Wow has lost its touch. Is cata responsible?

[lightstriker]

Wrath and Cata is really about Climate Change. Northrend is an analogy for the arctics. Deathwing is about the massive earthquake of the last few years. The Barrens are California and Arizona forest fires that happens every other year.

Less political subtext and more pew pew plz Bizz.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I actually like the talent trees a lot. Putting a few points in another tree or talent can make a massive difference.

For example on the frost dk. You can spec into a 1 minute strangulate combined with easier runic power generation, or you can spec into improved diseases with desecration, with or without rime. The way you play the spec is quite different.

Same goes for elemental shamans. You spec into instant ghostwolf or you skip it and take some resto talents which give you very decent defensive abilities? Those are quite important choices the current talent tree offers.

Funny, we had those exact same talent tree options as you mention in 3.x but with a lot more options for unique spec choices. I fail to see how the 4.0 talents actually improved anything for the players aside from making it harder for tards to pick specs that do nothing well without understanding why.

[thefunk]

Funny, we had those exact same talent tree options as you mention in 3.x but with a lot more options for unique spec choices. I fail to see how the 4.0 talents actually improved anything for the players aside from making it harder for tards to pick specs that do nothing well without understanding why.

A good example of which was the warlock PvP SL/SL spec which didn't require the top talent in either demon or afflic. That kind of experimentation is all gone. The other idea would be to choose your spec (Fury), which would automatically allocate new talents as you level for the 1st 31 points, and then have 10 points you can allocate elsewhere and save everyone time.

Or instead introduce magicite and allocate those to your armor and then learn spells which form part of that magicite. (5 internet points to anyone who gets the analogy)

I reckon they are designing WoW to cater for people that wear boxing gloves permanently. Or play with their faces.

[zenga]

Funny, we had those exact same talent tree options as you mention in 3.x but with a lot more options for unique spec choices. I fail to see how the 4.0 talents actually improved anything for the players aside from making it harder for tards to pick specs that do nothing well without understanding why.

My response was to thefunk his statement about *restrictive* and not being able to customize your char through talents. I just gave an example of why I think we still have meaningful choices, but I didn't say anything about it being better/worse than in the past.

[Mercbeast]

Really, it's the community that has progressively gone downward over the years.

Vanilla WoW was by far the best for community. You spent days in each zone going through quests and levels, and frequently grouped with others because every zone had *group quests* to complete. You formed groups for instances through communication, and common courtesy was helpful in making friends - especially if you wanted future people to group with.

Again, it's the community that's the problem.

First, it was the freebie epics handed out through BGs. Why communicate and work with people in the PvE world if you can solo berserk some BGs for purples?

Next, it was the freebie epics handed out through badges. Why bother trying to get that elusive drop when you can just grind the easiest instance for X number of badges to buy your freebie epic?

Finally, it was the dungeon finder tool. Why bother communicating at all with people on your own server when you can join a random cross-realm group, act like a total ass, and take your loot and run when you're done because you know you won't ever talk to those people again?

Blizzard killed the community of WoW with one instant gratification implementation after another.

The loss of community isn't related to gear. It is related to battle groups and that stuff. WoW has become essentially a single player game you just happen to play with other people. Who or what is on your server doesn't matter anymore because you don't play with them in BG's you don't group with them in dungeons. With server transfers there is no accountability. If you did something dickish, you got black listed from all the top guilds. Only recourse was to reroll.

It is a double edged sword unfortunately. For a game like WoW, a thriving server doesn't need the battle groups and what not and the experience is going to be fantastic. For a server that is not thriving, the experience is dramatically impacted by lack of population and then battlegroups actually help that server.

You're right about the instant gratification bit. This is a symptom of that instant gratification momentum and in WoW style MMO's it is firmly entrenching itself.

This is all an evolution really. Going back to the very first diku style MMO with EQ, the progression has been away from depth and difficulty to gratification and ease of use. I personally can't wait for a big company to buck the trend and make a solid, well supported Sand-boxy FFA PvP game.

[Akoko]

Funny, we had those exact same talent tree options as you mention in 3.x but with a lot more options for unique spec choices. I fail to see how the 4.0 talents actually improved anything for the players aside from making it harder for tards to pick specs that do nothing well without understanding why.

I have to disagree with you there. The new talent trees are probably the best thing to ever happen to WoW, if you discount the fact that true hybrid specs don't exist anymore. That was a loss in some ways for really unique specs like SL/SL, Restokin, arcane-frost shatter (makes PoM+Pyro look like a tame little rabbit), elementalist mage (widest array of stuns & instant cast spells), and dual-wielding spellpower weapons ele shaman (was nerfed pretty quickly). Blizzard argues that these hybrid specs are very difficult to balance and keep in check without affecting the two trees that they draw talents from.

But the bottom line is, every talent point counts for so much more than it did in Wrath. And you can't deny that the levelling process is so much more streamlined and fun now that you actually adopt the playstyle of your spec right at level 10, instead of needing to wait until level 40 to dual wield as an enhancement shaman, for example. And every time I respec I don't want to have to click 70 or 80 individual talent points in.

I raid hardmodes with my guild single-box during 3 weekdays and I respec multiple times per night. As a RESTO druid. And resto druids are one of those specs considered to have the smallest amount of choice. But if I want to play to my best and rank in the top 100 for World of Logs for each fight, every single talent point makes a massive difference and I often respec between fights. The trade-off is very often between utility and throughput, which is definitely a sign of excellent game design. This coolness is compounded even further for multiboxers, as we can sometimes discount utility talents depending on how our characters work together. For example, do I really need Fungal Growth on every one of my 5 boomkins? Perhaps I'll take Owlkin Frenzy and Perserverance on my main Boomkin so he can soak more hits and keep aggro. When have I really needed 5 Solar Beams? Perhaps I can use these points to min/max the damage of my slaves. Granted, my Boomkin team is only level 45 right now but the talent trees are already keeping things exciting.

I raided throughout BC and WotLK as several different classes and I can't remember a single time where I had to choose between utility and throughput.

Blizzard got many things wrong with Cataclysm. But the updated talent trees definitely isn't one of them.

[Tonuss]

I have mixed feelings about the talent tree changes. On the one hand, it cleaned them up a bit; selecting 1/1 in a talent for a 5% buff versus having to select 5/5 for the same buff is pretty reasonable. Especially since a lot of builds made it a no-brainer to take those five points. It also has the benefit of keeping less-informed players from making truly bad builds by restricting their options. I think it's a lot harder to make a really awful build now, maybe impossible.

On the other hand, it really took away a fun part of the game, where you had more freedom to try out a pretty insane spec or to otherwise experiment. By drastically reducing our choices, you wind up with a cookie-cutter spec whether you want to or not. There's just not much room for improvisation anymore. You can make some good/bad choices with the last ten points, but laying out your main tree is pretty obvious.

I think that overall it's a net positive. Combined with gear simplification and limitations, it reduces the number of ways that a random player can screw up. But for players who know the game well, and bother to research their class or just like to experiment, it can take away a lot of the fun. A game that makes it harder to fail can also make it harder to excel.