In a forum post, Blizzard responded to the accusation that they reduce the complexity of World of Warcraft through excessive simplification, such as by trimming the talent trees. However, for Blizzard, this is a necessity.
If a game only grows linearly, Blizzard CM Micah Wipple (Bashiok) stated, one quickly ends up with a tangle of complexity. More and more abilities, more and more decisions, more and more game systems would be stacked layer upon layer until a game emerged that could not be reasonably developed further.
With an expansion, it is always appropriate and also a good time to review existing and increasingly complex systems and to critically question oneself.
Blizzard has two principles in their design philosophy: On one hand, it is about “concentrated coolness” and on the other, giving players choices in important decisions. It is not about letting them choose between a lot of actually meaningless stuff, but about having them make a few decisions with significant impacts.
The earlier talent trees were neither “concentrated cool” nor did they lead to important decisions. Instead, players were demanded to make many decisions with minimal impact (2% more of a stat). Additionally, the talent trees presented players with questions that had only one or two correct answers if they didn’t want to play a sub-optimal hero. Over the years, the developers have been scratching their heads over how to make the talent trees more appealing and fairer. Ultimately, it was decided that talent trees simply did not work for World of Warcraft.
It is nobody’s fault, but every system tends to become increasingly complex over time. Therefore, it is always necessary to take a step back, look at the big picture, and critically evaluate what exists. Otherwise, you end up with a bloated system that demands players to make a lot of decisions that are neither important nor fun.
