As I was writing a quick impressions piece on RIFT, I had to write a long diatribe on WoW’s mechanics. \u00a0This was out of place, so I’m giving it a post unto itself.<\/p>\n
In WoW, each character has 1 class chosen from 10 at character creation, with some racial variation in available classes, but all classes have been available to each faction since the burning crusade, the first expansion. \u00a0In terms of the archetypal roles to fill (damage\/healer\/tank\/buff), depending on how the player customizes the character, any class can do significant damage, 4 classes can heal and 4 classes can tank, including 2 that can do both, and there are at least two classes with substantial buffing powers.<\/p>\n
Each class has three categories of abilities, and three corresponding “talent trees”. \u00a0For example, mages gain access to “frost”, “fire”, and “arcane” abilities, have “frost”, “fire” and “arcane” talent trees. \u00a0Characters gain access to abilities as they level, paying a trainer to learn new abilities. \u00a0Starting at level 10 and continuing with increasing levels, players also gain points to use in their talent tree. \u00a0Talents typically improve an ability associated with that talent tree. \u00a0Some talents also give abilities. \u00a0This system was expanded without fundamental changes in the first two expansions. \u00a0In the third expansion, Cataclysm, it underwent a more fundamental revision.<\/p>\n
I’ll skip the historical versions and describe the current system. \u00a0Each talent tree has 9 tiers. \u00a0The first 8 tiers generally have 5 or more places to put points per tier. \u00a0In order to open up the next tier of talents, you have to spend 5 more points in the tree. \u00a0Generally higher tier talents are better, and so talent builds tend to put 5 in each tier until reaching the ninth tier, which has only one spot, which gives the player a . \u00a0WoW eventually added the ability to have two talent setups, with the ability to switch between them when out of combat. \u00a0After Cataclysm, characters had to choose one of their three trees, and spend all their points in it up until level 69. (hehe), with freedom to distribute the remaining 10 points after that in whatever talent tree the player chooses. \u00a0Characters gain special abilities appropriate to their initial talent tree. \u00a0A character may be able to completely fill in one tree, but will never hit the top of more than one talent tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was writing a quick impressions piece on RIFT, I had to write a long diatribe on WoW’s mechanics. \u00a0This was out of place, so I’m giving it a post unto itself. Character development in WoW In WoW, each character has 1 class chosen from 10 at character creation, with some racial variation in … Continue reading “WoW Mechanics Review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}