This is how your talent grows.

In a recent interview with a Blizzard employee, we received a few tidbits on the talent-tree reviews done in World of Warcraft, which try to better balance the different classes, and yet make different characters of the same class different. While the development issues behind the talent-tree revisions are sensical and unsurprising to me, I noticed something more interesting in the end-note:

I feel like our talent trees are getting to the point of being very solid, but keep in mind that the level cap will be raised in The Burning Crusade, and we plan to extend the talent trees in the expansion.

This quote answers a long-standing question of mine: “How will Blizzard handle talent-points post-expansion?” My proposed method of handling it would be to flag any talent points earned after level 60 as “post-60 talent points”. A separate talent tree for each class could then be used to place these post-60 talent points in. This method would prevent people from spending freshly earned talent points in the existing trees, and force the points to be used on new content. This would give promise to the suggestion that “Hero Classes” would be specialized sub-classes where 10 post-60 talent points could be used to purchase new and exciting abilities.

The quote above, however, discourages me. An extension of the existing trees, while they still may offer new abilities, would place further emphasis on a specific tree, making hybrid builds less frequent. For example, on my shaman, I invested points into all three talent trees, making talent point placement into a slot below the 31st point in a tree impossible. A simple extension of the talent trees would invariably require me to respec my shaman immediately after hitting level 61 if I wanted to be able to invest in any of the new talents.

While the quote above may be misleading, or innaccurate given future developments, any truth to it does not bode well for talent tree balancing. Effectively, it will require me to remove points from the restoration tree for my druid, and purchase skills I hadn’t intended to use in the character’s feral tree, just so that I can take advantage of any snazzy new feral talents. If Blizzard truly forces us to specialize in this manner, I can only see it angering existing players, many of whom happen to like the flexibility of their current builds.

Tagged as: mendax.org