Next tank

[Carighan]

The concept of the tank, healer, damage dealer trinity was primarily established in MMOs by the first Everquest, which was obviously way before WoW.
The roots of the trinity system comes from even before that, going back to archetypes that evolved in fantasy pen & paper RPGs like DnD. It's simply a reflection of the most common fantasy party setups of a big heavily armored fighter/knight character, a healer/priest/cleric and a long range but physically weaker damage dealer like a wizard.

WoW may have popularized MMOs in the West, but it certainly didn't invent anywhere near as many things for the genre as people seem to believe it did.

Interesting.

So, let me ask you this, then. If EQ1 was so "trinity", how come the following:

- The label was unknown, as was the concept of a "trinity" of RPG jobs? In faaaact, there was a "trinity", but it meant something else, namely that you needed a Warrior, a Cleric and an Enchanter (which, if you were to reduce it to jobs, would be Tank + Healer + CC, DPS/Buffer/Debuffer came after that, though Enchanter also had some debuffing elements of course, and one of the most important buffs in the entire game to do dungeon farming at all).
- EQ1 itself described its classes in the concepts of six archetypes?
- WoW in beta still described its classes as six archetypes? (for example Priest was the dedicated CC class)

I mean, I get that most here are too young to actively remember their forays into these old games, but genuinely, WoW cemented the reduction from 6 to 3 archetypes. This was not without reason. It was difficult to have "pure" debuffer jobs for example. Usually these were mixed with DPS, see EQ1's Necromancer that then inspired WoW's "Debuff"-focused job (see beta 4), the Warlock. Which then got turned into DPS first and foremost, with their debuffs mostly just being 2 kinds of DoTs though they had some options back in the days. Likewise in EQ1, the dedicated buffer, the Shaman, also had some healing inspiration, and this wasn't uncommon either for buff-centric classes, though other combinations existed like debuffers also dipping into healing or tanking. Other games tried some other setups, like DAoC's CC-centric specs on Hibernia's and Albion's primary healer to contrast with Midgard's buff-centric spec.

It's also telling the way the article you link deals with the whole history in just two ultra-short sentences, quite clearly the author doesn't have any personal experience of really old D&D or EQ or M59 or so. :') Just saying, it's okay. By now Tank/Heal/Damage is established, we don't need to abolish the other three primary roles from the history books just because they have become secondary roles in modern design. And for good reason. Your old D&D Bard would be mighty pissed if you called him a healer or damage, however.