The Unholy Trinity

I don't play a lot of MMOs. I have tried World of Warcraft and I hated it. Eve Online... well, I don't much like unregulated PVP. I do like City of Heroes, though, and I especially like City of Villains. And not just for the character creator. I'll get back to why I enjoy CoV in a moment.

That said, due to my unfamiliarity with the genre, the following may be unqualified statements.

...

Tank/DPS/Healer is dumb. I can't stand it. The more a game separates those three roles, the less I will play it.

The ideal fantasy game, for me, is a game that allows me to feel as if I'm participating in the sort of fantasy fiction I enjoy, whether that be fantasy fiction first experienced through books, movies, or television. Even if I'm not playing Aragorn (actually I'm not a fan of The Lord of the Rings, either, but that's a topic for another blog), I want to feel like I'm playing a guy who might occupy an Aragorn-ish role.

Is Aragorn a tank, a DPS guy, or a healer?

He's none, and that's a terrible, stupid question, because fictional fantasy combat does not work that way. Fictional fantasy characters don't fill out those roles unless you squint so hard your eyeballs pop out of their sockets.

For lack of better terminology, the "Holy Trinity" feels very first draft. Very clumsy. It feels like the result of someone making a list of all the things you can do in virtual combat and then saying "Okay, we'll make one type of player character to do each of those things." There is no finnesse there, no effort put into making these characters feel like actual fantasy characters who show up in fantasy settings; it's just raw compromise for the sake of easy game design.

Compare City of Villains. City of Villains has five archetypes: Brute, Corruptors, Dominators, Masterminds, and Stalkers.

Brutes are heavy DPS guys who can mitigate damage against themselves, but they cannot tank effectively in the classical sense. (Fortunately, due to the way the rest of the archetypes work, they don't have to.) Corruptors are comparatively fragile but weaken enemies, acting as force multipliers in groups of player characters; they can heal, but it's not their focus. Dominators manage enemy behavior and can hulk out, increasing their direct combat effectiveness. Masterminds summon minions, which gives them both decent damage output and something like classical tanking ability (though, like Brutes, not to the extent of tanks in most MMOs). Stalkers do huge damage but are quite capable of defending themselves through stealth, if played correctly.

1) They all play differently.
2) They all play well alone.
3) They all play well together.
4) They all feel like the sort of character archetypes you actually get in comic books.

None of them fit obviously into one spot on the tank/DPS guy/healer trinity.

I would not call City of Villains the pinnacle of MMO design, just the most convenient example I could think of of... second draft play design. It benefits from the recognition that enemy damage mitigation, player character damage management, and player-character-on-enemy damage are the three roles that need filling in conventional MMO play, but it doesn't go the cheap and easy route of just making one character type to fill each of those slots. It's got problems (it's repetitive, for one) and I haven't actually played it in a few months, but it's a good illustration of the reason why I hate most MMOs, hold the design theories behind them in contempt, and will never play WoW again.