BlizzCon 2011: Screenshots of the new Pandaria talents for all classes {WoW}

Oct 23rd 2011 7:13PM This just looks to me like another extremely heavy-handed attempt by Blizzard to remove even more decision-making from character progression. Instead of actually providing several viable talents in each tree, and allowing people to pick from whatever tree they want (a la pre-Cataclysm WoW), they make nearly all all the decisions for you.

One of the things that I've always enjoyed about WoW was that the more you put into it, the more you got out of it. If you took the time to research your class, it would pay off.

Don't fool yourself. They're not giving people "unparalleled flexibility" when they only allow you to make six talent choices over the lifetime of your character; they're doing the exact opposite. This isn't about adding flexibility, it's about removing it and making things easier for the most casual players.

This is another step toward giving the illusion of equality, of dumbing things down so the people who take the time to learn game mechanics don't have any kind of edge over the people who don't. I'm sure there are a lot of people willing to support Blizzard in doing that, but I'm not one of them.