Can someone explain this.

Can someone explain this to me?

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h146/Orcao/PoESkillTree.jpg

How long and what level would you need to be to fill even 1/3 of that?

You're not supposed to fill even a third of that.
You select what path you want to go and any extra passives you can get are just a bonus

The passive skill tree is broken up into 3 categories. Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. The idea is to choose which path you want to go down and put your points there. This is going to give a good amount of customization to builds, such as a intelligence based Marauder or strength based melee witch (Not that these are going to be ideal builds for said classes. Maybe a melee witch :P) It's not intended to be able to take all the skills on the entire tree.

Thanks guys, so basically the entire skill(Forest) is all passive?

Yep, if you can find a screenie that zooms in so you can see it more clearly you'll see that right off the center of the tree where you can see your character there are three paths that branch out. Every skill on the tree is passive, gives a passive bonus to various things and also + to Str, Dex and Int.

Yea it's a bigger tree, but more of a set path, Not 100% sure if you can tamper in each slightly but i would think you could, (at loss of the best passives at the end of the trees i would assume).

When I made my first character, I thought I would be able to cover a lot more of the tree than I was able to, in the end.

You really have to sit down and choose a path. You can make a dual wielding ranger, or a ranged duelist. You can make a lightning nova templar, or a 2H maces physical damage-oriented templar.

You can make a tanky marauder specialized in shields at the cost of damage, or a powerful dual wielding, or 2H weapons specialist.

You can make a summoner witch, or a wand specialist, or a straight-up nuker.

It's all up to you, and all the above are valid choices. You'll probably end up covering at most 20% of the passive tree.

I should add, as always, that this, like everything else, is subject to change during the beta.

Also, it may sound negative that you can only cover 20% of the tree, but in the contrary, it isn't. It allows you to make a ton of different builds for each class, all of which are viable.

You're not forced into a style of play, all paths are open for each class.

Hell, you can probably make a strength-oriented witch if you want to.

God that picture sucks, please use this one.

http://i.imgur.com/TbatZ.jpg

Or this one.

The current tree has 750 nodes of which you'll be able to get about 100. The emphasis is on creating a build that fits your playstyle.

The passive tree will be getting a major revision before too long.