Why is Blizzard back to pruning in Battle for Azeroth?

In Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard began what they called “ability pruning.” For better or worse, the developers decided that classes just had too many buttons to press. They wanted to get back to basics, figure out which abilities were the most important for every spec, and “prune away” the rest. In some cases, they gave certain classwide abilities to one spec or changed baseline abilities into talents.

This would, Blizzard argued, leave more room for new abilities in the future. A lot of what they pruned was controversial. We’d had many of these abilities since classic WoW or early expansions, so losing them was painful.

Many players, including me, resolved themselves to accept it and move on. We fantasized about what exciting new spells our favorite specs would learn in future expansions. The Legion expansion, for the most part, delivered on those fantasies. The artifact for each spec added an exciting and spec-defining on-use ability.

Even so, some specs felt a bit thin throughout Legion, victims of overpruning. Legion‘s new PVP Honor talents pruned away more abilities from PVE content and made them PVP only, such as Tigereye Brew, Grounding Totem, and Anti-Magic Zone. Balance, Arms, Beast Mastery, and other specs currently have some incredibly simple rotations. There are of course always subtle nuances to these specs, but when Icy Veins can sum up the entire rotation in five or six lines, that’s going past simple and into dull.

During Legion, I hoped that the next expansion would retain most of the artifact abilities and add new class features, such as a new talent row or new baseline spells. But in Battle for Azeroth, instead of taking another step forward, we’re going backward again, Warlords-style.

Battle for Abilities

Blizzard is once again pruning classes on the Battle alpha. Many of those exciting and iconic artifact abilities are gone entirely. A few are talents. (In very rare cases, so far just one — Shadow Priest’s Void Torrent — they are baseline.)

Turning an Artifact ability into a talent is one way to preserve it. However, the class then loses two things: a baseline ability and whatever talent that Artifact ability replaced, because no new talent rows have been added.

Almost all of the new spells given to classes in the alpha (which so far have been relatively few) are in the form of talents. We aren’t gaining any options, just getting a new one to replace an old. A number of long-standing baseline spells are also becoming talents, like Shadow Word: Death. These types of changes sting. It feels bad to use a talent row for a critical spell that you’ve always had access to.

At least during the Warlords pruning, we had a brand new talent row to look forward to — and Blizzard also introduced spec-specific trees. Not so in Battle. On the alpha, it’s gotten so painful right now that players in the official Class Development forum are calling the next expansion “Battle for Abilities.”

The Darkglare heartbreak

As an example, I’ll tell you when this whole problem first hit me. I’m currently in the alpha, and I’ve been logging in with different classes to check out how they look and feel. Then I logged into a Warlock and I was heartbroken.

Now, I’m no Warlock player. I boosted one to mess around with in Legion, solely because I love the beholder-type demons and I wanted to Summon Darkglares. Demonology drove me crazy with its spammy Demonic Empowerment rotation, so I never spent much time on my boosted Warlock. However, I hoped that changes to Demonology in Battle for Azeroth would convince me give it another shot, because I still really loved summoning darkglares.

But that talent was gone. Removed from the game. Sure, Demonology had some really cool talents added, like Nether Portal and Bilescourge Bombers (which both replaced Legiontalents). But it’s disappointing that Blizzard had to take something awesome away at the same time. Classes still have nowhere near the number of buttons to push of older WoW expansions, so why is Blizzard still pruning instead of adding? Why is almost every addition on the alpha accompanied by subtraction? Class design doesn’t have to be a zero-sum endeavor.

If Blizzard wanted to make baseline spells and artifact abilities into talents, they could have added another row of talents. Or even — I’ll keep dreaming — a fourth column. Instead, we are losing something for everything we gain, and often losing other abilities on top of that. If we were back to the same place that we were in Mists, I could understand it. But so many Legionspecs already feel shallow.

How does WoW stack up to other MMOs?

Part of the appeal of MMOs has always been their complexity. When it launched, WoW broke the MMO mold by simplifying what desperately needed to be simplified, while retaining enough of the complexities that made MMOs special. But has WoW simplified classes too much?

Compare it to the competition. Final Fantasy XIV classes had some nasty button bloat by the end of its first expansion, Heavensward, along with an overcomplicated system of obtaining cross-class abilities. Square-Enix did their own pruning for Stormblood, which released last year. At the same time, they gave each class several brand new baseline abilities as they leveled. FFclasses still have far more buttons than WoW’s specs. Also, FFXIV adds multiple new classes in every expansion. They’ve added six classes since launch, which is double the amount of WoW’snew classes in half the time.

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t add many baseline abilities to its classes these days. However, ArenaNet adds a brand new spec to every class for every expansion, with its own full suite of abilities and its own talent tree. That’s eighteen new specs in two expansions, or in WoW terms, the equivalent of six classes. (GW2 also added a totally new class in Heart of Thorns.)

Compare that to WoW, where we get one new class about every four to five years. The latest class, Demon Hunter, didn’t even have the expected three specs. Blizzard has made some disappointing choices when adding classes, too. There have been zero new ranged specs of any kind since launch, either physical or spell-based, and only one new healing spec ever. Meanwhile, they’ve added five new melee specs and three tanking specs. It’s so lopsided and bizarre.

It also seems like we’re going to wait another two to three years before gaining a new talent row or a new class.

Instead of that, the big class addition in Battle for Azeroth is Azerite Armor. Now that we’re getting our first look at it, it’s pretty underwhelming compared to what the competition offers. The armor pieces grant what are basically custom tier set bonuses. Now we know why we’re not getting tier sets. Once again, Blizzard isn’t actually providing something new. They’re just taking away something that already exists and replacing it with something similar.

Comparing classes from different games one to one isn’t always fair. But it’s still accurate to say that, compared to other AAA MMOs, Blizzard has historically underdelivered when it comes to new classes, diversity of specs, and new spells. That’s part of what makes Battle for Azeroth so disappointing. In a game that already offers less in terms of class gameplay and diversity than others, the entire next expansion adds practically nothing to classes. All of these new races, as cool as they are, can’t make up for that.

Why does this matter?

You can add all the systems and shiny things you want to an MMO, but in the end, players will only stick around if they like the moment-to-moment gameplay of their class. In the past, this was one of WoW’s greatest strengths. But pruning can only go so far before it starts to affect that gameplay.

Blizzard has argued that having situational abilities just means those buttons take up space on your bar. You never actually use them. In some cases, this is true. However, I would argue that part of the fun of MMOs is knowing when those situational abilities can shine in the right circumstances. They also add a lot of flavor to the fantasy of a class. That’s something that Blizzard has been keen on lately.

Blizzard has argued that raids and Mythic+ dungeons have become so layered and strategic that complex rotations would make the game too difficult. I’m not sure that’s true. Many Wrath and Cataclysm classes had incredibly complex rotations, and those raid encounters were by no means simple. Yet we still liked the game, and players had success at whichever level of difficulty they wanted to engage with.

On the other hand, I am sure that the pruned classes of modern WoW make tasks like leveling, World Quests, and Heroic dungeons an absolute snoozefest sometimes. Classes are so stripped down that leveling rotations are often two or three abilities for dozens of levels. Going out into the world to quest at max level is also pretty disappointing these days. Enemies aren’t that interesting, so with the stripped-down specs, combat becomes lifeless. There simply aren’t enough tactical or rotational decisions to make. There aren’t enough abilities to make encounters feel dynamic.

Classes need to be fun and engaging no matter what content you’re doing. If you design them only around your most difficult content, they won’t exactly thrill when you’re out there completing World Quests. WQs, Heroics, and LFR are the entire extent of WoW for a large number of players. Let’s keep them in mind, too, when designing classes. They don’t care about topping the meters — they just want fun buttons to push.

Besides, I can’t be the only one who wants to keep their darkglare.