The following conversations are purely fictitious and used for editorial purposes

Early Monday morning, a conference room, a group of people sit around in mixed states of awareness. Some are still yawning, and some look like they slept in the clothes they are wearing.

The head developer clears his throat.

Dave: "Ok, let’s get this thing started. You all had the weekend, and most of last week, to come up with some character classes, so let’s hear your ideas. Joe, you start."

Joe: "What? Oh, sorry, I’m still trying to wake up ... Ok, here’s my thought. We create a class that can control the environment. Not all of it, but a part of it, like the mobs. They are a beastmaster, of sorts. They tame and use the mobs as weapons. We make the experience threshold outrageously high so it takes a while to get there if they travel the normal routes, and we give the bonuses along the way - like get to a certain level, get a couple of pets, if you will, to use as weapons."

Dave: "Sounds good! Might be fun too. Hehe. Ok, let’s go with that. Maggie, what have you got?"

Maggie: "I’ve thought about skilling up the ranged weapon users, giving them a bleed attack that will reduce the target’s health over time. It will be hard to heal and after a few second, pop - the target is incapacitated and the shooter can death-blow them at their leisure with the recovery buffer in place."

Dave: "Wow! That sounds deadly ..."

Maggie (smiling): "But there is more. We give them a mindshot. With a powerful enough weapon they can do half again as much damage as any player’s health bar. It will be a one-shot kill."

Dave: "I like it! Wait, will the beastmaster be able to use this? Can’t have him with deadly pets and weapons. Seems unfair."

Joe: "Won’t happen. We put the skill criteria so high, with complimentary must-have skills attached in other areas that they won’t be able to get there. Their only choice will be to take a lesser secondary skill."

Dave: "Works for me. Get me an draft outline, and let’s test it."

... months after the release ...

Dave: "Joe, we have a problem. Other players are complaining that the beastmaster is too tough. We have to do something."

Joe (still trying to clear his eyes, which are suffering from a lack of sleep): "Yah, I’ve heard. How about this? We let every player have a pet, but only the beastmaster can train it. And they can’t have more than one top-quality pet out. Makes them more vulnerable to getting killed, and reduces their value in groups in PvP."

Dave (rubs chin thoughtfully): "Give everyone pets, eh?"

Joe: "Sure, not the best, but hey, pets are NPCs anyway, so who cares if ‘Fluffy’ or ‘Fido’ gets killed."

Dave: "The beastmasters might not like it."

Joe: "True ... ok, no death-blow on the pets, let them age and die like real life."

Dave: "Players don’t age and die, so where is the real life?"

Joe: "Hey Dave, I’m trying to help here!"

Dave: "And I’m playing devil’s advocate."

Joe: "So what do we do?"

Dave: "Ok, I like that we give all players the ability to have lesser pets. But we reduce the number of high-end pets that the beastmaster can have out at once. And we make it that only he can tame pets for the others."

Joe: "But if he can only tame and transfer lesser pets, doesn’t that kill the economical side of the class?"

Dave: "Sure, but players are creative, they’ll find a way to make money."

Joe: "True. Ok, since we are nerfing their skill and value, should we drop the experience point requirements?"

Dave: "Are you kidding?"

Joe: "So they have to earn an outrageous amount of experience for essentially not much in skill."

Dave: "Sure. Consider it a real-life lesson. Pay a lot for little or nothing in return. Hahaha!"

This seems to happen far too often in the world of online games. A class is created with the best of intentions, but something goes awry. Players, being rather clever and inventive, discover the true power of the class and propel it beyond where developers thought it may go - and do so quickly.

Other players complain, and because it is a small class, the developers quickly design addendums to the class to ‘balance’ the worlds they have created. They call it balancing. Players call it ‘nerfing.’ Nerfing is where you take a class and diminish it so that it does not have the power or potential it once did.

Asheron’s Call 2 did it, and did it, and did it. It got to the point where the mobs (environmental monsters) were much stronger than the players, who had little chance when facing a group of mobs. Players who initially thought it was good to nerf one class because it was too strong, starting to yell and scream when their class got nerfed down the road because after nerfing all the other classes, their traits were the top of the heap and ‘balancing’ was needed to level the playing field.

What starts off affecting a small portion of the population soon affects all. It is the domino theory. One class falls, oops, another is too strong now, nerf it, oops, that means that class c is too strong ... And so it goes.

Eventually players get fed up and look elsewhere for a fresh start. Treadmilling the same area over and again for fewer rewards is frustrating.

Right now, in Star Wars Galaxies, there is a skill group called Creature Handlers that have received the nerf. Apparently this group got too strong. They were able to call out 2 and 3 ferocious pets and take them into battle. Other players were outraged. And CH’s could also train and transfer top-quality creatures to other novice CH’s, those at an entry level skill to the class. This meant a lot of high-end mobs were being controlled by players and the world was overrun with pets.

That has changed. The developers heeded the hues and cries and have tightened the leash on the Creature Handlers. The requirements for calling out pets has been raised. Yes, they can have two creatures out at once, but they will be minor pets. Yes, they can transfer pets to non-CHs, but these are minor pets that no one will pay a great deal of money for, thus killing one economical aspect of the skill tree.

The experience level requirements are still in place. Pets that they can tame, they cannot call out. A gurreck is a level 20 tame, but is a level 50 pet and players must have level 50 skill numbers (which is tantamount to being tier 4 in two areas and tier 3 in another) to call it out. Hmmm, let’s see, you can tame it, but you can’t use it. And you only have a limited number of slots in your datapad for storing pets. It is a good xp tame but ... yes, this is starting to make a lot of sense. Not!

Oh, and all those non-CHs who are smirking because the class was nerfed, you should wipe the smiles off your face and start thinking about what you will do when your turn comes. Usually it starts with one class and moves down the line.

But rather than merely criticize, perhaps some suggestions should be made. It seems that one of the problems was a CH taking a lot of high-end pets into a PvP zone and using them against other players. Well, other players hated that they could be dead before they knew they were attacked. Fair enough. Restrict the PvP zones so that a CH entering only gets one pet. But what about open cities? Often war erupts in towns, which are overt PvP zones, like the rest of the map. Good point. Zone the cities. Make some areas PvP, others are safe zones. Same rules apply - one pet in a PvP zone. Or, no pets in town. It interrupts with targeting in cantinas and medical centers.

If a person can tame a pet, they should be able to use it. Having the taming level at 20 and the maximum pet level at 50 seem at odds. Hey, don’t wipe out pets already tamed. You set the taming level, follow up by lowering the use level.

Yes, nice idea about allowing non-CHs to have pets, and better to ensure that they are lower-end pets. However, creature handlers should be rewarded for the work that goes into accruing all the experience necessary to work up the ladder. First tier skills are 17,500 experience points. For the second tier, would-be handlers need 52,500; 87,700 for tier three and 140,000 experience points for tier 4. Multiply that by four skill trees and you have 1,190,000 experience points after qualifying for the skill until the top of the ladder. This is one of, if not the hardest skill tree in the game.

But, some exploited their way to the top. Sure, just as people have in every single skill tree in the game. Hey, if you are going to punish a skill class for being too good, at least give them something in return. So far, creature handlers are getting nothing but pain. They have been tanked as a class and the rewards for persevering have been wiped out.

Most classes can generate a viable income from their skills. For creature handlers, it would have been taming and transferring babies to people who would like some companionship. But who really wants to travel to Endor with a murra or butterfly by his or her side. Selling pets has been all but been wiped as a viable source of income for CHs.

Star Wars Galaxies has, without a doubt, one of the finest development teams assembled. If there is a problem, they fix it quickly. The game keeps moving. Temporary fixes are put in place to ensure fairness to the players, above all else. That has been the hallmark of the game, to date. Well, here you go. An injustice has been done to an entire class.

There is little doubt that the tree needed to be modified so that the game did not devolve into who has the most pets wins scenario. But nerfing a class to a point where there is only hardship without strong viable rewards is nonsense. Certainly, they get pets no one else can have. But even if a creature handler can get up to 1,000 experience points per tame, 1,190 babies is a little harsh. There are only so many gnorts, durni, and paralope varieties that one can look at. And because they can’t use anything stronger than these lowly pets, there is little reason to test skills on the bigger animals.

So here is the challenge. Give something to creature handlers to make the tree worthwhile and skip the nonsense about being able to have one top-drawer pet out. That is putting a carrot stump before the horse.