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Ghostcrawler talks tanks and threat
Hey everyone, having fun in those heroics yet? In my own personal (PUG) experiences, things go wrong far more often than they go right. While healer longevity is a major issue, effective crowd control and threat management is growing to be another. Some tanks are just ill-equipped to handle generating threat on supercharged mobs, and some DPSers are just unable to understand the basic rules of threat -- or ignore those rules entirely. Perhaps it's timely, then, that Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street posted a blog entry about Blizzard's philosophy with regard to threat. The piece is something of a follow up to his previous blog entry on Vengeance and threat. A few of the key takeaways of his latest post include: Threat Needs to Matter "We don't think it's too much to ask for DPS and healers to wait a couple of GCDs for the tank to get the enemy under control ..." "... if someone is nuking or cleaving a random target on a group pull instead of assisting the tank, that's not the tank's fault." "... overall, we'd like to present threat better since we're asking you to take it seriously in the PvE game." source The post, "Threat Needs to Matter," is worth reading regardless of whether you're a tank or not. The full text is after the break.
Ghostcrawler explains tanking with a vengeance
Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) had some very interesting tidbits of information and explanations on the new tanking mechanic vengeance in a recent blog post on the new World of Warcraft community website. Vengeance is a new passive ability that all properly specced tanks receive, which converts damage taken into an attack power bonus to make sure that tank threat scales with the increasing power of DPS. Ghostcrawler admits that as with all new mechanics, there is much tweaking still to happen to Vengeance. He explains that the ability has been implemented to give tanks the tools needed to retain threat, but not do the job for them. One interesting point that Ghostcrawler makes is that Blizzard and the designers strive for a healthy balance between the mechanics making tanking possible and players' ability to successfully hold threat. All in all, this is a great post, and I hope for much more from Ghostcrawler like this. I love the systems design posts and rationales behind gameplay design, especially when it covers my role of choice. Check out the whole article on the new community blog. And, Mr. Street, as for that dinosaur -- screenshots or it didn't happen. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Ghostcrawler shares DPS spec design philosophy for Cataclysm
From time to time, we find an interesting forum discussion that manages to elucidate how the past informs the present and future -- specifically, how the design of Wrath of the Lich King has inspired Cataclysm's systems. Poster Klissa asks an interesting question about four specs known to be the bottom-of-the-barrel DPS specs during most of this expansion: the arms warrior, frost mage, subtlety rogue and beast mastery hunter. Klissa asks why, since Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) has posted on the forums that Blizzard has known for a while that these four specs just weren't cutting it, that they weren't buffed to be made competitive. As we've come to expect him to, Ghostcrawler responds with a fairly in-depth answer. He covers the difficulty of balancing two or more specs in a class that fulfill the same role and how this experience in Wrath of the Lich King helped guide Blizzard in its systems overhaul for Cataclysm.
Encrypted Text: BlizzCon news for patient rogues
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. This week, I'll be sharing my report from BlizzCon 2010 for rogues. As a member of our shadowy brotherhood, my duty to investigate and report on the rogue class is never over. Even though I was enjoying the festivities at BlizzCon 2010 and testing out the new demon hunter class in Diablo 3, I still made time to take care of business. The class Q&A panel is one of the best places to communicate directly with the WoW development team, and so I staked my place in line before the prior panel had even ended. When my turn finally came, I had to first pay my respects to the developers. I had asked them at the prior year's BlizzCon if we would ever see a Vanish fix implemented, and Ghostcrawler avoided promising anything. Fast-forward a year and we finally have a Vanish that I'm proud to call my own. I opened my time by giving them their much-deserved thanks. I then took the opportunity to ask about something near and dear to my heart: off-hand weapon speeds. Axes and daggers were simply never meant to be used at the same time. Their art styles don't even match!
The Light and How to Swing It: BlizzCon paladin info roundup
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. So this is pretty much going to be a collection of blurbs from the BlizzCon 2010 class Q&A panel. Some questions that were asked throughout the day were things that have come up in the past, but others had new information that hadn't even hit the beta servers yet. The panel members from left to right consisted of Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street (WoW lead systems designer), Kris Zierhut (WoW senior technical game designer), Owen Landgren (WoW game designer), Ion Hazzikostas (WoW game designer) and Chris Kaleiki (WoW associate game designer). I went back and tried to do a much more thorough job at transcribing the information than we do in our live blogs (because none of us can type as fast as Ghostcrawler speaks). Also, I've added a "too long didn't read" (TLDR) version of each question at the beginning for those of you who don't read the whole post before commenting. For the rest of you, there is a full transcript as well as links I've found to videos of the panel on YouTube and linked directly to where the question is asked, if you want to actually see what was happening. This isn't official video, so it might get pulled for copyright issues, but until then, it's a great reference.
BlizzCon 2010: Day 2 round-up
Day 2 at BlizzCon 2010 saw the two most traditionally popular panels (the class Q&A and the general Q&A) go live, but there was plenty at the convention to keep you busy even if you were among the two or three people there not interested in developer panels. Liveblogs We liveblogged the World of Warcraft class Q&A and the World of Warcraft open Q&A panels and transcribed two previously unannounced DirecTV interviews with Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) and Tom Chilton. If you're looking for player complaints, developer snark or news on future game changes, you'll find 'em here. People, interviews and events Matticus caught up with Andy Salisbury for a preview the WoW magazine's third issue, and Anne Stickney interviewed both Richard Knaak and Christie Golden. Robin Torres put together a gallery of the items Blizzard auctioned off to benefit Child's Play, one of them a painting of characters in the upcoming DC Horde comic series. We also took lots of pictures of this year's art gallery. On a non-Blizzard note, someone took a nasty spill during Friday's dance contest. Friday recaps Lisa Poisso observed some happy realm meetups, we recapped an impressive costume contest, and Matticus wrote about the live raid and Paragon's ill-fated defense of Orgrimmar. Future content The Emerald Dream (or should we say Emerald Nightmare?) was confirmed as a future addition during the general Q&A. We don't know if it's going to be an expansion, a patch, a raid or something else, but developers promise that seeing it "is a matter of when, not if." New worgen cinematic The cinematic panel was a lovely peek at how the Blizzard team created the recently released Cataclysm cinematic, but it was also notable for the debut of long-missing cutscene that will power the Gilnean leveling experience forward. Revenge of the login dragon Angry about being voted out in favor of players' favorite candidate for warchief, Abesik Kampfire, the "login dragon" makes an ear-shattering return for the Cataclysm login screen. Closing ceremonies The Warcraft III and StarCraft II tournament winners were crowned (the WoW tournament was still in progress), and Paul Sams, Blizzard's chief operating officer, even started to talk a little about the company's new MMO ... or so we thought. %Gallery-105863% %Gallery-105843% %Gallery-105842% %Gallery-105858% BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!
Breakfast Topic: What was your favorite moment at BlizzCon?
This year's BlizzCon was a little more sedate than last year's, but there was still a fair amount going on. We found out a little about patch 4.1, saw the cutscene that's been missing from the worgen starting area and the new Cataclysm login screen, and are perhaps still a little farshikkert from the reader meetup. As with any BlizzCon, there were some intriguing, thought-provoking and funny moments, and we're interested in hearing your favorites. For me, it's a toss-up between the following, both of them from the general World of Warcraft question-and-answer session yesterday: Ghostcrawler's quip about the new alchemy two-person mount in Cataclysm: "Have you heard about the new alchemy mount? It'll be hard to get but fun to see who gets it first. It's awesome ... Who doesn't want to mount their friends?" A question came up on faction balance from an Alliance player on a Horde-dominated server, and the developers felt that more needed to be done to make the Alliance "cooler," that the "mythos and psychology" among players had developed to favor the Horde for PvP prospects. As the developers' answers ended, someone in the hall screamed, "Give us Saurfang!" BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!
BlizzCon 2010: DirecTV Ghostcrawler interview
Between panels, the DirecTV folks had an interview with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street (lead systems designer for WoW) on some various aspects of both Cataclysm and the recent 4.0.1 patch. Just a warning, this is essentially a live blog and a lot of things will get paraphrased to get it out. We'll try to clean it up a little bit on a second pass, but just think of it as a live blog and you should be golden. Everyone wants to know where their moose is. They can't handle the moose. Are wintersabers still available or should we get them before the sundering happens? No, they'll still be available. We're not doing anything with them. What about the mounts in AQ that we use in the instance? Now that it's going to be a zone, can we use them there? AQ or ZG? AQ mounts will still be there. So you can still get them. What is getting ready to happen with the sundering? Are we going to be able to watch it happening or are the servers going to go down and when the come back up it's all done? Pretty much that assuming all goes well. The two old continents will go away and the new ones will just appear almost over night. Players will experience that and then shortly after that Cataclysm will go on the shelves and people will be able to level their goblin, worgen, or go up to 85.
BlizzCon 2010: Class Q&A panel liveblog
The class Q&A panel will go live in roughly 20 minutes, so get ready. We'll be liveblogging every minute of it past the cut! I'm afraid you guys are stuck with me again, but the other writers have already warned me that liveblogging any Ghostcrawler panel usually results in fingers falling off by the end, so I've taken the precaution of arranging some Motrin and heat packs off to the side of the computer. I type at 127 words per minute. Bring it, Dr. Street. BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!
Class balance from 1 to 80 getting developer attention
If you've played World of Warcraft for any length of time, you've probably heard the refrain that game balance is most important at endgame. Whatever endgame happens to be at that time (level 60, originally; level 85 in Cataclysm), the idea is that a little weirdness in talents, abilities, survivability or damage output as you level up isn't as important as making sure things are working properly at maximum level. While it may still be true, recent forum posts indicate that the leveling game and even the current, soon-to-be-moribund maximum level of 80 are seeing more balancing passes now than one might expect. Ghostcrawler - Re: Question about design priority We are going to spend some effort adjusting numbers for 1-80. It's not as big a priority as 85 because frankly, more players care about balance at 85 than they do lower level balance. As some folks have pointed out, inexperienced players almost by definition, don't place a premium on balance, and experienced players tend to not worry about balance much until they're at max level since things are changing so quickly. Rather than adjusting everything independently, we tend to focus on max level and then work backwards from there. It doesn't help to nerf say rogue damage by 5% from level 1-60 if we then find we also need to nerf it at level 85 and then buff the 1-60 numbers to compensate. There is some goofy stuff going on at lower level, but we'll get it all straightened out. After spending so much effort revamping the old zones and quests, we don't want the leveling experience to be an odd one. source I wouldn't call it a change of direction, as Blizzard has never said it doesn't adjust lower levels, and clearly a great deal of Cataclysm's focus has been on content for leveling players, but it does show a willingness to make changes in the face of oddities of design. (The original poster notes things like rogues soloing Scarlet Monastery while level-appropriate.) With more people than ever leveling through battlegrounds or the dungeon finder, the lower-level experience is actually pretty compelling and important. It's good to see some design time aimed at fixing its problems.
Ghostcrawler: Round 1 of patch 4.0.1 class rebalancing implemented
For the record, I did not ask for a pony. When I logged into my account post-4.0.1, though, my cup runneth over with them. Sadly, though, Blizzard is taking all my precious ponies away for redistribution. WoW Insider's own Matt Rossi had a terrific post yesterday about the class balancing issues that we were seeing with patch 4.0.1. Casters like me were experiencing the thrill of god mode, with reports of mages being able to one-shot their opponents. And while we casters were getting sweet, delicious ponies, melee players got a big pile of pony excrement. Arms and fury DPS were down -- way down. So was retribution paladin and kitty DPS. Last night, Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler let us all know that fixes were on the way. Today, he confirmed that fixes were implemented and explained what was done to each affected class to balance them out. The full post explaining who got buffed, who got nerfed and why is available just after the break.
Ghostcrawler explains hit scaling in Cataclysm
Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) hit the official forums earlier today to give a very in-depth look at the intricacies behind Cataclysm's hit rating philosophy, the nature of characters getting "more powerful," and the way boss levels actually work. All in all, it's a very interesting read. Essentially, bosses will get more powerful as the raid tiers grow in number, requiring players to attain new hit levels to stay hit-capped. The bosses are, in essence, getting stronger as you also grow in strength, which makes perfect sense. It's also very nice to see Ghostcrawler having a really excellent discussion about this subject with players, considering hit is a really weird and convoluted stat to begin with. Hopefully, with Cataclysm's new tooltip features and hit rating helpers, the mysteries behind hit rating will be less challenging for most players. Check out Ghostcrawler's posts behind the jump.
Cataclysm Beta: Hunter changes in latest build
The hunter class received handful of tweaks in last night's Cataclysm beta build 12803, but by far the most significant among them is the removal of the minimum range (sometimes referred to as the dead zone) for hunter special shots. However Ghostcrawler, lead systems designer, was quick to jump into a thread to point out that it was only a bug. Ghostcralwer - Lead Systems Designer We did not remove the minimum range of hunter shots intentionally. If it's happening, it's a bug. source It's as if a million voices all cried out in joy and then were extinguished. Read on after the cut for a full list of the hunter changes in the latest build. As if life were worth living while Blizzard toys with our hearts this way.
A City of Heroes-style mentoring system "in the long-term plan" for Cataclysm
UPDATE: The Escapist has posted the full text of their interview with Ghostcrawler, so I've replaced the "abridged" version with the actual exchange instead. Those of you who've played other MMOs (yes, they exist) might recall a feature from City of Heroes (yes, CoH did it before EQ2) that let you temporarily level down your character to a friend's level, allowing you to do any kind of level-relevant content together. Well, guess what? Blizzard is planning to let you do the same thing in a Cataclysm content patch, avoiding the type of situation you see above. The Escapist recently interviewed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street about Cataclysm, and this exchange took place: Ghostcrawler: A very simple thing we've done is just put on your character panel what phase you're in. So that you can look and be like "Oh, so the reason I can't see you is because we're in different phases." Long-term, we're trying to work on a system where you can actually go back and forward a little bit. You might be able to scale your character down levels in order to go play with a friend, and even redo quests that you've done before. Part of the reason we're able to do that is because of the technology we originally developed for heirloom items, which are items that scale. And then for the Cataclysm expansion, we've changed spells, so they also scale with level. So instead of having ranks now, your fireball will just get more powerful as you gain levels. So since you can scale both class spells and items really easily, now we think we can actually let you lower your level down if you want to play with somebody else. I kinda wanted to have that for Cataclysm launch, but it's a feature we're working on. John Funk: So do you think that's saying that, like cross-server dungeons, it might be patched in before the next expansion? Ghostcrawler: Yeah. I mean, we gotta get this one out the door first to know how much we need to do for the patches that come afterwards, but it's definitely in the long-term plan. We hadn't heard anything about this feature before, but it sounds great -- this way, you can play with a lowbie friend without drastically reducing his experience gain, and you'll always have something to do together. Heck, it could even pave the way for making old raids relevant again. I'm excited to see how this plays out! World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
The Light and How to Swing It: The ever-changing Holy Shield
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge -- and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to gregg@wow.com. In previous posts, I've talked a bit about holy power. Usually, this was in relation to our retribution and holy brothers and sisters. The main reason behind that is ... well ... protection just didn't fit well with the system yet. Sure, Blizzard has tried a couple of different things, but to be honest, it has felt kludgy and unpolished. The main reason behind this rough feeling in protection has been Holy Shield. You see, Blizzard hasn't quite decided what it is going to do with the ability yet, so we're kind of stuck. Each patch has a wild redesign to help things fit better into the current mold the developers have for the class, but it just hasn't fallen into place. Some of the problems players have been having include unfamiliarity with the new holy power system, the lack of a proper UI element to keep track of it and figuring out how to manage the new ability rotations. Let's take a look at how our faithful old companion, Holy Shield, has fared thus far in the beta.
Ghostcrawler on bloat vs. choice in talent trees
In a forum thread that started about the current state of talent tree design and the infamous "this tree is too bloated" vs. "there's not enough choice" debate for each, our old crustacean pal Ghostcrawler comes in and waxes philosophical. While I think his entire answer is interesting, I'm going to focus on just one aspect of it here. Ghostcrawler - Re: Bloat vs. Choice I'm really not building towards any kind of conclusion with any of that. It has just been interesting to see the feedback. I guess I can offer that you might want to be careful about who you think you are speaking for when you say "we feel this" or "we don't want that." Players, even the microcosm of the forum community, want different things. source He lists a long series of different viewpoints some players hold which I think is worth reading in its entirety. It got me to thinking about my own general prefences as to how a talent tree should be designed. I basically like it when there's enough room in any talent tree for two fairly viable builds to emerge in that tree. Back in the day, (not so far back that actual dinosaurs roamed the earth) you had the dual wield and two handed slam builds for fury, and both were fairly viable. (Dual wield did usually come out ahead on damage.) However, I think it unlikely that such a diversity of option in each talent tree is really possible, and a good compromise is the idea that you can get most of the talents you're going to want and then customize based on preference. This is seen in the current warrior protection tree on the beta where one can spec for AoE or single target after picking up most of the core tanking talents. It's an interesting read all told. Give it a read and see what you think about the idea: how would you define your preferences for talent design? Is there a valid distinction between bloat and choice in a tree? If so, what is it?
Totem Talk: Enhancement Cataclysm update
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury, and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 9 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. With such a lame title, you'd never guess we have so much to talk about this week! Mastery bonus is all elemental damage, not just nature! Smarter Searing Totems! Four Ghostcrawler replies (11 paragraphs!) about Shamans, with four paragraphs solely about Enhancement! Longer Hex! New crit-increasing talents! Increased totem ranges! Well, okay, maybe that last one isn't as exciting as the first few. But there's so much news out there for us enhancers, I don't even know where to begin. The logical place to start is with the biggest news: Enhancement Mastery bonus "increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating." This is a change from the first Cataclysm build that included mastery; previously our bonus was only increasing our nature damage. The nature-only mastery was great for our core spell, Lightning Bolt (LB), but with Maelstrom Weapon (MW) now including Lava Burst (LvB) we would not benefit from our Mastery bonus with LvB. This was a problem for two reasons: first LvB does more damage than LB, and second, LvB could be used to keep Elemental Devastation up. Lava Burst will automatically crit when Flame Shock (FS) is on a target, making it a smart choice to used to keep Elemental Devastation active. That choice changed. Mastery now affects all elemental damage, which includes Lava Burst. Hence, Lava Burst plus Flame Shock plus mastery equals happy enhancer. This is a great buff for us. Because LvB has an 8 second cooldown and LB has none, we'll still keep LB handy for when LvB is on cooldown.
Ghostcrawler on the future of totems
Earlier this week, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) responded to some posts regarding totems. There have been some doom-and-gloom comments and, unfortunately, very few positive ones. (Nice to see Strawberry get a mention in one of GC's replies.) Since I'm now the elemental shaman columnist here, I thought I'd weigh in with my own thoughts on the matter. Quote: Why does a DK not have to choose between horn of winter and desecration? Because that is pretty much all the DK gets. The shaman on the other hand gets to choose among Strength of Earth Totem, Windfury Totem, Wrath of Air Totem, Flametongue Totem, Tremor Totem, Healing Stream Totem, resistance Totems and Earthbind Totem, which doesn't even count Bloodlust / Heroism, and things like Unleashed Rage or Elemental Oath. If your buff was as competitive as theirs and you had so much versatility, we fear we'd see raids with many, many shaman in them. As it is, there's still a good chance for 3 shaman in a 25-player raid, while the DKs might get 2 slots if they're lucky. You should get a slot because you are a good player, not because your buff rules. source From what GC is saying here, we can see that because we have multiple potential choices in buffs via totems, these buffs won't be quite as good as the ones provided from other classes. The problem with that is that even in a min-max raid environment, the shaman selects totems based on what other buffs are provided, rather than being brought along to specifically provide totem buffs. It's also worth noting that most of the differences between the buffs a shaman provides and those from other classes boil down to either range, activation or both. As it stands at the moment, you will make sure you have one shaman for Wrath of Air and an enhancement shaman for talented Strength of Earth. That will cover the only shaman-specific buffs you require for the average raid. In fact, you are more likely to stack paladins in a raid than shaman, to get three blessings on everyone (Sanc, Kings, Might or Wisdom, although enhancement shaman and retribution paladin would like to have all four), compared to having one shaman dropping Wrath of Air, Totem of Wrath/Flametongue and possibly Mana Spring, with a second doing Windfury and Strength of Earth, which will cover all of the "primary" raid buffs.
Breakfast Topic: A day in the life
A poster on the forums queried the developers on what a day at the office for the class balance team entailed. This is one of those topics that I'm sure most of us have wondered about from time to time. Do they spend their days skimming Arena Junkies and Elitist Jerks looking at feedback, or are they nose-deep in spreadsheets running calculations on the effective health of tanking builds (which are sometimes the same thing)? Usually, this is the type of thread that receives a goofy answer from a community manager, if it receives any notice at all. However, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) decided to chime in with how the standard day goes. As it turns out, there really isn't such a thing as a standard day. His whole description of the day as well as some examples of recent events that players could relate to reminded me of an old Blizzcast from 2008. In it, Blizzard community manager Nethaera interviewed Monte Krol (lead tools programmer) about the behind-the-scenes information. As a code monkey myself, hearing about writing the tools that are used to build World of Warcraft was fascinating. Hearing the process behind how features are developed and decisions on class mechanics come about is something that players are constantly interested in (as some are insistent that the developers just put ideas on a dartboard in order to figure out what they're doing). What part of Blizzard would you like to see behind the scenes of, and what changes do you think have the best developer stories?
Officers' Quarters: In defense of guild talents
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. About a week ago, Blizzard revealed all the latest updates concerning their gameplan for Cataclysm. Among them were a host of changes to the new guild systems and UI overhaul that were originally announced at BlizzCon 2009. Today I'd like to focus on the removal of guild talents. In future columns, I'll address other changes. Guild talents get the axe Two of the biggest announcements from last week were not new features but the cancellation of previously announced features: Path of the Titans and guild talents. I've heard a lot of complaints from people about removing the Path, which is to be expected -- it was considered a key feature of the expansion and a long-awaited means to customize your character beyond talents after glyphs, in the words of Ghostcrawler, "didn't live up to what they could have been." It's a shame they couldn't make the Path work, but I'm hopeful that the revised glyph system will compensate for its loss. On the other hand, I'm not hearing nearly as many complaints about the removal of guild talents. Again, perhaps, this is to be expected. After all, Blizzard's plan is to replace them with unlocked perks that you receive automatically as your guild levels up. In other words, every guild will get every talent. Awesome, right? For guild members, yes. For officers, not as much.
