Last week or so the NDA was lifted on the Cataclysm Beta for WoW and we were blessed with all sorts of Cata info goodness. That was the good part. This week is a bit more controversial.

The first bomb they dropped on us was that when you post on the official forums it will be using your battle.net login which uses the REAL ID system and thus it will display your real name as the poster. You can opt to have it ALSO show one of your character names but your real name is a must.  For those of you that are unfamiliar with REALid, it’s Blizzard’s cross game chat program which will show you if and when your friends are playing other bliz games (connected via battle.net). You can also have status things up like in alot of social media like facebook that your friends can see. When you are friends with someone who has accepted your REALid request you will see their real name displayed with toon names next to it to see as well.  This is a decent thing as a whole and hey it works well for things like XBOX live,steam  and such but not with real names. This has only raised some flags with the ingame names showing real names b/c for the most part those people who you want as REALid friends you know their names anyway.

   The REAL problem here is the whole forum posts thing. People in the last 2 days are extremely livid. For the most part they simply do not want their real name in the forums for the world to see. Blizz had orig put their blue poster’s real name as well, but quickly took that back (I have seen posts going back and forth today with them saying no real names for blues and then yes its ok but I think they will ultimately make it so you cannot see blue posters real name).  Personally, I don’t really care much about the forums. Sure I have posted in the past and don’t mind it much, but if my real name will be there and not any sort of avatar name then I just won’t be posting there again until it changes. No harm, no foul. I just won’t post on there. I won’t quit the game over it like thousands CLAIM they will be doing, I think that’s a bit extreme to me. In the same vein I think you won’t ever see the famous people who love and play the game ever posting either. They might have been real active in the past, but not now.

    One thing I tweeted about briefly and believe to be true is, this should cut down on forum trolls some. I don’t think people will as likely to post  nasty flame wars if it’s their real name being posted under. In the same breath I don’t think there will be as many spammers and key logger posts as well. This might ultimately be one of the good things and reasons why they have done this. However, as crazy people have gotten about facebook privacy, I think eventually Blizzard will give in and remove this thing from their public official forums. It’s just bad business to plaster real names all over the place.

OK on to some Cataclysm news. I want to say this is good news but I am torn a bit on this one as well.  Today blizz blue poster Zarhym posted about the vast changes to the talent tree makeup. The trees will be cut down to 31 point talents as max, as opposed to 51 point talents which are there now. Another thing is that at level 10 when you put in your 1st talent point you will be locked into that tree for the full 31 points. Once there (now level 70 more on that later), you can then put points into another tree. Also they are streamlining how talent points and skills are given out. Every level you will get either a talent point or new/leveled up skills. And these will alternate. Thus this means that level 7o is when you will be able to delve into a 2nd tree. They are not changing anything about if you can dual spec or anything so this helps too. So not a whole lot is changing they just want you to get to that last big tallent first. And they have also said they want some early talents to be bigger and mean more. So look for some bigtime tree staples to come earlier in the tree. Examples given were dual wielding pretty much right away for Warrior and Shamen in those specific trees. Trying to give you something that defines you as that spec right away. (Fine with me I like that aspect)

    This is all going back to how blizz is trying to make talents more fun and less passive. They have been saying forever they want to have less cookie cutter talent spec’s that you HAVE TO have to succeed. They want people to be able to do what  they want for the most part with their talent points. I agree with this in theory, but I think that when you cut out talents and points given you are cutting out the ones you can free form and don’t need to succeed. I am real torn in a few ways on all of this. I think that by definition, the less points you have available they less variability you can make. I think we will still see a ton of cookie cutter specs you have to have.  However with them changing so much they might be able to pull it off. Gone is alot of the + 2/4/6% type talents which are seen as, and really are, just boring. Staying will be the fun ones as they say, which I am guessing are all the ones which grant you skills themselves (see wyvern sting, readiness).

    I will keep ultimately positive tho. The last time they completely re-did the trees (either before Lich King or BC or prolly both I can’t remember but one of them was pretty drastic) they worked out great IMO so I will just have to trust blizzard here and say they will make it work. BUT and a big BUT, a thing that keeps driving me crazy is we keep seeing things they are changing and implementing now. If you are putting it in now how far will that push back the release of Cataclysm? We REALLY need to have this in our hands before Blizz-con. I say this again both as a huge WoW fan and a Stock holder. You can simply kill blizz con if the main things you cover are starcraft 2 and Cataclysm (AGAIN). Granted I say Kill, but realistically that thing will sell out in 10 seconds next year no matter what happens this year. I am just one of the guys who wants more new stuff just not a convention of the same old same old. And unfortunately NO I am not going this year. No Tixx I will just have to watch the coverage on all the internet outlets.

Untill more info is out…. Happy Hunting my WoW friends!

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