To me combat is king for MMO's

I'm going to say it.   The dismantling of the beloved talent trees and all the depth and complexiity that goes with it, being replaced with basically a linear character skill system hints towards a new game exerience combat model that shall we say didnt go over so well for another  company.

I cant imaging blizzard changing the talent tree so radically without also removing all the nuances that made each class challenging and allowing the best players to allways have some trick up their sleeve.

It was the depth of the talent tree system the allowed the spells and abilities to be unique and fun, without all those ittle tweaks I'm imagining a much more simpfied an boring combat experience.  Just stuff like higer crit chance, more endurance etc.  But probably worded like "More kick assness rank 1"  "Evenmore kick assnes rank 2" or "You are harder to kil rank 1" "You are even harder to kill rank 2"

We shall see.

I understand your frustration, but this change is not really comparable to the NGE. The NGE removed / destroyed entire classes, completely changed the combat system, did not fix any bugs existing since launch, etc., etc. It essentially tried to change a mostly sandbox game to a mostly thempark game (in a nutshell).

Dood you've obviously not looked at any of the info on these changes.

NGE? Really? *double-face-palm-and-groan*

I'd not call any one thing the NGE of wow but the many over the last few years and whats coming sure does come close to the feel of killing the game off.

I started playing wow after CU/NGE hit loved it up to cata witch was the end of it for me:( WOWcrack is dead  long live TORcrack lol

lol Depth of the talent tree system?

No matter what ever since the game was out theres always basically been one single "valid" build for each class type with maybe 1 or 2 very subtle differences.

I like what theyre doing.

A talent revamp =/= surprise game reset.

Imagine waking up one day and your <insert class here> is now compeltely deleted from the game, a few days after buying an expansion THAT HAD JUST EXPANDED THAT CLASSES CONTENT, as well as the content from the rest of the game. 

All gone. 

Everything you earned. Trained. Accomplished.

And all you got in return was the brand new ability to glow like Obi-wan's ghost on a new character.

Talk about being trolled...

(And no I didn't really play SWG, but I read about what happened and I can only say that it sounded absolutely horrible)

Starwars Galaxies STILL retained more depth than WoW after the NGE, and the NGE was done to make SWG more like WoW.  So the fact that Blizzard is trying to make their game even more simplified is somewhat hilarious to me...

Although I have become really addicted lately to Realm of the Mad God and I find its simplicity refreshing so I can't talk too much shit.  That has more to do with the permadeath though, something WoW would never do. 

I support what WoW is doing.  Complexity should not be arbitrary, and in WoW it was/is (as far as talent tree goes).  The complexity of the talent trees was not benefiting anyone.  It was complex for complex-sake.  This is not the case in SWG, its complexity was really interesting and made combat pretty fun.  It just needed some balancing and instead they destroyed it.

Originally posted by Teh_Axi

Dood you've obviously not looked at any of the info on these changes.

Unfortunately I have, and all Ive seen is a "greatly" simplified version of hte existing talent tree,   With global imporvements to stats and abilities.    In my opinion they have turned chess into checkers.

And for the other poster who said dude everyone had the same spec before, your fooling yourself if you think this will make things any different.  You want class diversity?   Its not coming from Wow,

If you ask me its the start of a menu revamp for a console port...........

Originally posted by Puuk

NGE? Really? *double-face-palm-and-groan*

Welcome to mmorpg.com. You will get used to exxageration and hyperbole soon ;)

I know that folks are treating it like the OP is talking about MoP... but I'm kind of wondering if the OP just played Cata for the first time.

Originally posted by wormywyrm

Starwars Galaxies STILL retained more depth than WoW after the NGE, and the NGE was done to make SWG more like WoW.  So the fact that Blizzard is trying to make their game even more simplified is somewhat hilarious to me...

Although I have become really addicted lately to Realm of the Mad God and I find its simplicity refreshing so I can't talk too much shit.  That has more to do with the permadeath though, something WoW would never do. 

I support what WoW is doing.  Complexity should not be arbitrary, and in WoW it was/is (as far as talent tree goes).  The complexity of the talent trees was not benefiting anyone.  It was complex for complex-sake.  This is not the case in SWG, its complexity was really interesting and made combat pretty fun.  It just needed some balancing and instead they destroyed it.

you call wows system complex are you kidding me. but at least you could mess around a little bit there people who like tryin to find unique builds not just cookie cutter.

What they have basicly done is given you the cookiecutter build. The talents are now things you can choose from to diversify yourself and adapt to situations easier. You will appearently be able to switch around talents easily to allow you to choose different ones for different encounters etc. There will most likely be optimal builds anyway, but that is going to be the case any way you slice it. The point is, now you can choose talents however you want and still perform well. Theorycrafting is not going away though, but elitist jerks will at least have no need to complain about people not going with the optimal builds.

Originally posted by Puuk

NGE? Really? *double-face-palm-and-groan*

Originally posted by Zoulz

What they have basicly done is given you the cookiecutter build. The talents are now things you can choose from to diversify yourself and adapt to situations easier. You will appearently be able to switch around talents easily to allow you to choose different ones for different encounters etc. There will most likely be optimal builds anyway, but that is going to be the case any way you slice it. The point is, now you can choose talents however you want and still perform well. Theorycrafting is not going away though, but elitist jerks will at least have no need to complain about people not going with the optimal builds.

You had the choice not to play with those kind of people.

Used to have choice...choice is important.  Even the illusion of choice.  It is why the Architect said the first versions of the Matrix failed... :)

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by Zoulz

What they have basicly done is given you the cookiecutter build. The talents are now things you can choose from to diversify yourself and adapt to situations easier. You will appearently be able to switch around talents easily to allow you to choose different ones for different encounters etc. There will most likely be optimal builds anyway, but that is going to be the case any way you slice it. The point is, now you can choose talents however you want and still perform well. Theorycrafting is not going away though, but elitist jerks will at least have no need to complain about people not going with the optimal builds.

You had the choice not to play with those kind of people.

Used to have choice...choice is important.  Even the illusion of choice.  It is why the Architect said the first versions of the Matrix failed... :)

Oh, I doubt elitists are going anywhere. They will find new things to complain about, i'm sure. :) So that choice is probably not going to go away. Although I wouldn't mourn if it did.

But if we are going into a more philosophical discussion, i'd say there is actually no choice at all, since chance is a lie. Everything happens for a reason. If you throw a dice on the table, the outcome is in fact not random at all. How it lands has everything to do with the natural law of physics. Everything is very complex though, so things seem to happen randomly.

You know, I plyed WoW since it was out for four months, non stop, on a single character.

A mage and I played fire, frost, and arcane for several years each, and you know what, that the idea that  there is a single 'cookie cutter' build is complete BS. Even in the most cookie cutter build there are leftover points that you can do what you want with.

And if you cruise over to talentchic.com you might notice more than one build per tree.

So quit trying to defend crap with bullshit.

Originally posted by snapfusion

If you ask me its the start of a menu revamp for a console port...........

Lmao, wow very subtle . . 

It's sad that I find myself defending WoW when I'm as critical as they come of it. You're definitely fooling yourself if you think that the new talent tree system is more simplified. It has fewer skills, but far more customization. Go figure.

Currently, no matter what class you pick, there's always a single build to optimize your pidgeonholed spec. There were those large clinch spells that everyone got all of and the only thing you were sacrificing were extremely small stat bonuses and you'd only end up with a few of those un-spec'd.

If you spent more than 3 seconds looking at the new system, you'd know that the it allows you to have many different choices in the same spec. They made it so the intervals at which you do get to choose a new talent will be a defining skills that is visually unique and very distinctive in gameplay.

With the system now, at a certain level, you know exactly what skills a DPS-cat has. With the new system, that DPS-cat can have one out of three possible defining characteristics that distinguishes it's playstyle and approach to combat.

I don't know why people keep defending the current talent point system. It's so bad. All these "choices" but only 1 makes sense because you only have 1 role to fulfill in a dungeon or PvP. And comparing it to NGE was just dumb...

How exactly were talent trees complex?  Everypne had exactly the same build minus one or two points. How the hell is that complexity