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In the game, it is an infallible rule that the best healing class will be the class rarely played. Since Priests/clerics/medics have been in short supply at the beginning and our game experience has suffered because of it. Early games forced social behavior by requiring players to group to make progress in the game from time to time. This was a great way to build friendships and MMO developers liked how online friends stuck around longer in their virtual worlds in this game. However, the developers forced people into groups it became obvious that those with healers were much more powerful. As a result, most of the developers designed all enemy encounters around the assumption that a group would have a healer.
It is impossible to make enemy encounters to have a healer and 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.
On the one hand, 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.
On the other hand, 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.
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.
But the only problem with pure healers is that they are limited in what they can accomplish by themselves. And also the restrictions on direct combat and having to constantly monitor other players' hitpoints seem to make the class unpopular with most people.
Probably, World of Warcraft is one of the best games at making hybrid healers almost as good as the priest/cleric class. However, there will always be a need for a pure healer class since the hardest encounters in these games always requires the effectiveness of priest/cleric healing.
With the trend started to form and become apparent, the rarity of people playing healing classes was affecting their games. However, most high level decision makers saw these trends as encouraging more subscriptions and commitment to their games. Not only did hard encounter required healers but 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. To this day, other games took advantage of this design flaw and we still see specific and rare classes required for progression in the same way.
It is impossible to make enemy encounters to have a healer and 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.
On the one hand, 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.
On the other hand, 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.
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.
But the only problem with pure healers is that they are limited in what they can accomplish by themselves. And also the restrictions on direct combat and having to constantly monitor other players' hitpoints seem to make the class unpopular with most people.
Probably, World of Warcraft is one of the best games at making hybrid healers almost as good as the priest/cleric class. However, there will always be a need for a pure healer class since the hardest encounters in these games always requires the effectiveness of priest/cleric healing.
With the trend started to form and become apparent, the rarity of people playing healing classes was affecting their games. However, most high level decision makers saw these trends as encouraging more subscriptions and commitment to their games. Not only did hard encounter required healers but 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. To this day, other games took advantage of this design flaw and we still see specific and rare classes required for progression in the same way.
