Wrath Of The Lich King Talents
Sure,
Northrend is a fantasy world that runs by its own rules and organic principles,
but it’s never so far removed from your everyday reality that you cannot
transpose a little wisdom and experience from world to world. Sure, Arthras is a lot more menacing than
your boss, and your faction and race are a lot more attractive than your
colleagues in your department. Still,
the way you manage your colleagues and friends inevitably influences how you
deal with your party and how you progress toward confrontation with the Bad Guy
of all Bad Guys.
Just like
in real life, you make choices and train according to your expectations about
how you will become strongest, most proficient and powerful in your role. You distinguish your character and build your
reputation according to the talents you develop. The Blizzard guys tell you, straight-up and
straight-out, the game offers countless combinations of talents with which you
can experiment. As your character develops,
growing familiar with the landscapes and gaining battle experience, your unique
combination of talents can radically transform your style of play,
distinguishing you in your class and role.
You begin
collecting talent points at level ten, and you score one talent per level as
you advance. The Blizzard guys caution
and veteran players emphasize, “How you choose to spend your precious talent
points is an important decision that should be planned and executed with
careful deliberation.” In other words,
this choice determines the course of your life in the World of Warcraft as
totally and completely as your choice of college major determines the course of
your life in suburbia.
Every class
has three “talent trees,” which correspond with the focus of the talents in
that tree and develop your skills consistent with your chosen role. Think of your progress up the talent trees as
the equivalent of on-the-job training.
If, for example, you’re a mage, you’ll attend schools for the three
different kinds of spells you cast—Frost, Fire, and Arcane. And you literally work your way up the talent
trees, spending points and building skills at lower levels in order to advance
to the “first” or top level. Many of the
skills have “prerequisites”—you can’t jump to the advanced talent until you
have proven your mastery of the beginning and intermediate talents. The game itself is programmed to show you the
talents for which you are eligible. If
your mouse won’t click in a gray area, you’re not ready for that level of
training.
Once again,
as in your ordinary everyday life, you must see and acknowledge the importance
of your choices. Once you have begun your ascent of the talent trees in your
faction, class, and specialty, you cannot undo your choices short of resetting
your entire structure under the guidance of a trainer. And you pay for the privilege of starting all
over again. You must spend talent points
to unlearn your skills and begin again—not the kind of choice you make just
randomly because you’re having a bad day.
