I don’t envy the World of Warcraft development team. They’ve got a
population of 10+ million players to please, a relentless stream of
expansion packs and patches to deliver, and a vast array of content to
refresh and balance. It’s a hard job. Right now – they’re taking on one
of the hardest jobs possible: introducing fundamental change to the core
mechanics of the game – the talent system – in an attempt to improve
it.The new talent system let you assign points into a tree of abilities every level or so. Instead, you’re given a menu of abilities that unlock at pre-defined intervals, and at those intervals you’ll pick one from three. It feels, immediately, less RPG-y that by not assigning points every level (or in Cata, every other level) you’re making less choices. But, I do agree with Ghostcrawler who pointed out in his blog that “you will have more choices that *matter*.”
