I finally logged in to the Wrath beta for the first time last night, and frankly, was a little disappointed. Like a lot of players, I really enjoy seeing content live, and playing around on the beta feels like I'm somewhere i'm not supposed to be -- things are not done (it's a little unnerving to see a Blizzard game without impeccable amounts of polish on it), and there's no flow yet from the old world to the new -- you're dropped into Northrend and it's like you've jumped forward a few months in game continuity. Something is missing.

But having been to the strangely buggy future, I can tell you one thing so far. Blizzard will do something they haven't done for almost two years now: every character will very likely get their talent points back around the Wrath of the Lich King release. Sure, it probably seemed obvious to most, but this is a bigger deal than you might think -- free respecs used to be a pretty common occurence, as almost every patch, Blizzard would refund talent points to at least one or two classes. But that was changed right around the last expansion, as Blizzard has opted for smaller class changes rather than content patch revamps. We haven't seen a talent point refund in a long time.

If this release is like last time, we won't necessarily see our talent points refunded upon installation, but rather around a big content patch right beforehand. If you were planning on respeccing for Wrath, you might want to wait a bit -- while respecs still aren't free all the time, we are apparently getting one done for us.

Hunter talents are out, and there's definitely a lot to say about them, both good and bad. While we have discussed some of the changes to the lower Survival tree, what we haven't touched on is all the new talents and the talent changes in other trees. If I was to sum it all up in one sentence, I'd say this: The 51 point talents look lackluster, but most of the rest is downright drool inducing.

Marksmanship's early tiers are now full of easily obtainable goodies for any Hunter, Survival's gained even more group and raid buff utility, and Beastmastery has even more amazing pet synergy.

There's a lot to cover, so we'll tackle it one tree at a time. First, we'll look at Marksmanship, which was once premiere Hunter tree, but has fallen a bit to Beastmastery in Burning Crusade. It's certainly seen some marked improvement for Wrath so far, and even if you don't plan to spec Marksmanship, you'll at least want to know about the first few tier talents, as you'll probably want to grab many of them anyway.

Kemmeua of Emerald Dream decided to share some WoWhead love on the official forums. (And by the look of the WoWhead main page it needs a little love.) He shared some rookie mistakes that players have made. For example:

• Didn't know there were different Zeppelins, thought it was a triflight system so that if I stayed on long enough it would take me to Tirisfall then to Grom and back to Durotar was on there a long time.
• Didn't know they people were yelling at me to TANK better, I thought tanks plowed things and that's what I was doing
• Saw alliance in crossroads and thought, "OMG," so I go an whack 'em and get camped for a day yelling for help.
• Didn't know how to talk to people.
• Saw a hunter with dual weapons on a Kodo and thought "WOW!"
• Saw a raid group forming in Kargath for MC, asked them if I can join, getting told I cant roll with the big dawgs at 43.
• where do u get liferoot if you can't herb? stupid quest giver.

This guy is either a clueless newb or an obvious troll (I lean towards a bit of trolling-- it's too perfectly designed to provoke a response), but either way, he claims that he didn't just forget to use his talents, he actively chose not to. That's right-- he claims he can go all the way to 70 without using talents at all.

Even if he is kidding (and he must be, right? the talents you choose are based on your own "skill and merits"), what would that be like? Could you imagine going to 70 without Nature's Swiftness or Vampiric Embrace or Tactical Mastery? I guess it's possible, but unless you just wanted to prove you could do it (hey, people have done crazier things), how hard would the game really be without talents? By definition, no talent is necessary for the core gameplay-- the whole point of having three trees is that you can go without the other two you don't choose. But is it possible to build a viable character using no talents at all?

Troll away, talentless player. But thanks for making me consider something I'd never thought of before: just how much do the talents you choose govern your gameplay? And if you didn't have any of the talents that you have, how much would your game player differ, or suffer?

A lot of surprises came with the awesome Patch 2.3. Shamans, in particular, have been getting a lot of unintended love. The recent three-hour server maintenance found a lot of Shamans on the WoW forums talking about getting free re-specs, after a bug in the recent patch gave some Shamans an additional Talent Point to spend in creatively undesirable ways. Reports have trickled in that some players' Shamans got their Talents wiped clean while others, such as WoW Insider's Mike Schramm, did not. The irony is that a lot of Shamans had already paid their hard-earned Gold to re-spec thanks to the buff-flavored goodness of 2.3 only to find that they had their Talent Points refunded a day later.

What about you guys who play Shamans? Did you get your Talent Points refunded? If yes, did you use the free re-spec to choose a new build or take the same Talents you've known and loved? Were you among the over-eager mobs who spent for a re-spec as soon as the servers came back on last Tuesday?