Are they meant to be like WoW ie if I want to be a frost Mage I only use talents from that tree, or is it more pick w/e you want?

Reading them from wiki of the game it's not clear.

Did you play Skyrim? It is a lot like perk trees.

you can pick what you want that isn;t reliant on the class skills.

Whatever you use, the more you learn for that skill line & the more you can choose from it.

But, its up to you whether to stick to a certain type of playing and using skills that compliment that playstyle, or diversify & choose other skill lines that cover for weak points in your playstyle.

No..its not like wow.

Look at the videos on skills & you will see people using whatever weapon they want & choosing a variety of skill paths.

Take a look at the skill calculator.

http://skillcalc.massyx.de/

You can eventually earn enough skill points to learn every skill for your race and profession plus all the weapon, guild and crafting skills. But that would be a long-term goal.

So you'd probably want to decide what you want to be really good at first and start spending points there. Then spread out to less important (to you) skills later.

But I think the only respect in which it's like WOW is the morphs. After you've use a skill enough you get an option to morph it into one of two options. That's a little like how WOW offers you a choice of three bonuses at different tiers in their spec tree but that's as close as it gets.

Specifically re Frost Mage...

There's no Frost Magic as such. But the Destruction Staff skill line is elemental and its spells vary depending on what kind of destruction staff you have equipped - fire, lightning or frost. So you'd probably want to focus on those to start with.

Your choice of profession doesn't matter when it comes to frost magic specifically. Sorcerers are the most magey profession and get crowd control, daedric pets and lightning magic. The lightning might be a good accompaniment to your frost staff. Or Dragonknights might suit you. They get fire and earth skill lines. Templars and Nightblades sound a bit less like what you're after but you might want to check out their abilities anyway.

You cant get 200-300 skill points can you? I hope there is a limmit. Otherwise in time you will have allround demi gods everywhere.

Only 6 active skill slots and a lot of the passives only give a bonus if a certain skill is slotted or weapon/armor equipped.

So even with everything maxed, no, it wouldn't break the game.

More like maxing out multiple lines will allow you to be able to fully "switch" into a different character without actually re-leveling or respeccing.

You can only use 5 active skill+ "ultimate" per weapon type, meaning 12 skills total.

Get all skills you want, but you can only use a few, not to mention that to morph certain skills they need to be level..5? I think. And for a skill to level it has to be on your bar...

There will be no demi gods everywhere until some one, inevitably discovers the best combo's of class/skills for certain specific roles.

I can't remember which interview it was in, but yes, I'm pretty sure they said that you could eventually earn enough skill points to learn everything. I like that. In fact, I won't buy the game if that isn't the case.

I have GW2 I can play free, well forever. I don't think it's as good but I'm not gonna lay down money for ESO unless it ticks all my boxes.

i would need to see something where they said you can earn everything on 1 character. my guess is they never confirmed this

At one point they did say you could learn everything on one character. When they did the crafting remake that changed since the crafting skills now pulled points that would be used on combat skills. However I believe it's estimated to be able to get somewhere in the range of 150 skill points not counting veteran ranks and skill points from other source.

http://eldersouls.com/elder-scrolls-online/skills

Damn, w/ new MMORPG pvp keep raid videos and what other stuff I've started to uncover .. I .. I .. I wanna play .. wah .. ha .. ha .. ha!

i would need confirmation of this at launch. this game has a ton of skills and if 1 person can learn everything (outside of the crafting skills) then its a huge blow to me. i am sick of games letting you be everything at any time. choices should mean something

Well we know that there are about 300 skyshards spread around the game so that is 100 points. And you get a point each level so that is 49. You also get some for certain quests. So, that is roughly 150 skill points + an unknown amount from other quests and an unknown amount form veteran ranks and other areas. That skill builder site has you needing roughly 300 points just to learn all the combat skills excluding vampire and werewolf lines. So take that for what you will.