Why do people harp on "Classes/Roles/Specializations" so much in the gaming world?

The answer lies in the word, 'ROLEplay'. It's a past time both in acting, in tabletop games and in video games because people find it enjoyable to portray other characters in a variety of factual or fictional settings. There's a very defining level of maturity required for this to be enjoyable; one cannot simply run around the room with his arms like a plane, making machine gun noises shouting 'I'm a tank plane soldier!', it ruins it for everyone taking this seriously. Darkfall, however, did allow this kind of behaviour and unsurprisingly it caused a Guiness Book of World Records exodus and left an immature cluster of players to rival 4chan.

Regardless of whether you're playing high fantasy or dystopian sci-fi, a system of character progression and level of access to abilities which is simply not plausible will be seen by many as game breaking to immersion as zero gravity would be for combat. It's simply the case that people want to play defining roles as, as in life, it's our differences which make us interesting and our limitations which allow us to grow communities to achieve collective goals.

Now you can argue, and I know the handful of you will, that Darkfall is about having access to everything and that in Agon, characters are supposed to cast spells, fire bows and wield swords, simultaneously. That everyones character should oddly be allowed to mechanically be as capable in everything as everyone else. Ignoring the history of the development of Darkfall and all communications from the development team (as this strictly dictates that this wasn't the plan, more so the result of a cessation of development and change of game direction), but to believe this you have to accept another reality; we wouldn't be talking about Darkfall today without the hype it received in response to claiming to build upon the legacy of games which had meaningful and immersive character restraints. Had the game been proposed as many of you wish, an all access fantasy shooter with little to no meaningful character differentiation (and thus an erasure of immersion required to enjoy a 'role' to 'play'), it would have been overlooked immediately in prelaunch as it was by the 95% who left it behind post launch.

Maintaining Darkfall in it's current carnation is a viable route to take but you have to appreciate that the Darkfall you advocate is not entitled to any of the promise and hype the original concept was famous for, nor will you have the substantial cash drop the game received with these aspirations in mind. The 'freedom' Darkfall was built upon was not the freedom you've adopted which is the same freedom which took a hatchet to the playerbase from the first day. You've created a whole new beast which feeds on an entirely different kind of player.

/r/Darkfall Thread