What your MMO class says about your psychosis

9:17 AM on 07.26.2007   |   Colette Bennett

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Within the first ten minutes of playing any MMO, you are faced with a multitude of choices about your virtual destiny. Will you be a lithe, death dealing monk? A magic casting priestess? A cheery furry dead set on the distribution of free hugs? Little do you know that those friends who you casually refer to as "casters" or "melee" players are revealing more about themselves than you may realize. A gamer's choice of MMO class is like a road map into their soul, if you will. What frightening secrets may be revealed within?

Hit the jump for a crash course in hack psychoanalysis.

The Warrior

On the surface, Warriors seem like the generic, well rounded class made for first time players who aren't skilled enough yet to use the weaknesses and strengths of their character class to their advantage. In truth, the player who chooses the Warrior class is deeply repressed and has wanted to beat the shit out of something for some time, preferably his mother. The giant sword and brute strength are merely a symbol that represents the hunger for ultimate world domination. The kid that chooses the Warrior very well may have had his head jammed down a toilet in grammar school. In the long run, he is harmless and may just need a little Prozac to numb the pain.

The Healer

I once heard a guy say, "I like to be the healer so I can help everyone, as it's what I like to do best, because I tend to put other people before myself." The healer is the ultimate martyr and often makes Jesus look selfish without really trying. In an MMO, they serve an incredibly important purpose -- keeping other players alive. The need to caretake goes from a minor weird habit to an essential function the moment they log online. It somehow seems infinitely more healthy to assist a fellow team in surviving raids than it does to hand your paychecks over to your lazy, unemployed leech boyfriend. So maybe MMOs are like free therapy in this case. These guys are also known as the people who quit their day jobs to play Everquest.

The Red Mage 

These are some indecisive sons of bitches. Can't settle on magic, can't settle on melee, so they  just straddle the fence and kind of do a little of both. These are the type of guys that promise to marry you for years and instead spend the wedding budget on car parts and electronics that have a lot of knobs. They're useful in a party, you say? That may be true, as long as they don't do that thing mid-fight where they forget which strategy they were supposed to go with and just start randomly hitting things or casting, throwing off the rest of the party, or just ignoring everyone and doing their own thing altogether. Many politicians would be Red Mages (and likely have been).

The Assassin

If the Assassin is played by a man, he wants to bang her. If the Assassin is played by a woman, she is likely a partial lesbian and wants to bang her too. Gamers who gravitate to the Assassin also want to be Trinity from The Matrix, Lara Croft, and any other female figure who can kick ass and take names. In real life, this person has not lived up to their full potential and may suffer from serious bouts of jealousy towards other people. In addition, he/she will be the type to buy useless weapons at anime cons, spend an enormous about of time chatting on the internet, and getting drunk enough to believe that vinyl pants are indeed still in vogue.

The Necromancer

This guy appears completely normal on the outside, rather than being the gothy type you may assume. Within the plain facade however, he has a secret history of killing small animals to watch them die and then feeding their tiny corpses to his dog. He may have been on several major antidepressants and perhaps developed an immunity to one or two of them. Beware how chatty you get in game with this type -- while you natter away about leveling up and trade items, he's freehand sketching a picture of your Christmas family portrait, which he will jack off onto as soon as you sign off. Maybe before that, even.

The Paladin

The Paladin is the religious version of the warrior. He is meant to represent a spiritual icon in the midst of battle, often clothed all in white in case the attitude didn't quite get it across for you. You would think religious people would naturally gravitate towards the Paladin, but they're too busy complaining about the people they hate in Sunday mass to play video games. There is nothing mentally wrong with gamers that choose the Paladin other than that they are abysmally bored and have already leveled a character in every other class. There's no other real reason to want to play a holy roller with a quest in mind and a stick firmly shoved up his ass.