Complete lack of any AI for the monsters

[Skandranon]

Why not? In your example you had a warrior, and a paladin that was enough to heal him.What happens if you have a mail wearer instead? Well, maybe with enemies doing less damage you could make with that instead of having to get a warrior!

Prior to level 60 end-game raids, you don't actually need a warrior for anything. At level 60 end-game raids, what you propose is impossible. Elaboration below.

Or maybe a druid can spec into something that isn't so strongly heal-oriented! Wouldn't that be nice? Heck, maybe you could even let paladins play the "holy warrior" they were told they would be instead of the bad heal-bot many complain they become. Or warriors that try to go offensive wouldn't get looked at over the shoulder so much.[right][snapback]87661[/snapback][/right]

This sounds all well and good, but doesn't actually make sense.

If you are to have discrete classes in a game, their capabilities must, by definition, be different. Thus, in certain roles, certain classes will either be better than or worse than others. Encounters must therefore be scaled assuming that each class plays the role that it plays best.

Using your example, if the enemies that did less damage could be successfully tanked by a mail-wearer, who would have some additional capabilities because they couldn't wear plate, why would anyone bring a warrior? Oh, the warrior can do something else, you say. Then all you've done is swapped roles; same system. What if enemies do very little damage so non-healing druids and tanking paladins and offensive warriors are viable? Then parties with healing druids and tanking warriors and buffing paladins tear through the encounter; it's trivialized. The only way you can avoid that is by making druids best at things other than healing and paladins best at tanking and warriors best at offense, in which case you've again just played a game of musical chairs and had everyone trade roles.

You cannot have a system where anyone can play whatever role they choose and have success without either making the encounters trivially easy for anyone employing the classes in their correct roles, or making all classes equally good at everything, thus obliterating the need for distinct classes or spells or abilities at all.

Your main point, from what I can tell, since you are relatively inexperienced, is that any group of any class should be able to accomplish any thing. Your comment "having to get a warrior" seems to me to be talking about problems like 5-man instance groups not finding an interested warrior of the right level to do their instance. Don't worry: you don't need one. I am happy to inform you that for anything prior to level 60 end-game 40-man raids, you do not need a perfect group; you can do all the way to BRD and probably even UBRS without real tanks and, if you do it right, without any plate wearers at all.

However, for those 40-man raids, any responsible designer will ensure that there is a role to be filled by each of the eight classes; it is not outrageous to expect that members of all classes will be available and that each will want to be useful and effective. Asking for a 40-man raid missing a class or having classes playing off-roles to be as effective as a 40-man raid where all classes are present and working to the best of their ability is simply paradoxical - you cannot design a game that way.