” will level that much faster by comparison.

In a few cases more specialized pets could occupy one or both henchmen slots; hunters could fill them with animals in much the same way they do now with their single slot, and warlocks would have some ability to gain demonic minions. You could do similar things with other classes, i.e. druids might have access to forest humanoids such as dryads, furbolg and so forth. Henchmen would consume either food (for critter followers) or coins (for the humanoid kind), and the degree to which they are compensated would impact their happiness icon in the same manner as with current hunter pets.

Of course this would not be simple despite having most of the basic mechanics in place; hunters and locks would both need to be retuned to reflect the fact that their pets are no longer a unique item but rather just a different twist on a (now) common theme, and instances would have to be re-tailored to allow for henchmen; I would make followers count as players for purpose of maximum group size, and have two versions of every instance, much like the normal/heroic modes of BC instances – you’d have your basic 6 man instance which could be handled by two players accompanied by a full retinue of 2 henchmen each, or a tougher party formed of all “mains”. Or if you just wanted to grind “yard trash” or a few early/mini-bosses you could go it yourself with your two henchmen.

Then there would be the heroic mode which would be designed for 15 slots, i.e. 5 actual players with maximum allotment of henchmen or as before less henchmen and more “mains” to form a tougher group.

Another benefit of henchmen in instances is that if someone has to bail suddenly, another player can potentially replace him by summoning a henchman (e.g. let's say you have a group of 3 players accompanied by 3 henchmen, which could mean that one of the players has a henchman "unsummoned"; if a player leaves, that henchman can be brought forward to fill the spot and the group can continue without having to put everything on hold and spend the next hour or two trying to recruit a replacement player).

I don't want to oversimplify the very complex process of tuning dungeons for the right difficulty/payoff ratio but I do think this could work; after all they already laid the groundwork in Rexxar.

All this being said, it will never happen – not in World of Warcraft anyway. The game is too successful and too well established for their parent companies/shareholders/etc to even think about allowing such a radical tweak.

But the radical new thing that scares the established industry leaders can also be just the new angle a young up and comer needs to wedge their way into that same industry and attract enough business to fuel its own MMORPG. It wouldn’t have to take much away from WoW to do it – World of Warcraft already has so many subscribers it could split off enough customers to spawn a few different MMORPGs and still remain easily on top, and that would be fine with me; more than likely I’d just end up playing both games rather than choose between them.

One can dream anyway.