Blizzard officially answers gamers’ relevant questions about Cataclysm on twitter on July 16, which concerns 31 points talent, specialization, mastery system,  and so on. The following is the game design information.

Game

Q: Will there be account-wide Achievements? If  so, can we expect to see things like vanity gifts for having multiple characters?

A: It’s an idea we definitely want to do, but it’s pretty challenging technically, so it’s not on the immediate horizon. We can’t promise anything obviously, but I wouldn’t feel the need to get difficult Achievements on more than one character on the same account.

Q: What about some class specific quests for Cataclysm? I enjoyed them in the early levels of WoW!

A: It’s very expensive to create class-specific quests given the literally thousands of new quests we are already adding for Cataclysm; however, we are going to have class-specific dungeon quests for everyone at levels 20 and 50. These won’t be as involved as, say, the old Benediction quest line, but they will give you a way to get some blue loot that isn’t otherwise available.

Q: What are your thoughts on there being guild housing as a possible guild leveling reward?

A: Our design dilemma with guild housing relates to what players might do in a guild house. If you generally hang out there, and have vendors and banks and Auction House access, then you stay there all the time and it makes the cities feel pretty dead. In a game with instanced dungeons and now phases, we are reluctant to provide more reasons for players to not see other players. It’s a social game! If we can come up with a good role for guild houses then we’ll definitely do them in the future.

Q: Will World of Warcraft ever get a new weapon type?

A: Doubtful. Tauren might be able to dual-wield gnomes on a stick.

Team and Dungeon

Q: With each expansion boss mechanics become more and more complex. Don’t you think that bosses will be overcomplicated soon?

A: We have a lot of players who have been killing bosses for nearly six years now. We think we need to keep it fresh for them. Having normal vs. hard modes is our way of making sure the complexity doesn’t make those fights inaccessible for some players.

Player VS. Player

Q: Are all characters getting 5% stun/fear reduction baseline since they are no longer talents?

A: We would rather adjust the crowd control durations to appropriate levels. Currently some crowd-control effects are so easy to get out of that only really layered crowd control (using crowd control effects of different diminishing returns) really matters. We don’t want all of PvP to be kiting each other around with instant nukes and heals. Knowing what average durations are (rather than having some classes with duration reducers and some without) will let us judge the baseline better. We think players are individually just looking at their own trees now and thinking that they were made less powerful without realizing how across-the-board all the changes are.

Q: Is your goal to not have players have a separate talent specialization solely for PvP? If so, please elaborate on how you plan to accomplish that?

A: We are removing many of the PvP talents, as well as trying to make some of the PvP talents a little more useful for PvE (for example, a talent that currently procs on taking critical damage could instead proc on taking any damage, including AoE damage, as well). While we recognize that very competitive players might still want unique talent builds for PvP vs. PvE, the hope is that more players might be able to use the same specialization more often for multiple aspects of the game.

Q: I PvP a lot in the level 10-19 bracket. What are some cool new abilities we’ll see at level 10 in Warsong Gulch?

A: Since all players will be getting a signature ability like Mortal Strike, Summon Water Elemental, or Mangle when choosing a specialization at level 10, we think players will see a lot of new abilities in the level 10-19 Warsong Gulch bracket that have never been seen before.

Profession:  Export

Q: Will the ability to run while shooting affect PvP or PvE battles more? What was the initial intention of the new ability?
A: With how encounters are today, damage-dealing while on the move is becoming increasingly important. You’ll see in a lot of classes we specifically are giving new ways for players to still do damage while on the move. That said, your damage while standing still while casting or on a target in melee range should always be optimal.

Profession: Healing

Q: Some of the new talent trees for healers seem to emphasize a style of “mana regeneration by dealing damage.” Is that intentional? If so, why?

A: Yes. In almost any situation, there are periods where heals are not urgently needed 100% of the time. Today, you probably just cast heals anyway in case someone takes damage, since mana doesn’t matter much. But if mana did matter, the “right” thing to do would be to do nothing. Talents such as Telluric Currents provide an active way to recharge mana while contributing damage.

Q: Do you expect anyone, alts or new players, to level as a healer specialization? Do you think locking them to Holy or Restoration early is bad?

A: We expect leveling as DPS will probably always be more efficient, just because killing things is faster than surviving longer while you kill things. Furthermore, we don’t want the healing specializations to be as good at killing things or the DPS specialization will not have a role. We do, however, think we can make leveling as a healer more enjoyable than it is today. Also, it will be a lot easier to use Dungeon Finder to level as a healer.

Profession: Tank

Q: Any plan to make “Crit Immunity” passive from choosing a tank tree instead of spending talents on it?

A: No, and you can blame the druids. We want a tanking specialization in Bear Form to feel different from a DPS specialization in Cat Form, otherwise it doesn’t feel fair to other classes when the Feral druid can do everything with the same talent specialization. We tried to include crit immunity bonuses in talents you would normally take.

Profession : 31-point Talent Tree and Specialization

Q: With the 31-point tree, many talents still cost two or three points. Is this going to be changed, as it basically increases their cost?

A: For the most part, yes. There are some overpowered talents that don’t need the boost, but many of the others will have their effects increased.

Q: How do the mastery bonuses work now that they don’t show up on the talent interface anymore?
A: The mastery bonuses will be trainable passive bonuses somewhere around level 75. Each talent specialization will have a different Mastery available on the trainer with a base potency and 0 Mastery Rating. The character sheet interface will have additional information on the additional potency gained from Mastery Rating.

Q: If every specialization is intended to take their 31-point talent, why is it not baseline at the level you could acquire it?

A: Those talents are a good “brass ring” to work towards. They often change your character pretty dramatically when you get them, so it’s a fun moment. There is definitely an interesting philosophical discussion about talent trees and how many talents should be mandatory vs. optional. Some players would like a model where everything is on equal footing with everything else. Others want to make sure there are some safe decisions so that they don’t have to do tons of theory-crafting research every time they talent their character. We are trying to shoot for something in the middle where we have some expectation for how a particular specialization will play (for example, we don’t want to have to develop and support the non-Chaos Bolt Destruction rotation) but players can still decide if say Blitz is something their Arms warrior will use or not.

Q: How will pets scale with Mastery their masters’ Mastery?

A: The talent specializations that rely heavily on pets (Beast Mastery and Demonology, for example) have a Mastery that makes Mastery rating also increase pet damage. Other specializations that have pets, but whose pets do not benefit from Mastery, will have their Masteries balanced accordingly, taking into account that pets will not benefit from them.

Q: Will there be a “hard cap” for Mastery rating (to avoid having 101% chance of getting a critical block, for example)?

A, In the course of finalizing all of the Masteries for the various talent specializations, we will make sure that, in the expected gear a player can acquire from the final Cataclysm raid tiers, the player will not crash into a “hard cap” unless they go out of their way to stack Mastery more than is reasonable. This may require redesigning some of the Masteries as the rest of the class designs are finalized.

Q: Ever thought of changing tiers to unlock with 3 Points instead of 5, now that 5 tier talents are gone?
A: We considered this idea, but ultimately decided against it.

Q: Are we going to be able to view the Mastery talent previews for Cataclysm as soon as we can?
A: With the talent tree redesign, all the Masteries need to be re-implemented, and, in some cases, redesigned. This will require at least a couple of weeks before they will be available on betA:

Q: Can you provide some clarity on the third Mastery that is affected by item stats?

A: We recognized the earlier implementation of Mastery in the beta was confusing. Mastery is no longer directly associated with a talent tree, but is instead a passive effect learned from a trainer at a later level. That passive effect will now grant the third Mastery bonus you formerly saw in the talent tree pane. The passive effect will have a base value, and then Mastery rating will increase that effect further. The other two Mastery bonuses previously listed at the top of the talent tree pane have been removed, but, in some cases, have been reimplemented as passive specialization bonuses. Currently, in the beta, you cannot see any of the Masteries, as they need to be reimplemented after the talent tree redesign.

Q: Will we see these talent changes in Wrath of the Lich King, before the release of Cataclysm, like we did with the last expansion?
A: Yes.

Q: It was said that players would be allowed to choose based on their play style. Do you believe fewer talents will accomplish this?
A: The talents that we are pruning are typically things like extra strength or coefficient boosts to spells. It’s hard to have a different play style based on talents like that. We are trying to keep the talents that really change gameplay. A Retribution paladin that feels like he can help out healing on 5-player dungeon runs might take the two-point talent to improve healing. A Protection warrior who tanks a lot of 5-player dungeons might want talents that help with AoE pulls, while one that is a raid off-tank might want, say, Safeguard and Vigilance instead.

Q: With the new 31-point tree system, how will players use dual-specialization? Do we get to choose a new tree when we first use our secondary specialization (off-spec)?

A: You can use dual-specialization for a different specialization in beta, if you choose, much as you can today. We are going to lower the level at which you can use dual-specialization, as well as the cost for purchasing it, because we recognize that using Dungeon Finder while leveling is likely to be popular.

For more information, you can visit forums.worldofwarcraft.com