One Rogue's Journey

The rogue is obviously spawned from the D&D thief. There can be no argument there (and I doubt there ever was). They have most all of the same abilities: Hide in shadows, pick locks, find/remove traps and my favorite, backstab. In WoW your rogue is a sustained DPSer, far removed from the utilitarian class from which they are derived. In D&D a rogue was essential but not as the damage dealer but as utility (don’t get me wrong a good thief with some nice eq could lay it down, especially considering a x5 backstab makes a rogue’s 1.5x backstab look just plain silly but that was far more situational and much harder to pull off depending on the niceness–or lack there of–of your DM). No, you definitely wanted a thief for his ability to open locked doors and chests (even if he would probably lie about the contents of said chests) and more importantly find and disarm those nasty traps (the nastiness of which of course depending again on your DM but trust me, they’re gross).

Now is this change of the thief class wrong? No, certainly not, it’s a natural progression when you change the play location from the table top to MMO world. Instances are pretty amazing but nothing compared to what a good DM could create and without a DM the thief as utility starts to unravel.

Nothing beats D&D. It’s hands down the best gaming experience you’ll ever have, but despite this (or perhaps because of this) it can never be fully translated to the console or PC. But that’s ok, WoW’s pretty fun too.

Just don’t forget to bust out your dice now and again.