Have you ever played on a private server? All of them have reduced respec costs. What were the consequences?
Reduced respec costs are not the same as dual spec.
There is definitely a compromise to be found there.
However, it also isnât necessary as gold is so easy to come by, especially with the P2 dailies.
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Itâs quite interesting that even people in favour of Dual spec have raised the point that TBC is very light on content. This is true of many games of that era, because they were designed with more time sinks and grind. You look at modern games and they way more quests, dailies, things to do that arenât a straight up grind.
You mentioned before that the argument from design ethos is a bit of a dead end, but I think Blizzard led us down that path in vaguely defining the limits of changes to TBC classic with the caveat that changes âwould attempt to stay true to the spirit of TBCâ. This inevitably leads to unwinnable arguments around design intention.
At core I think Blizzard needs to more clearly define the limits of changes they are willing to make. Their commitment is way too vague and open ended at this point. It has opened the door to a free for all on requesting changes.
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Not everything that exists in TBC was âdesignedâ for TBC. Itâs like saying that Northshire Abbey quests are part of âTBC game designâ. Or that Scholomance is part of âTBC game designâ.
Ghostcrawler said that nothing in the game was designed around respec costs. Which means that the 50g respec wasnât âdesignedâ for TBC. It wasnât even a consideration.
The reason it wasnât a consideration is because the 50g respec has no effect on the meta. The ideal raid comp is exactly the same whether respec costs are 5g, 50g, or 5000g. The same is true for PvP.
TBC game design was primarily focused on making every spec worth bringing to raids. This was accomplished largely by giving every spec a unique buff which was so good it practically became necessary.
The TBC system was a response to complaints in Vanilla that certain classes/specs sucked, and that subpar specs were no fun to play(if you could raid at all).
Likewise the WOTLK system was a response to complaints in TBC about things like how if your enhancement shaman or prot pally missed the raid, you couldnât raid. That these finely-tuned raids didnât allow any flexibility.
Others complained that respec costs caused people to become raidloggers, because respec costs were a heavy burden on anyone who wanted to do anything else(especially battlegrounds/arenas).
With all that said, my only position is that the 50g respec sucks and the only thing it accomplishes is preventing people from playing the game. They lowered respec costs on private servers and other than a few purists who grumbled for a few days, no one cared.
No one is going to log on, walk to their trainer, and be mad that their respec cost is 10g.
I literally would be unhappy if I went to the trainer and the respec fee was not 50g (or whichever accurately scaled cost depending on how often Iâve respecced up to 50g).
It would actually deter me from wanting to continue playing. You would be ruining the game for me by adding this.
Iâm not ruining your game by saying not to add it. You are potentially ruining mine in a scenario where Blizzard would listen to you. You are the aggressor here.
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Pro tip, even with dual spec you still have to pay a fee to change one of them.
Further showing that if you simply choose not to use dual spec your experience wouldnât change at all as youâd have to do exactly what you do now to change specs.
This is true. But I would argue that the lack of dual spec was by design. For reasons Iâve discussed in detail previously.
It was no accident that they didnât put class trainers in Shattrath.
It was no accident that they kept respec costs.
It was no accident that in-spite of a lot of forum noise begging for dual spec back in the day (very early in TBC) they held off. They didnât even release it with the WoTLK prepatch or expansion. They waited for the class rebalance to go live and get data back before releasing dual spec a few weeks after. That wasnât accidental.
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The fee becomes almost irrelevant for a vast, vast, vast majority of players because those players will very rarely run in to it if dual spec were available.
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But thatâs not what you said, you said youâd be disappointed if you didnât have to pay 50g to respec.
Well good news, it would be entirely up to you to continue to do so, thereby having no impact on your experience. You would just need to be a little worried about what others are doing.
Intentional or was it simply something they didnât think about one way or the other?
Okay, allow me to rephrase, since your goal always seems to be to just word-trap me with semantics.
I would be seriously deterred from the game if myself, or anyone else, ever had the option under any circumstance, to switch specializations without a fee.
Right so it just comes down to you being way too worried about what others are doing even when it doesnât impact you.
I remember it being hotly debated. Jeff Kaplan before he got moved on made some comments (Iâve been searching the web for them but canât find). The effect was that respeccing was meant to make people think about their class identity and was meant to be a somewhat impactful choice. I wish I could find the post. But any of us that were involved in the discussion at the time knew about all this. I was actually for dual spec at the time and was stoked when Tom Chilton took over with a new design approach at the time.
Respeccing was not a left over thing that wasnât thought about - it was a hot topic at the time just as it is now.
Unfortunately a lot of my perspective on this is guided by my memory of events, arguments and discussions at the time. Hard for me to prove to someone who doesnât share those memories. The relevant posts are difficult to locate. So, I accept where youâre coming from but I think youâre wrong.
I think there is design intent behind not including dual spec in TBC. It comes down to incentivising impactful choice, having to choose an identity and having to pay to switch it. Having people form a sense of attachment to their role.
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It does impact me, and just as a forewarning before you predictably ask me âHow?â (since you always seem to engage in these exchanges as a blank slate for some reason), Iâve already explained how like a double digit number of times.
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If you donât like flying, donât buy it, it doesnât impact you.
Do you see how silly of an argument your making is?
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Paying to respec was part of the original design of the game. It wasnât specifically part of TBC game design. It just wasnât changed in TBC because it wasnât perceived to be something that needed to be changed during Vanilla(when TBC was being developed).
Why do you think they didnât put class trainers in Shattrath?
You are correct that they held off. And you are correct that they seemed rather timid about introducing dual-spec. I donât know what âdataâ you think they got back that led them to release dual-spec.
From listening to the Ghostcrawler posts, dual-spec was a very controversial change to the game, and the arguments being made then are exactly the same as they are now.
I donât want dual-spec, but everything Ghostcrawler said is correct. The 50g respec stops people from playing the game. It was tolerable in Vanilla when PvP was more time than skill, when you could tank 5-mans with a 2-hander, and where raids could still be cleared with a bad comp.
But in TBC it is just miserable.
To make it less convenient to switch talents. To make it cost time as well as gold. Also to maintain a reason to visit the old capitals.
Jeff Kaplan had very different ideas about what made a good MMO to what Tom Chilton had. WoTLK was very much Greg/Tomâs argument against Jeff.
Jeff went on to make Overwatch a strongly rock/paper/scissors based game with strong âclass identityâ. Specificity as opposed to versatility.
In very general terms you could argue that Jeff was a champion of specialisation and Tom (and Greg Street prior to him) was a champion of generalisation and both their respective game versions reflect that. Obviously itâs more nuanced when you dig into it.
Iâm not saying this as proof - btw. Just as an old man whoâs played a lot of games for a long time who remembers this stuff. Itâs why I hold the view I hold. I wish I could find the quotes needed to flesh this out.
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the lack of dual spec is not making it âimpossibleâ for you to play, you big baby.
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Isnât it more reasonable they considered it redundant because there were portals to every capital city? And that it would just needlessly clutter up Shattrath?
Many profession trainers are also missing from Shattrath. Was that âdesignedâ for any particular purpose?
Nor would adding it make it impossible to play.