The Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft is slated to bring some interesting changes to the long-running fantasy MMO, and this week Blizzard released a Talent Calculator to prepare future Pandarens and Pandarian explorers alike for the new and (reportedly) improved Talent System.
Now available for your tinkering pleasure, the Talent Calculator demonstrates the many ways in which each class can be used as a jumping-off point to create vastly different characters by combining one of three specializations with a multitude of talents, which are themselves unlocked every fifteen levels. Entitled "Talents 2.0”, Blizzard created the new system to facilitate more variation between characters, and encourage players to experiment beyond the so-called “cookie cutter” builds.
Talents 2.0 is just one of many tweaks, additions, and surprises listed for Mists of Pandaria. Earlier this month, Activision-Blizzard announced to investors it had lost another 800,000 WoW subscribers in the previous year on top of the nearly one million defectors reported in the year before that. It's unclear if Mists of Panadaria has what it takes to reverse that trend, but judging by the early buzz Blizzard can afford to be caustiously optimistic. Let us know what you think of the talent tweaks in the comments below.
WoW veteran says the MMO's devs had to make "ten times the amount of quests" as originally planned to sate playtesters, and now the game has 38,000 of them
World of Warcraft devs used to joke about the MMO making $1 million per month - just months before it smashed through $15 million in monthly revenue
