[Pip Boy]

Originally Posted by Krylo

The talent trees are so simplified now, and cross-builds no longer even possible, that they may as well not even give you talent trees.

I think that the new talents are a huge improvement over the old ones. Whereas in the old talents, a lot of specs were unplayable at most levels (arcane mages below 70, shadow priests below 50), leveling up in any spec is a much more smooth process than it was before because vital spec abilities can be given early on now without worry that people using a cross-spec will just take the best thing from each tree.

As for not having many choices for your spec, that really depends what class you play. Some specs still have a lot of choices to make in the new system, and even in the old system a lot of classes and specs had their talents pretty much limited to "pick these for PvE or pick these for PvP".