PVPlab

There’s been a lot of buzzing on the Warcraft forums recently as it related to expansion talents. The topics and gripes are fairly wide ranging, everything from the supposed domination by retribution paladins (wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh air?) to mage talents being by and large awful (if you’d like to form an opinion for yourself, you can check out the new end-game fire talent, living bomb, here). One issue in particular that caught my eye was the possible addition of the expansion talent trees before Wrath of the Lich King is released, much like they did with The Burning Crusade. The decision hasn’t officially been made yet, but a Blizzard Community Moderator did hint that its a distinct possibility:

We haven’t stated this as of yet, so it wasn’t me. I have said that it is a possibility much like Burning Crusade, but I can’t confirm this for you at this time. When the time comes, we’ll be letting everyone know more details about our plans.

The response from the playerbase has been mixed. On one hand I think everyone is pretty excited to get a look at the talents and put them to use as soon as possible. On the other, many have voiced concerns that releasing the talents early would be a bad idea on a number of fronts:

• Knee-jerk Nerfs: Many players (a surprising number of paladins..hmm) have made the case that releasing the talents early could give the wrong impression when it comes to how well the talents are balanced. This makes some sense, I suppose, given that level 80 gear will undoubtedly be higher in stats like stamina, maybe resilience, etc. A talent may seem like its really over the top in level 70 gear, but will mitigate out as players gear up and reach the next level cap.
• PvP Balance: If you were around when The Burning Crusade talents were first released, pvp became a “LAWL BOOM HEADSHOT” fest. Talents that were obviously tailored to the much higher health pools that the expansion made available reigned supreme. It was frustrating to play a squishy class during that time. Blizzard, however, has stated that the steep itemization differences between classic WoW and Burning Crusade will not be as harsh with Wrath. Couple that with the obvious itemization improvements since then (much higher health, the addition of resilience), and I think that Blizzard could safely release the talents without completely destroying pvp as it stands now. That said I’d still expect some imbalance and/or an increased speed of death when and if the new talents arrive.
• Delayed Gratification: Shockingly, many players don’t want the expansion talents to be released yet because they belong with the expansion. They want to be surprised, to be able to take in the new surroundings, quests, game mechanics, and of course, talents. Getting the talents early would ruin some of the “wow” experience you get when playing a new game/expansion for the first time, or so I’m told.

So what about you, readers? Do you believe we should get it over with and let the talents out now, or should we wait to the more controlled environment of the expansion to unleash the hell that will undoubtedly follow?