Today's post is targeted at noobs. If you know what a noob is, then you might want to excuse yourself from this lesson in gaming terminology. In this post, I'm going to be talking about the language of World of Warcraft, however some terms will be applicaable to MMORPGs in general. The definitions supplied are authored by me, and while not everyone will agree on exact wording, it should give the reader a sufficient understanding of the terms. These will be in no particular order...
This game is talented.
Last week, Blizzard revealed a new talent calculator to preview the revamped talent structure we'll be seeing in Mists of Pandaria. There's no denying it represents an unprecedented change in the talent system. Today, I've decided to take you all on a stroll down memory lane and go over the basic design of the talent system past and present.
Originally, all classes had 3 talent trees that went 31 pts. deep, and by level 60, players had 51 points to spend. Your first talent point was earned at level 10, and every level thereafter. This meant that players typically spent roughly 31pts. in a primary talent tree and then either spent 20 in another tree, or split those remaining points between the two remaining trees. One of the most basic properties of the talent trees were that the talents consisted of mostly passive buffs, with active abilities at 21 and 31 points, respectively. This meant that one of the meaningful options for a player was to invest 30 points into their primary talent tree, and 21 points into another if they preferred that 21-pt. active ability over their primary tree's 31-pt ability. However, the option also existed to make hybrid talent builds where a player could invest points more equally - although such builds were arguably never truly viable for anything. The only way to change your talents was to visit a class trainer and pay a sizeable fee. Click here for a talent calculator from patch 1.9
Then came The Burning Crusade, and 10 more levels meant 10 more talent points. Many talents were shifted around, some talents became base-line abilities, and new, arguably less-interesting talents were introduced as fillers. but in the end, all talent trees were extended by 10 points to make them 41 pts. deep with very desirable talents right at the bottom. This worked out fairly well, in my opinion. The trade-offs remained largely the same although the trade-offs between 41-pt talents and 21-pt talents were skewed more in favor of the 41-pt talent in most cases. You still needed to visit a trainer to change your talents, but the cost remained the same, and due to inflation, it was considerably cheaper. Click here for a patch 2.01 (TBC) talent calculator.
The next major update came with Wrath of the Lich King, and represents the pinnacle of talent bloat. By this time, players had 71 talent points to spend at max level. To keep players firmly rooted in a single tree, most very desirable talents were moved DEEP into the 51-pt talent trees, and most of the points at the top of the trees were under-whelming fluff. For max-level players, it worked fine, but at low levels, players didn't really feel like they were getting much out of their chosen talent trees until much further into the game. In patch 3.1, a dual specialization feature was introduced for players who had reached a certain level. For a one-time fee, players could set up a second specialization and were allowed to switch between the two any time they are out of combat. This was a welcome change for hybrid classes, as well as anyone who liked having different specs for things like PvE vs PvP content. While I can't verify exactly which patch it's from, there appears to be a pretty decent WoTLK talent calculator here.
With the launch of Cataclysm, the talent trees were pruned significantly to address the problem of talent bloat. Gone were the hit talents, range talents, any pretty much any talent that stated simply, "increases damage done with x ability by n%". Talents no one wanted were either cut, or combined with a more desirable talent. However, trimming talent trees back meant players wouldn't get as many points to spend. In fact, at level 85, players currently have fewer talent points to spend than ever: 41. Meanwhile, the introduction of the talent system to players reaching level 10 was vastly improved as well. Previously, a player reaching level 10 would earn a single talent point to spend in the talent tree of their choice, but that choice was just not very meaningful. In cataclysm, players are presented with the three talent trees and offered passive bonuses and one signature active-ability for each specialization. For example, a level 10 destruction warlock would learn Conflagrate, which means they are able to melt faces much earlier than ever before. One down-side of the current system is that players are now locked in to their talent tree of choice until they've spent 31 pts. (This kills the hybrid builds.) However, dual specialization still exists, and players can always visit a trainer to unlearn their talents. The current Cataclysm talent calculator can be found here.
Now, if you're like me, you might have thought the pruning that took place in Cataclysm was a signal that going forward the talent trees would be allowed to grow once again as leveling players would gain more talent points to spend. And if you did, you would be wrong. At Blizzcon 2011, developers announced and previewed a new talent system that is nothing like anything the game has ever seen. For starters, the talent trees are gone. In Mists of Pandaria, the choice players make at level 10 will largely determine the set of abilities, both active and passive, your character will learn as you level. This results in a couple of different effects. First, you'll be learning abilites that you may have traditionally skipped as talents. Second, your spellbook won't be cluttered with off-spec abilties you just don't need. Does an affliction warlock need to learn Incinerate if he'll never cast it? Blizzard's answer is "No."
But wait! That's not all. The talent system itself has been transformed into a series of SIX choices a player will make starting at level 15 based on their class. Every 15 levels, you will be presented with 3 talents to choose from which share a common theme. The level 15 choice may be about survivability, while at level 30 you may be choosing from 3 different forms of crowd control. It's important to note that most talents won't increase through-put, but rather are focused on utility and adapting to different types of content. In fact, developers have stated that they intend for the new talent system to be much more dynamic than the old talent trees - in that players would commonly go weeks or months without changing their talents for a given spec. Developers point to the way in which players currently swap glyphs as a model for the new talents. I personally suspect we'll see players swapping talents when moving from PvE to PvP content, and in raids I wouldn't be surprised to see many players swapping talents on an encounter by encounter basis. That's what I call compelling game-play. You can check out Blizzard's preview of the Mists of Pandaria talent system here.
Be mindful that the MoP talents and skills are still in development. In fact, they are pre-alpha. This doesn't mean they might change or they might not be finished. It means they WILL change and are NOT finished. Having looked over the ones for classes I play, I can tell they've still got quite a ways to go, but overall I'm pretty happy with the direction.
Share your thoughts about the WoW talent system - past, present, or future in the comments below!
Then came The Burning Crusade, and 10 more levels meant 10 more talent points. Many talents were shifted around, some talents became base-line abilities, and new, arguably less-interesting talents were introduced as fillers. but in the end, all talent trees were extended by 10 points to make them 41 pts. deep with very desirable talents right at the bottom. This worked out fairly well, in my opinion. The trade-offs remained largely the same although the trade-offs between 41-pt talents and 21-pt talents were skewed more in favor of the 41-pt talent in most cases. You still needed to visit a trainer to change your talents, but the cost remained the same, and due to inflation, it was considerably cheaper. Click here for a patch 2.01 (TBC) talent calculator. 
The next major update came with Wrath of the Lich King, and represents the pinnacle of talent bloat. By this time, players had 71 talent points to spend at max level. To keep players firmly rooted in a single tree, most very desirable talents were moved DEEP into the 51-pt talent trees, and most of the points at the top of the trees were under-whelming fluff. For max-level players, it worked fine, but at low levels, players didn't really feel like they were getting much out of their chosen talent trees until much further into the game. In patch 3.1, a dual specialization feature was introduced for players who had reached a certain level. For a one-time fee, players could set up a second specialization and were allowed to switch between the two any time they are out of combat. This was a welcome change for hybrid classes, as well as anyone who liked having different specs for things like PvE vs PvP content. While I can't verify exactly which patch it's from, there appears to be a pretty decent WoTLK talent calculator here.
Be mindful that the MoP talents and skills are still in development. In fact, they are pre-alpha. This doesn't mean they might change or they might not be finished. It means they WILL change and are NOT finished. Having looked over the ones for classes I play, I can tell they've still got quite a ways to go, but overall I'm pretty happy with the direction.
Share your thoughts about the WoW talent system - past, present, or future in the comments below!
Adventures of a future Pandaren.
The recent Blizzcon announcement of Pandaren as the new playable race in the next expansion really made me look forward to playing one, and I decided almost immediately that I would need to come up with a great Panda-inspired name and level a new character some time before the launch of Mists of Pandaria. (followed by the obligatory race change, of course.)
This is how Pandaid was born. Over the last few weeks, I've leveled a priest for the first time. This is also the first character I've leveled through the 1-60 zones since they were revamped. I was impressed. The old zones really do feel like new, cataclysm content. I thought the Looking-For-Dungeon system worked great, with quest givers in all the instances, and useful blue-quality loot from the Satchel of Helpful Goods you get at the end of each run. The Hero's Call boards are another perk I hadn't fully appreciated. Every time I finished questing in a zone, I could not only follow whatever bread-crumb quests I had picked up in that zone, but I could check the boards in the major cities for quests that would send me to other zones suitable for my level. This meant I could quest for five or ten levels and then run dungeons for five or ten levels, and no matter what level I was, the Hero's Call board would put me back on track.
So off I went, fully equipped with lots more spare time than someone by age should have and every experience-boosting heirloom I could get my hands on. I passed 60 within a week. Then I started queuing for Outland dungeons, and that's where I discovered the weaknesses of the LFD system. Sure, they still gave the Satchel of Helpful Goods, but there wasn't a single quest giver in any of the burning crusade dungeons. At one point, I was level 64 and had only completed Hellfire Peninsula. The only bread-crumb quest I had was for Zangarmarsh, and I knew that wasn't level-appropriate. I flew all around Shattrath looking for the Hero's Call board, but it seems there isn't one. No problem, I thought, I'll go back to Stormwind! No quests on that board, either. Indeed, I was on my own, as if I had actually gone back in time to an era where such amenities simply didn't exist.
So, as I write this, Pandaid is level 84, and I seem to have survived the TBC and WoTLK content, but I sure was happy to see that Hero's Call board light up again when I reached level 80. The thing is, I just can't shake the feeling that Blizzard really dropped the ball by not carrying those features across those 20 levels. I realize they're not make-or-break features; Clearly I made it to 80 on several toons before they even existed. However, if the absence of those features for those 20 levels made such an impression on me, a veteran wow player, I can't help but wonder what kind of impression is left on players who play through those levels for the first time.
One other small complaint I had with leveling is what I consider poorly thought out ability progression; Early on, and primarily only in dungeons, I had issues with running out of mana and having no way to regenerate it in combat. Also, I had no AoE ability at all until 62 (lol @ Holy Nova) and no meaningful AoE until I learned Mind Sear at 74! Obviously, every class (or spec even) will be different, so your mileage may vary.
Share your own panda-inspired names and/or your experiences with leveling post-cataclysm in the comments below!
This is how Pandaid was born. Over the last few weeks, I've leveled a priest for the first time. This is also the first character I've leveled through the 1-60 zones since they were revamped. I was impressed. The old zones really do feel like new, cataclysm content. I thought the Looking-For-Dungeon system worked great, with quest givers in all the instances, and useful blue-quality loot from the Satchel of Helpful Goods you get at the end of each run. The Hero's Call boards are another perk I hadn't fully appreciated. Every time I finished questing in a zone, I could not only follow whatever bread-crumb quests I had picked up in that zone, but I could check the boards in the major cities for quests that would send me to other zones suitable for my level. This meant I could quest for five or ten levels and then run dungeons for five or ten levels, and no matter what level I was, the Hero's Call board would put me back on track.
So off I went, fully equipped with lots more spare time than someone by age should have and every experience-boosting heirloom I could get my hands on. I passed 60 within a week. Then I started queuing for Outland dungeons, and that's where I discovered the weaknesses of the LFD system. Sure, they still gave the Satchel of Helpful Goods, but there wasn't a single quest giver in any of the burning crusade dungeons. At one point, I was level 64 and had only completed Hellfire Peninsula. The only bread-crumb quest I had was for Zangarmarsh, and I knew that wasn't level-appropriate. I flew all around Shattrath looking for the Hero's Call board, but it seems there isn't one. No problem, I thought, I'll go back to Stormwind! No quests on that board, either. Indeed, I was on my own, as if I had actually gone back in time to an era where such amenities simply didn't exist.
 |
| Pandaid cries in front of an unhelpful Hero's Call board. |
So, as I write this, Pandaid is level 84, and I seem to have survived the TBC and WoTLK content, but I sure was happy to see that Hero's Call board light up again when I reached level 80. The thing is, I just can't shake the feeling that Blizzard really dropped the ball by not carrying those features across those 20 levels. I realize they're not make-or-break features; Clearly I made it to 80 on several toons before they even existed. However, if the absence of those features for those 20 levels made such an impression on me, a veteran wow player, I can't help but wonder what kind of impression is left on players who play through those levels for the first time.
One other small complaint I had with leveling is what I consider poorly thought out ability progression; Early on, and primarily only in dungeons, I had issues with running out of mana and having no way to regenerate it in combat. Also, I had no AoE ability at all until 62 (lol @ Holy Nova) and no meaningful AoE until I learned Mind Sear at 74! Obviously, every class (or spec even) will be different, so your mileage may vary.
Share your own panda-inspired names and/or your experiences with leveling post-cataclysm in the comments below!
Just another WoW blog...
Hello, friends! ...and welcome to the new Deathonabun blog. This is now a World of Warcraft blog, so that's what my posts will be focusing on going forward, with the possibility of some Star Wars: The Old Republic commentary as well.
So, with that being said, let's go over what we can look forward to in the coming weeks in World of Warcraft. Well, primarily, I'm expecting patch 4.3 to be deployed on live servers on either November 29th, or December 6th. This will bring 3 new 5-player dungeons, a completely revamped Darkmoon Fair, and a new tier of raid content in the form of a raid called "The Dragon Soul," in which players will finally be dispatching the primary villain of the expansion, Deathwing. On the feature side, we'll be getting transmogrification, void storage, and a Looking-for-Raid system which will function much like the current Looking-for-Dungeon system but will offer a somewhat easier raiding experience than the more organized raiding you may be used to. The catch? (There's always a catch, right?) Well, the loot just won't be as powerful. Welfare epics, indeed. However, I think it may be a great way to gear your alts.
As for SW:TOR, it officially hits store shelves on December 20th, although players who have pre-orders will be invited to begin playing as early as 1 week in advance. Beta is still on-going, and yours truly will be taking a look at it this weekend. It seems this is the weekend where pretty much everyone who is interested in beta will be getting in because Bioware has shifted their focus from game-testing to stress-testing. That being said, I expect to see a game that will be virtually indistinguishable from the product they'll be shipping in a few weeks.
If there's something specific you would like to see on this blog, please let me know in the comments below. I'm open to covering anything from tips for beginners to advanced theory crafting. Just don't ask me about PvP. lol.
So, with that being said, let's go over what we can look forward to in the coming weeks in World of Warcraft. Well, primarily, I'm expecting patch 4.3 to be deployed on live servers on either November 29th, or December 6th. This will bring 3 new 5-player dungeons, a completely revamped Darkmoon Fair, and a new tier of raid content in the form of a raid called "The Dragon Soul," in which players will finally be dispatching the primary villain of the expansion, Deathwing. On the feature side, we'll be getting transmogrification, void storage, and a Looking-for-Raid system which will function much like the current Looking-for-Dungeon system but will offer a somewhat easier raiding experience than the more organized raiding you may be used to. The catch? (There's always a catch, right?) Well, the loot just won't be as powerful. Welfare epics, indeed. However, I think it may be a great way to gear your alts.
As for SW:TOR, it officially hits store shelves on December 20th, although players who have pre-orders will be invited to begin playing as early as 1 week in advance. Beta is still on-going, and yours truly will be taking a look at it this weekend. It seems this is the weekend where pretty much everyone who is interested in beta will be getting in because Bioware has shifted their focus from game-testing to stress-testing. That being said, I expect to see a game that will be virtually indistinguishable from the product they'll be shipping in a few weeks.
If there's something specific you would like to see on this blog, please let me know in the comments below. I'm open to covering anything from tips for beginners to advanced theory crafting. Just don't ask me about PvP. lol.
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