Jumping the gun
Guys, I have but one thing to say to you all today and it is this:
STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING
Yes, MMOChamp has “new” talent trees out so what do 99% of people seemingly think of this?
OMG THAT’S WHAT THE CATA TREES ARE GOING TO BE LIKE!!1
I’m baffled. This is not a new process that Blizzard has when it comes to developing talent trees. They start with a baseline, in our case that baseline is the existing talent trees currently live in WotLK, and then they iterate on that baseline THROUGHOUT THE ALPHA, BETA AND THE LIVE EXPANSION ITSELF.
The idea that these are “finished” talent trees or even mostly complete talent trees is ludicrous. They’re giving us an idea of how things are shaping in the alpha at the moment, that’s pretty much all. Remember that post I did a while back about the history and evolution of the Death Knight class? Of course not because you didn’t read it. That’s ok, I’ll go over the gist of it again.
This is what the talent trees looked like for Death Knights during the WotLK alpha.
This is what the talent trees looked like for Death Knights during the WotLK beta.
This is what the talent trees look like for Death Knights currently.
Do you get it? There’s a lot of changes between those three setups and there were many more changes in between them too. This is the process that ALL classes are going to be put through in the months ahead.
Stop assuming these new talent trees are anything close to what you’re going to see the first day of Cata. They’re not. At the moment they’re pretty roughshod with only minor initial changes. THESE TALENT TREES ARE GOING TO CHANGE DRASTICALLY. So drastically, all your conclusions about what you’re seeing right now will be completely irrelevant.
Really, all this shows us is how much work they have yet to do to get Cata ready for even the beta testing.
You’re getting a look at an evolving organism. Don’t mistake it for anything else.
Hey, even if that’s not exactly what the talents will be like, that doesn’t mean we can’t express an opinion. :P
And when this kind of stuff is released with comments that say that these are the “most complete” of the revised talent trees, it does kind of make you expect a little more…
Shintar´s last blog ..Confused by the priest talent preview
[Reply]
Shayzani Reply:
June 10th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Opinions are fine, I just can’t fathom the folk who genuinely believe that these talent trees are the finished product and are already doing theorycrafting on them.
Also yes, you do have a very solid point. The blues could have done a lot better job of explaining what they were giving us with these.
[Reply]
Shintar
10 Jun 10 at 4:25 pm
If no one does theorycrafting and debate on the current talent trees, Blizzard will not know what to change. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty certain Blizzard is more than happy to let the public rant and rave and yes, theorycraft everything concerning the talents, so that they can then make changes according to the results.
If they didn’t WANT us to rant and rave, they wouldn’t have released them. I’m 100% sure they were fully expecting the massive crying after two expansions of experience.
Honestly, your post is much ado about nothing. The more people are crying about it simply means the more feedback is given to Blizzard. What else would you want the public to do? To sit around and let BAD TALENTS go live because the entire time they were thinking QUIETLY “Oh, they’ll fix it before it goes live”? To NOT do theorycrafting so that things that don’t scale or are imbalanced in subtle ways DO go live and aren’t discovered until 2 weeks into the new arena season?
I say, bring on the cries, the more the better.
[Reply]
Shayzani Reply:
June 11th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
First, thanks for commenting.
Blizzard isn’t wholly dependent on its players to make their game for them. Blizzard will know quite a great deal about what to change on their own. I’m not trying to marginalize the much needed contribution from players but Blizzard isn’t clueless about these things either.
Blizzard has been trending towards much more openness and sharing more information of late so releasing these drafts doesn’t seem entirely out of character for them. However, very little has actually changed with these talent trees and they all still have the % modifier buffs that Blizzard has said countless times its for sure going to be removing from the talent trees. No passive mastery bonuses were included or taken into effect either.
This means that Blizzard already has planned massive changes to even these newly released trees which severely undercuts any theorycrafting from players.
All I’m saying is that theorycrafting on these specific trees as currently released is as productive as building sand castles underwater. Wait until they do the big things they’ve said for sure they’re going to do before we break out the calculators. If those changes don’t come, then raise a stink about it.
Much ado about nothing? I’d say that sums up all the player input on these talent builds very neatly.
[Reply]
Anonymous
11 Jun 10 at 7:09 am
i’m all for discussing the talent previews and finding glaring errors in them. Maybe a bit more of this would have prevented some players from being able to solo razuvious at wrath launch. Hopefully that line of thing won’t repeat itself with cataclysm.
i do think it’s ridiculous to get worked up over them though, or to theory craft when we know they’re not the full story yet and have the wrong numbers. That’s just stupid.
[Reply]
Latusthegoat
12 Jun 10 at 11:55 am
You never comment on my blog anymore. And I thought we were friends.
Woah 19 comments last post. I guess you are too famous for me now. D:
Jamie´s last blog ..Monday Morning Memory
[Reply]
Jamie
14 Jun 10 at 10:14 am