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At GDC 2011, Tom Chilton gave a speech to fellow game developers, sharing some of the lessons learned from Cataclysm and some things they should watch out for.  In particular, he warned of the problems that came of the talent system – bloat, illusion of choice, confusion for new players… he said that if he were to do it again, he’d like a system similar to Modern Warfare 2‘s  perks.  I’ve never played MW2, so I can’t say whether that’s a good system or not – but I think first I’d like to ask whether the problems with the current system are really that bad.

To address the simple ones first:

• Bloat: Yes, there was a lot of bloat, and there could be in the future.  But that was a result of Blizzard adding a talent point with every level with the two new expansions; that’s not something they have to do.  Nor do they have to add new talents to the bottom of the tree – they could just as easily move sideways.
• Confusion: A player now has 10 levels before they have to worry about talents at all, and until level 70 before they have to worry about multiple trees.  There are very few talents that are not good for PvE, and they’re easy to spot and avoid.  You should know your class pretty well before you have to worry about choosing “the best” spec.

And that brings us to his other point – the “illusion of choice”.  The crux of his argument is simple: Theorycrafters find the mathematically superior combination of talents for a simulated boss fight, and then the vast majority of people just use that.

I don’t disagree that that happens – but is it a problem?  First off, simply choosing to use that spec IS a choice.  That spec is not always best, regardless of simulated fights; choosing to use it means eschewing anything tailored to fight-specifics in order to make something that works well most of the time.  It also means you’re focusing on raid-length fights, rather than dungeons.  Not to mention PvP…

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At this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, Tom Chilton, one of Blizzard’s lead designers, talked about sequels – specifically, Cataclysm.  He covered his favorite zone revamp (Westfall), his least favorite (Desolace), and the talent bloat issue Cataclysm tried to address.  The talent portion will get its own post, but I first want to talk about Desolace.

In classic WoW, Desolace was one of the least popular zones in the game.  It was big, mostly empty, grey, with lots of disconnected pieces in different parts of the zone.  There was no real overarching storyline to be found, other than that this zone was dying.  It felt like a zone that, if you were to turn the clock forward a few years, would just be completely barren, the last few bits of life in the zone having given in to inevitability.

But then, when the clock actually was turned forward a few years, we find a Desolace that has been partially reclaimed.  It’s not dead – far from it.  It’s recovering; there’s life.  I don’t know whether the storyline is more cohesive or not, as I haven’t quested through the zone yet – but having flown over, and done some archaeology there, you can see the difference.

Tom Chilton’s problem with the revamp is that “desolate” and “flourishing with new life” clearly don’t go together.  The revamp removed what was the core of the zone – the gray, dead feel.  He would rather they have taken the feel of the zone to the next level; reinforce its identity, rather than change it.

The reason I’m glad Blizzard went the way they did is pretty simple – the identity of the zone was a large part of the reason players, including myself, didn’t like it.  Doubling down on that would just have intensified the dislike.  Yes, Desolace lost what made it so different from other zones, but what made it different also made it bad, so that’s good!

If Warhammer Online taught me anything (other than that it’s important to keep expectations realistic), it’s that immersion isn’t always good.  If you’re immersed in unpleasantness, you’re not going to enjoy yourself.  So, I say bring on the green, and maybe I won’t have to avoid Desolace on the next character I level.