In a recent interview with IGN, World of Warcraft: Forever’s principal game designer Kris Zierhut was asked about the flexibility of talent builds and respec costs. Through his response, we learned more about the team’s design philosophy and hopes for Forever.
Talents Are a Commitment
Zierhut starts off by saying that a lot of the pressure that players might have felt in WoW Classic from dealing with unoptimized builds in the open world (especially if you’re a healer) or constant respec costs will be relieved by the fact that we will have access to dual spec. Druids, for example, will be able to switch between their Restoration and Balance specs whenever they see fit.
But Zierhut goes on to say that they want to keep talents being a commitment. You won’t be able to change your talents out in the world on a whim, to change your current talents you’ll still have to find a class trainer and pay for the respec.
Triple Spec – But No Loadouts
What is most interesting about this interview however, is what Zierhut said about their plans to make it easier to change specs. While still sticking to their philosophy of talents being a commitment, he said that they have ideas on how to make the talent system more accessible.
One idea he floated was triple spec. While Zierhut thinks that two builds are enough for most of classic content for now, he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of adding a third spec for players to swap between freely. Similarly to Retail, this would allow players to fill all the roles that their class are able to, so a Paladin could freely swap between Retribution, Holy, and Protection. Or if you’re all about the Warlock life, you could have three different versions of your Affliction tree if you’d like!
Something that won’t be coming to Forever however, is the Loadout system that Retail has. They want to stay away from the expectation that you should be changing your talents between each boss. So rather than having a tab for each of your specs, and then freely swapping talents within that tree, we will be sticking to the layout we know from dual spec.
If you’re intrigued by the Forever team’s philosophy on class design, the Deep Dive panel from BlizzCon is a great watch, and we’ve linked to it below. You can also read the entire interview with IGN here.
