Path of the Titans and the Glyph System

Path of the Titans: Removed!

Blizzard has scrapped the entire Path of the Titans progression system. As it is, it may be coming back—but not likely.

Tom Chilton explained that Blizzard had spent a long time working on the Path of the Titans system, trying to balance making it complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be understandable. At the end of the day, they realized that they had ripped it all down until it resembled an upgrade to the glyph system. Simultaneously, they felt that the Glyph system wasn't as much of a game-changer in WotLK as they had originally wanted it to be, so they've decided instead to scrap the Path of the Titans concept, and instead focus on making the glyph system into the feature they had originally wanted.

Glyph System Changes

To accomplish this, they've added a new tier of glyphs: Medium Glyphs. Tom explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the "best" glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they're trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility.

On the UI side, there have also been a few changes—I was asked not to take photos, but the glyph UI now lists all the possible glyphs for your class. Tom Chilton pointed out that up until now there had been no way to get a complete list of all your possible glyphs in-game—the only option was to go to the Auction House and look through what was available (or to patronize our own fine establishment).

There was also talk about making glyphs permanent rather than consumable—so that as soon as you used a glyph for the first time, it was added to your "list", and thereafter you could rearrange your glyphs later on as you chose.

Guild Advancement

Guild Reputation

Firstly, the whole guild currency idea has been scrapped. The rewards that they had originally had in mind for that system, like special guild tabards and mounts (with your guild insignia on them and everything!) are now unlocked by guild achievements. Rather than buying them with guild currency, you buy them with simple gold—but which rewards you can buy is restricted by your guild reputation.

You farm guild rep by doing four things:

• Completing quests
• Doing rated Battlegrounds
• Killing raid bosses (to get credit, the raid that downs the boss must be mostly comprised of guild members—7/10 for 10-mans, and 20/25 for 25-mans)
• Earning guild achievements

Basically, you'll be farming rep with your guild in exactly the same way you would farm any endgame rep—and the rewards will (presumably) be similar. A final decision hasn't been made yet about how guild reputation will transfer (if at all) between alts, but they did say that leaving a guild won't immediately wipe your guild reputation—though joining a new guild probably will.

Guild Achievements

Some examples of possible guild achievements were offered:

• 10,000 total quests completed
• Having a max-rank of every profession
• Having an 85 of every class
• etc.

In addition, some of the existing achievements (like the classic raiding meta) are being converted into guild achievements, to give players a reason to go back and do them. This allows players to farm achievements to help their guild's rank and their guild reputation, even if they already have them all.

As it stands now, guild achievements will be retained by the guild, even if all the members of the guild who were present when the achievement was earned have left the guild. The guild achievement pane actually lists the guild members who were present at the time the achievement was originally earned.

Guild Leveling

The whole guild talents idea has been scrapped as well. Tom Chilton talked for a while about the issues they faced—Can only the guild leader pick the talents? Do you have respecs? Who pays for them? How do you make all the players feel involved? Do you min-max builds, so that all guilds feel the same? Instead, they've altered it to a simpler system: each guild progresses normally from level 1 to level 25, and gains a new perk at each level—just like a character learning new spells. The guild menu will now show you what your existing perks are, and what the perks will be come the next guild level. No information was given about how exactly guilds would progress, but it's easy to guess at possible methods—raiding, group pvp, guild achievements, etc.

New Guild Interface

Another thing I was frustrated not to be able to photograph, guilds now have a fully revamped interface with a lot of long-awaited features.

First of all, there's a new guild landing page, with a news feed—something broadly similar to the character feed for individual characters on the Armory, but for the entire guild—listing recent successes in raiding, new characters hitting max level, etc. You can also flag items as "sticky", in case you want to make sure the Message of the Day stays up there, or you're exceptionally proud of a recent kill.

In addition, the guild roster is now filterable. You can now see the professions of your guild members from the guild menu—and sort players by profession. This enables you to do things like searching for a crafter in your guild who can make the item you need, so you can easily contact them—a HUGE time-saver.