This is a truly ridiculous idea. World of Warcraft has been such a successful game because of it's accessibility to casual players. Blizzard is making instances shorter in WotLK because people can't find the time to run them now -- how are they going to find the time to completely level a new character of the same class? They won't, they'll simply quit playing. Those of you who think being able to respec somehow detracts from the game should simply refuse to respec, but don't try to hinder other people's enjoyment of the game with such nonsense.

In an expansion back, no common knowledge is necessarily given any more. What if they make it ridiculously easy to level a second character instead of ridiculously easy to respec? (I do mean ridiculous, and I do mean second) Possibly including but not limited to starting at a higher level, faster experience, and shared reputation, keys, attunements, ratings, and account-bound equipment or badges. There has already been mention, and possibly development, of account-bound equipment and account-wide attunements, and DKs already start off at a higher level, so that's about half the list already. I would see this as also satisfying both constituencies: individual characters retain relative permanence, but it makes it easier to experience other aspects of the game, and furthermore those other aspects aren't as limited to the other specs of your original class.

I don't expect this to happen in WoW, but I do expect next-generation MMOs to be much more account-based rather than character-based.

I have 7 70s; 2 of them leveled after the 2.3 leveling patch. Leveling is already easy; most classes you can level by repeatedly smashing a few buttons. The only "tough" ones are perhaps warrior, because rage generation can be a remarkably fickle thing at sub-60 levels, and maybe lock at extremely low levels, since the VW blows at tanking.

But I digress. It's already easy to level another toon, it just requires a bunch of time. I agree that the introduction of the Death Knight, and perhaps new hero classes, will encourage people to level new alts. The problem is, those people will also be the ones that are terrible at playing. The game gets easier and easier, and we see more and more terrible players at level cap. I'm willing to bet that, a few months into WotLK, we'll see less of "lolret" and "huntard" and start seeing much more "lolblood" or "lolDK".

Maybe instead of having a "respec switching thingamebob" they could just have three specs: one is active in non-instanced content, another in PvE instances (5 mans and raids), another in PvP (areans and BGs).

That way you solve the PvP spec problem, you solve the farming problem for tanks/healers, and you don't force people to spec for a role they don't enjoy in raids because "it's easy and free". You can still respec for a different role if you want to, but it's not an expectation or something bliz should be designing around.

Sure, I'm not from a sunwell guild, and I guess I'm kind of arguing against the respec (or at least playing devil's advocate in suggesting there is a downside to it).

Personally I'd love to be able to respec every now and then for kicks, but the simple fact is that I don't have the gear to do so. Sure, if you've been farming T6 for months then your resto shaman might have good enhancement sets, but if you're not in a bleeding edge guild, likely you have a ton of hunters and full time enhancement shaman ahead of you on the mail drop list. Especially with resto shaman being virtually impossible to recruit, what guild is going to gear a resto up in other specs unless the loot would be sharded otherwise?

So I think if blizzard are going to go down the "play a whole class" route, they do need to think carefully about how to do so. I know they're merging some gear come the expansion, but it'd do nothing for my enhancement set (on the other hand, it would at least put in elemental gear before T6 content, so it's something).

From a PvP perspective you see the same thing: if you want to be a shaman rather than a resto shaman, have fun spending 3x as long in BGs and arenas.

The game as it's currently designed is based around playing just one spec as a hybrid. The fact people manage tyo do more is a testament to the time they have to farm content (raiding and/or PvP) rather than a feature that was designed in.

Quoting this for posterity.

"Lets not have respecs! Lets have all rep/ratings/equipment/etc shared between all characters of the one account."

This is probably the stupidest thing yet in this thread. Congratulations on reaching a new low.

You talk about destroying the "role playing" aspect of the game, nothing would ruin it more than this. It will never happen that a game will have something like this and no also include the equivalent of free respecs.

The role-playing aspect isn't hard to correct, actually. Your account represents a family/fraternity/other small independent self-contained organization. Characters on the account are members of the organization, perhaps as the field agents or champion heir apparents. Reputation applies to the organization, (some) equipments are too powerful/treasured to entrust to outsiders, etc. A more established champion allows you to roll (recruit) higher-level starting toons. You could even have a shared surname and auto-link/import friend lists.

And I'm not advocating the outright removal of respecs. Being able to correct errors or respond to game changes, at the least, are important, and being able to change your mind isn't a bad thing. I think the choice should be a hell of a lot less trivial than it is currently, and I'm offering an (admitedly insane) alternative that allows people that want to experience other aspcts of the game a viable means to do so that still retains individual character permanency.
And, just to be clear: my objections to trivial respecs are gameplay-based objections, not RP- or immersion-based objections. I think the point of specializing is lost when the specialization can change as necessary.

The role playing element is always a justification built around the gameplay anyway. Developers choose what they feel would play well, then invent lore to justify why things work that way.

PSGarak's explaination (which is only one possible way of explaining it) seems to me to be a lot easier to reconcile with the lore world than the fact you can kill the same person over and over, or that you can ride from one end of a continent to the other in under an hour. If the gameplay is fun, people will suspend their disbelief. I think even the most die-hard roleplayers realise if they want everything to work "realistically" they have to log out and play a pen and paper RPG.

Jagiya: There's a mod called "Action Bar Saver" which can do that kind of thing. There's a few others too, look around on wowinterface for something that works for you. Blizzard have also talked about doing something like that in the future in the default UI, which makes me think they've been considering the spec swap idea for quite some time.

Let's say -for the sake of argument- Blizzard doesn't change the way how respecs are handled currently (i.e. going back to a large town, paying 50G). But to make it a bit more comfortable, they let you save two talent distribution so that you don't have to click through 61 talent points each time, possibly making mistakes along the way. Would this satisfy the people saying free respecs are evil, or is this already too much? If you now say this would be acceptable, think a bit further: 50G in WotLK will probably mean 1-2 Dailies, making respecing essentially free. And Blizzard probably realized this (among other reasons) and just went (is going to go) the full way.

Would be fine by me. If not preferable. I just don't like the idea of just switching your talent spec in the middle of a dungeon, ya know? "Hrm. I think I'd like to forget how heal. Yeah. Healing sucks. I totally wish I could melt faces like that dude over there." *talent tree genie appears* "Your wish is granted! Please don't make another wish for 30 minutes."

=P

It seems to me that what some people seem to be fearing (talent specs being meaningless) is already a reality for the high end raiding community. 50g is a drop in an ocean to a Sunwell raiding guild. We respecced all our healing priests to CoH for Twins, respecced our affliction warlock to destro and someone's warlock alt to shadow embrace for Brut when we had a few people missing, respecced our feral to healing for Felmyst, respecced our elemental shaman to resto for Twins, etc. The only real limitation is gear.

People who are afraid that this will let raid leaders demand certain specs from people on a fight by fight... well, we already do (in my own guild we only do it when it's necessary and the bank pays for it, but we certainly ask people to respec when the alternative would be harming our chances of success). As Gurg memorably put it, in Sunwell people play classes, not specs.

In the raiding scene, this change would simply bring this state of affairs to the not-so-rich.

Don't exaggerate. You're not forgetting how to heal, you're forgetting how to heal BETTER, and CHOOSING to DPS instead.

A Shadow specced Priest can still cast Renew, it's just not going to be as powerful as the Renew from a Holy specced Priest.
The reverse holds true for Shadow Word Pain.

And no, I'm still not buying the so-called lore aspect: If you never respec, you're role-playing as a Priest who takes delight in killing other people instead of mending their wounds. How is does that affect your suspension of disbelief if you, the player himself, has the same delight in killing as the character you're supposedly role-playing as?

Spending the extra time, and having the patience to do so, is the difficulty here for some. Especially for people who play casually. If you're working a 50 hour week and juggling a family / girlfriend and other social commitments, it's not particularly rare that you could take a year to get to level 70. Does making one person spend a year in the game justify not breaking someone else's immersion?

Apologies for the derail but there's already a mod that can do this.

Talented - WowAce Wiki

Lets you set up talent templates which can be applied at the click of a button. Very useful for someone that plays a class with multiple roles and for the PvE/PvP crowd.

The only limit to the speed it take me to set a spec is the delay for the server to register the clicks, I would be bitterly disappointed if the only change was a 'Talented' replacement. That is still 3-4 dailies, that I normally wouldn't do so that I can have fun in a battleground/arena for an hour and then do an instance afterwards.

There are 3 issues that should probably be kept seperate, because people seem to have differing views on it.

1: Cost of respec, some people want the cost because it's an investment and discourages, however minimally, people swapping willy-nilly between specs.

2: Assigning talents, i think this is one everyone can agree on, most people would like to be able to change their specs with the click of a button, not have to go through and manually assign their talent points. A paladin in our guild has respecced up to 3-4 times in a single night for SP, allowing them to do it at the press of a button, with or without a cost, would be higly appreciated by alot of people.

3: Where to respec, some people want to be able to quickly change their talents 'on the fly', while others obviously think you should have to go back to town to do it, again, as part of your investment in your talent spec.

I think we need to seperate these 3 to have any meaningful discussion, as a lot of the arguments here are degenerating into 'yes i agree with 1, but not 2, so you're completely wrong and what you suggest would just ruin the game for me!'.

Personally, cost of respec is something for blizzard to decide, as has been suggested, i think a money sink (10,000g was suggested i believe) to allow you to have a 'secondary' spec that you can change to without cost would be nice, but that secondary spec also need to be changeable, probably for a 50g 'respec' fee, otherwise this secondary spec could become worthless with patches nerfing and buffing talents.

I think i covered (2), i think most people are in agreement that there should be some sort of system (not mod based) to allow you to quickly assign talent points, and not have to input them individually every respec.

The thing that i'm most worried about are the suggestions that people have for 'on the fly' respecs. Being able to do it in combat could be incredibly unbalancing for both PVE and PVP, especially with gear homogenisation in the expansion. Imagine something like Muru, our strat at least, required 4 tanks in p1, and 1 in p2. The fight it balanced around that, but if with the click of a button those tanks can suddenly respec to DPS or healers for p2, the fight suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. Then we all know what will happen, blizz will balance around that, and suddenly fights are balanced around everyone having invested in a 10k gold sink.

Other than pointing out flaws in others argument, my only real suggestion for the issue is make repair bots able to respec you to your secondary spec. As far as i'm aware you can't drop these in combat, i'm not sure if you can access them in combat though. This solves the problem of quickly respeccing during an encounter, or even an arena match. Other options include items that another profession could make, maybe a new item for inscription could be a buff scroll that changes you to your secondary spec. There are all sorts of ways to do the respec, don't be restricted just to a button on your bars or going all the way back to town. It could easily be incorporated as a perk for a profession, or a money making item for a profession.

While I'm not sure if you can use these inside an Arena, you can definitely drop and use them while in PvE combat - I've more than once dropped a repair bot in the middle of Hyjal trash to repair my nearly broken, and I believe there was even one instance of using it in the middle of the Illidan fight.

While we don't know much about the new inscription effects, one that has been mentioned was an increase to the dispel resistance for viper sting. That's a pretty much PvP orientated inscription, unless we expect to see more Moam based mobs.

If inscriptions don't follow along with the "free second spec" rules as talent, we are just being setup to move our costs to and hassles of maintaining the min/max edge for players of both PvE & PvP to the inscription side.

And to be crystal clear, "No, it's not acceptable to pay 50g every time, whether it's 1 daily quest or 5." It's the perennial bleed on the gold that is so offensive. Want to play an AV? Respec. Want to run a 5-man? Spec back. Wait it's time for arenas! Respec! Uh oh, raid is tomorrow! Spec back.

That said, as one of the most vocal advocates for this here and elsewhere, I perceive the notion of doing this "in situ" as ludicrous. Hunters have to go to a stable to get a pet. You have to go to a trainer to respec now.

"Oh, Trainer of My Class, Transform Me Into My Other Self" should be an option on the trainers. This is far more reasonable than just being able to click yourself in the field into something else, is not hugely onerous, imposes a perfectly reasonable "tax" on respecing and is almost certainly going to be part of the mechanic.

While I wouldn't be 100% opposed to switching in the field with a cooldown, I'd be pretty surprised if it was allowed and would expect hunters to immediately demand portable stables.

I'd be fine with a brief sports training montage playing after you visit the trainer and ask for your talent points back. Preferably no longer than 45 seconds.

Speaking of a clunky mechanic that needs updating, the whole stables thing seems outdated, especially how few slots there are. I'd also love as a non-hunter to be able to keep various mounts there, saving me the bag/bank space.

Personally I hope the multi-talent specs is an in-the-field, no cost, long cooldown type deal, because to me the only reason to implement it is convenience, and that would be the most useful, without being game breaking or influencing encounter design.

I think one thing people commonly overlook is that there's more to respeccing than just selecting new talents.

Talent specs differ not only in the XX/YY/ZZ numbers, but in gear and skill priorities as well. Even across classes like Rogues, how you weight certain stats and what skills you keep in close reach will change. Unless you've got the gear and a snazzy UI to cope with changing specs on the fly, the effectiveness of easy spec switching is dubious without proper preparation. This is only accentuated by classes like Mages or hybrids.

WoWInterface Downloads : Action Bar Mods : Action Bar Saver

Highly, highly recommended for anyone who respecs regularly, along with Talented.