[Melkorus]

Here is a post from Athelan that answers your question

Make what you will of the title of the thread but I figured it would at least point out what it was about and maybe make it useful for linking to when the questions get repeated.

I just wanted to let you guys know part of the thought process that went behind me supporting the class merges.

It has been a vocal expression of many of the fans on these forums the desire to feel like they can individualize their character not just in appearance but in style.

I made a decision a long time ago that heavily impacts the complexity of our classes (especially with melee who use a lot more unique animations as opposed to particle effects). I made the decision that only having a couple animations that were generic to a weapon type was boring. Sure it works but it is what we see in most games. Player of X race wielding Y weapons will use Z animation set unless he triggers one of very few special move animations. While most of our classes do have some weapon types that are prefferable for their moves I wanted each class to actually look different. If a Barbarian is wielding a big maul and performs one of his combos, I dont want it to look like the same exact thing as when the Bear Shaman is doing one of his (or hers) with the same weapon.

What I ended up with was approximately 15 very unique animations per class specific to their combos, using heavy influence on both the spirit of the class, the effect of the combo, and what sort of sequences may be used to trigger it. When you multiply this out with all of our classes it was easily a couple hundred very complex animations.

Now that's all well and good, and we are not losing any of that. What we are doing is adding depth that allows the player to have greater flexibility in his or her characters developement. So much is being put into the combat and the classes there was no feasible way for me to say that I could have the same quality level for 5 different weapon types for classes. Because of this I pushed for the elimination of what we called "generic" "non specialized" combos and the merging of like classes so we can have truly deep and meaningful character developement in multiple feat lines.

We still have a large variety of very interesting classes, and we are not losing anything. Instead we are strengthening the flexibility one can have with a single character. So now for example a Barbarian would have 30 unique animations and have the option of pursuing duel wielding or two handed weapons, or maybe dabble some in both until choosing a specialty in one they like better. Maybe just because they like the way it looks. Or maybe because they like the two handed weapon emphasis on area hits, or the duel wielding's multi strike flurry type attacks.

In closing just let me say that I find this change very exciting and think it end up being very rewarding for the player. It doesn't reduce my workload any but that's what overtime is for