4e bigots

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition bigots think they have uncovered some great secret: WoTC is stealing rule ideas from WoW! The use of formal combat roles, like Striker, Controller, and Defender are World of Warcraft constructs and now they have been imported to D&D! Heaven forfend! Computer-based RPGs have been stealing virtually everything from D&D since their inception. However, there's some problem with D&D borrowing from the computer-based RPGs. And how brilliant of you to decipher their nefarious plot.

I’m not a MMORPG fan. But I think that combat under 4e is superior to previous versions. At least so far. Our party is nearly to level 5. The promise of 4e is that all classes continue to remain relevant from levels 1-30. So, clearly too early to judge.

I've been in too many games where the fighter becomes the spear-carrier, the thief the reporter and the cleric the nurse of the magic-user at level 8 or so. In previous versions of D&DOr where the magic-user and his 4 hit points uses his Sleep spell then cowers for the rest of the day. Then there's the fact in prior versions of D&D that someone _has_ to be the cleric, even if no one wants to be, or the party is up a creek.

The idea of roles is baked into D&D, there are just now more options and the roles are more clearly defined. Fighter, Magic-User, Thief ... these have always been part of the game and are, dare I say it, roles. Thieves sneak around, fighters take the bad guys head-on; magic-users stay at the back and use area attacks. That's their role.

4e ain't perfect. If it was all I knew of role-playing, I would have a very limited view of what it meant to play an RPG. However, combat is part-and-parcel of the game of D&D. And the more structured, more formalized approach to combat as it is presented in 4th Edition has reinvigorated what had become a fairly stale component of our weekly game. I await other improvements. I dearly wish that WoTC had released it under a more open license.