Why WoW's New Talent System is Better than the Old One

I just got World of Warcraft's new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, a couple days ago for the age old reason that my friends were playing it and I didn't want to be alone.

I've yet to experience any of the post-level 85 content, but I absolutely love the new talent system.



For anyone who isn't familiar with the game, here's some background.

This is an image of the talent system circa WoW's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King:

Image of old talent tree taken from www.gamestool.net

The old system rewarded players at every level up with a skill point that could be spent in their skill tree. The trees were split into three, each relating to one of three specializations of the character class.

This is the new system as of WoW's fourth and most current expansion, Mists of Pandaria:

Image of new talent calculator taken from www.wowhead.com

The new system seems a lot simpler, allowing you a one of the three specializations for you class (the warrior in this case) directly at level 10. The specialization choice determines some of the skills you will unlock, both immediately and as you level up. Every 15 levels, you are allowed to pick one of three talents from the current tier. These talents are determined by class and are not affected by specialization.

There have been many player complaints about the "simplification" or "dumbing down" of this change, but what this overhaul really did is change the system from an illusion of choice to a system with actual, meaningful choice. People complain that there is less choice than before, but there is actually a whole lot more.

Before, you got a point to spend every level, yeah, but most of those points had a negligible impact on the way you played--many of the nodes of the tree increased some kind of statistic by a single percent per point. Aside from the choice of specialization, there was pretty much only one "right" way to spend your points. Any minor, still-viable variation on that was, again, mostly negligible.

Now, every time you make a choice, it has a very noticeable impact on your gameplay, For the most part, there aren't any "right" choices, so it feels much more like you're customizing your character in a meaningful way, and it personally makes me feel a lot more unique.

I guess some people still just prefer the illusion of "more points to spend = more customization", but once you see through that, the new system is much better.

It was such a beautiful moment for me when, while reading up on the most effective spell rotation for arcane mages post-MoP, one of the steps was along the lines of "use the bomb spell of your choice". That's never happened before in WoW. For the first time, there is actual choice, even if it's small.
Some people complain that your picks "don't matter" because they're all good, but I much prefer having 54 "good" choices (6 talent tiers x 3 options per tier x 3 specializations) to having only 3 "good" choices (3 specializations, not a lot of real choice in point placement).