Hey look, some info about Cataclysm, huzzah huzzah. Taking a look at it:
Path of the Titans is scrapped; instead, we get Medium Glyphs: Why, you may ask? Well, evidently they couldn’t balance Path of the Titans, but they feel they can balance Medium Glyphs. “Tom [Chilton] explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the “best” glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they’re trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility.” This reason is flat-out stupid. If medium glyphs do anything more than a minor glyph, there will be a set of “best” medium glyphs, too. Adding a new tier of glyphs just means new things for the math nerds to minmax. Plus, let’s not hesitate to point out that they haven’t gotten minor glyphs right yet - several classes have at best 1 or 2 usable ones, then slots you fill up because you’re tired of it being empty. DKs got lucky, we’ve got 4 to 5 (2 mandatory, 2 or 3 you can choose between based on spec and raid comp). Druids aren’t so bad off either, at least if you’re tanking.
At least a couple usable changes came out of this - a mention of being able to see all the possible glyphs for your class, and (the one that sucks for scribes if it goes live) discussion of making glyphs permanent - once you use a glyph once, it goes into your permanent collection and you can use it thereafter. If they do that, scribes had best be able to make and sell the best shoulder enchants.
Guild currency is out; guild reputation is in: different method, different terminology, same end result. When your guild does things together, or even alone, you get rep for it; I, for one, would like to have a mount with my guild tabard on it. Guild talents are also scrapped; guild perks are in, as your guild “levels up” they get guildwide perks. Also, finally, a new guild interface. No word yet on if it’s a huge enormous stupid rigamarole to add a new rank anywhere but at the bottom.
Downshifting raids: Being able to turn a 25 into 3 10s if you don’t have the people for the 25 is pretty hot. No upshifting, though. “They explained that they felt this would cause a lot of pressure on guild to pull some really unpleasant maneuvers—for instance, stripping out the bottom 15 players to do some particularly difficult encounter, and then inviting them all back in for trash. They figured the legitimate use-cases for upshifting a raid were much more rare.”
Flexible raid lockouts: As long as the raid you want to go into doesn’t have a boss up that you’ve already killed, you’re good to go. Essentially, you can’t kill the same boss twice per raid lockout - but you can pug a raid on one night, then join your guildies for the next night. Fun! Sounds like they’re switching to more of a “boss ID” system, rather than a “raid ID.” Works for me.
Stormwind and Orgrimmar redesigns: blah, blah, blah. Does anyone find it amusing (and maybe sort of symbolic) that Garrosh refuses to put his stronghold in the Valley of Wisdom? (BASIC CAMPFIRE FOR WARCHIEF)
Grim Batol: Bastion of Twilight: Hello, New Naxx! 5 boss fights, plus an ultra-hard final boss fight, plus motherf*ckin’ CHO’GALL as a final boss! Yeah, I’m just a little excited about this raid. And a council-style fight, huzzah. I’m just hoping for fewer overhangs on the roof - trying to rotate my camera to find those floaty purple balls is harder than eighteen bitches on a bitchboat.
Skywall: New 5-man, new raid, able to use your actual flying mount, and oh yeah, you get to fight Al’Akir the Windlord in the raid. Glad to see Ragnaros isn’t stealing facetime from all the other elemental lords. Wonder if Thunderaan will show up, pissed that he was repeatedly used to do nothing but get a sword? (Also - I’ve never seen Memory of Thunderaan. Kind of wish I could now, though.)
Deepholm: The Orgrim’s Hammer has crashed into the elemental plane of Earth, but the Skybreaker is still floating around. Take that, goblin engineering. Also, Therazane the Stonemother will be running a new Hodir-like quest hub. I wonder if she’ll be pissed at how many times we killed her fat ugly evil daughter.
Uldum: WoW does Egypt. And furries. Furries made of stone.
I’m sure I didn’t cover nearly all of it, but that’s the parts that jump out at me. I spent a good chunk of the weekend either not playing WoW, or playing my druid when I was playing WoW (did I mention I have a druid now? Went from level 7 to level 23 over the weekend).