I don't think your perspective of the whole playerbase back then is all that accurate. Most people were not raid-focused in Kunark. They were just trying to get to level 60 or trying to figure things out. Virtually nobody had a Bard epic in Kunark era and I don't at all remember the playerbase being amazed by that epic specifically and rushing to make a Bard because they heard about it.
I wouldn't call Enchanter "passive" either. Constantly mezzing a bunch of mobs is quite an active role, and I don't think mainly only people who were already playing a healer or Bard were the type who would do Enchanter, nor would those people be actively dissuaded from making an Enchanter as the class grew in renown. I'd say it's the other way around - some people who played Bard actually switched to Enchanter because it was the stronger class. I don't think too many Enchanter players were switching to Bard, heh. Bard was always its own specific thing that appealed to a specific type of player. It had more melee ability than other casters and song twisting was a strenuous thing, so it felt different, and the roleplay aspect of the game in 1999 was quite strong. A significant amount of people who picked the class back then just wanted to roleplay as a musician/performer.
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Originally Posted by DMN
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A lot of wizards quit and moved over to mage/necro, and quite a few mages and, heck, even some degree a few disillusioned druids also moved to necros over the first year. Necros probably weren't at the top the first couple months but would rapidly start to climb up in population. It was a simple case of "if you can't beat em, join em."
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1 year after the launch of the game is not the "majority of 1999" period that I was talking about. Wizards definitely started declining in population for several reasons (and the introduction of the Play Nice Policy was a big one, because they were no longer allowed to actually use their burst damage in an advantageous way) but they were very popular during that earlier era. They were literally named "masters of magical damage" by Verant, which was reinforced by the Magician and Enchanter class descriptions saying "this class does not have the same offensive ability as the Wizard", so many new players picked Wizard on that basis alone, but the actual in-game play of being able to burst things down back then was also impressive, as were the teleports.
The thing about Necros back then is they were constantly being nerfed by the time more people were realizing just how OP the class was, and a lot of players simply didn't want to switch over to the class even if they understood they were OP. Necros were noticeably most OP at the higher levels and after more people had found out about giving the pets low-delay weapons, but people who were already in their high 30's/40's didn't want to just abandon the character they were already playing. Plus, the whole "evil" thing. A significant amount of the playerbase back then simply refused to group with Necromancers or "evil" characters, and they themselves didn't want to make an evil character because of being scared about being attacked by more NPC's out in the game world.