Took me a bit longer to get around to finish my series on Blizzcon’11 (after The Good, and The So-So). That’s mostly because I had little time to think about the points I liked least, and I wanted to give them some thought so I’d not be ranting without any substance.

I had a couple more points, but I cut it down to two which are most important to me, to give the post some more focus. Both of them have either-or problems, where I can see two possibilities of how they end up, and I like neither nor.

Yet Another Revamp of Talents

Talent choices in a game like WoW can be either meaningful, or interesting. If they’re meaningful, that means there is a difference in the choices. If there is a difference in choices, there will be a best option for each situation or spec. If there is a best option, choice stops being interesting.

I’ve seen people talk a lot about choices, but I have not seen anybody come up with a good idea how to make choices both meaningful and interesting. What I’ve seen at Blizzcon is a try to trade a bit of meaningful for interesting. I think they are on the best way achieve neither in the process.

WoWkémon

Either this ends up badly tacked on, like EQ’s Legends of Norrath. I’m sure there are LoN players and I’m just not in the right community, but all I’ve ever seen is people getting their monthly free boosters for loot cards, which are generally some fluff item. Nothing against fluff items, they work fine in EQ. I’m not sure how well they’d work in today’s WoW, though. Housing is a great fluff sink. However, Blizzard might profit if they sell premium pets with better stats in their shop. Though that would probably annoy pet collectors.

Or this becomes an integral part of WoW. I’d rather not have a pet raid boss. Or, even worse, an extension of their announced quest model (“finishing a [daily] quest might give you a buff for the day”) where you better do 5 pet battles before the raid because it will give you a certain buff.