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Bashiok on choice and complexity
It's not a secret that a lot of change is coming to Warlords of Draenor and WoW, and not all of us are sanguine about all of it. Enter Bashiok, the man, the demonic evil tree avatar, with a forum post about the nature of choice and how it informs complexity in our gaming. Bashiok's point about interesting choices vs. choices for the sake of having more choices is one that is worth discussing. There's complexity that comes from the interaction of options, and complexity that descends from an overwhelming variety of options. In the past, Blizzard has always tried to err on the side of lesser, more interesting choices as opposed to more choices that aren't necessarily choices at all. One need look no further than the change in Mists of Pandaria to our talent system. We lost talents that added things like 1/2/3% crit and gained decisions. Not everyone liked that change, but it's worthwhile to keep in mind when looking at future changes that happen. There's a lot of complexity in modern WoW that evolved over time as new systems were introduced, but not all of this complexity is based on meaningful options and gameplay. As we get closer to Warlords of Draenor, we're going to lose some of this evolved complexity, in order to clear out some room for more choices that matter. For the full text of Bashiok's post, click on through to the other side.
17 Blizzard employees to follow on Twitter
It's no secret that we here @WoWInsider love Twitter. But what you might not know is that Blizzard loves Twitter as well. Not only does it have @Warcraft, @StarCraft, @Diablo, and @BlizzardCS accounts, but their friendly blue posters and other leading figures are on Twitter as well, just waiting for you to follow them and find out what's being served for lunch at the Irvine campus. (Actually, we haven't heard about that yet ... We need some pics of what a Blizzard lunch looks like, @TalkingCongas!) Blizzard has confirmed to us that all of these accounts belong to the individuals associated with them and are not fakes (and that they are all OK with being posted publicly). Further, what these employees say on Twitter is not endorsed by Blizzard. Sometimes they might talk about things related to WoW, while other times it could be something completely unrelated. Please also be respectful of these people's accounts. Don't pepper them asking for invites to a beta, and so on. It's not going to happen, and no one likes to be bugged about such things. That said, follow away and enjoy some nice insight into @ChrisMetzen's WoW playing. The full list after the break.
Bashiok explains why the MoP talent calculator is out already
Blizzard unveiled the new talent calculator for Mists of Pandaria last night. Instead of making a talent point decision every few levels, you'll now be able to choose from a handful of really cool abilities. This really makes your decisions more relevant. The old system had more illusion of choice, but didn't we all take pretty much the same talents? In the new MoP system, every choice will make a notable playstyle difference. Of course, Mists of Pandaria is a long time away. We've got an entire content patch to get through first. Bashiok hit the forums today to explain why the talent calculator is available so early. He points out that these talent trees are definitely going to change; we're still in a pre-alpha stage of development. Since many of those changes will happen in response to player feedback, getting the dialog started early is a good thing. More importantly, the hope is that by revealing the early talents, players can get a better idea of the design philosophy behind changes. Whether you dig those reasons or not, we're all clearly very excited to get our hands on the talents. Check out what Bashiok said behind the cut.
