Will we be able to untrain talents in the retail product?

In the upcoming beta patch, we plan to allow characters to untrain in talents freely in order to better help balance the talents. However, we feel that investing in talents is a commitment that defines and distinguishes one's character and should not be allowed to be changed freely. Although we do not have a structure for how this will work in retail as of yet, we do intend to have a penalty to prevent players from talent-hopping to suit situations on the fly.


About this.... I'm not a fan of the whole ability to untrain talents thing, I hope the penalty/cost for untraining a talent is severe enough to deter people simply min-maxxing to the best talent build.

Read the full Q&A here (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=197451&p=1#post197451).

The problem, of course, is if you DON'T allow them to min max, they will cry, and whine, and get the current "min max" nerfed because its more "powerful" than the way they did it.

Your pessimistic outlook is right on the nose in this case Feldaran. :) I completely agree. Hopefully they strike a good balance between making it hard enough so people don't change every day but easy enough so that people DO actually change rather than whining. Although, the chances of a halt to whining about anything are slim to none.

I prefer to be called a realist ;)... but since pessimism and realism are so close, its hard to tell the difference sometimes ;).

You can just tell Feldaran played a lot of EQ and actually paid attention to the forums :)

Either way, I just hope the penalty is enough that everyone doesn't just blow away their talents on a whim or because someone found something "better"... otherwise what's the point of the talent system since it's main goal is to make characters unique.

Well here comes the realist again: can't have unique characters in MMORPG's. If there is a "best", people will be it. If they can't be it, they will whine until the "best" is no longer the "best". Rinse, repeat.

6 person D&D group = Every char can be a hero, all can be unique

3,000 people on a server = none can be unique

That's just how it goes.

True, very true, which is why i try to be unique through my actions instead of my build.

Yes, that is the way to stand out. Be a good player, get a good rep. I was in my server's uber guild in EQ, and I know I'd take some FAR less well equipped people with me to group than some incredibly geared dorks/arses that were in that guild.