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Just reviewing the upcoming changes, I'm kinda sad to say that I'm not really looking forward to them.  Mostly because I haven't been playing long enough to go through all the current content.  Looks like by the time this expansion is released, I probably will end up missing a good section of the old content (especially when you factor in how I'm not ever going to play Alliance).

The higher level stuff I probably won't get to for a while as I'm still too low.  I haven't even done a single raid nor hit any of the Burning Crusade spots.  However, the first I want to dive into is the whole new race/class additions.

First, I think adding more classes to existing races is silly.  It truly devalues each race and makes it seem more like a bling thing as opposed to something tied to the behavior of the character.  From an RPG viewpoint, some of the new class/race combinations are flat out stupid.  Dwarf mages?  Blood elf warriors?  Troll druid?  Bad design points of view.  If I were put in a corner and forced to make this kind of decision, here's what I would've done:

Gnome Priest (ok)
Human Hunter (ok)
Night Elf Mage (ok)
Blood Elf Druid
Tauren Paladin (ok)
Troll Warlock

I would've revoked warrior and hunter from the goblins.  Doesn't really fit their MO.  Blood elves have paladins and hunters, so there's no real need to be warriors.  I moved the warrior position to a druid for blood elves as well.  One I would think elves are more attuned to nature and magic in general and two they have a druid trainer in the city.  So this would make more sense.  Now, the whole thing with paladins and the Horde didn't make sense from an RPG from the beginning, but obviously was done to appease people who wanted to solo with the game's favorite class.  I mean, traditionally Paladins are holy warriors, cavaliers with honor and dignity, standing up for religious causes.  So giving it to the Horde was silly.  But I suppose if you get rid of the moral implications of the class, then the closest thing would be to put them as tauren.  Heck, I might even take one since I do like tauren.

Also, the troll druid didn't make a lot of sense.  Warlocks make more sense from an RPG point of view because of how warlocks are associated with demonic incantations.  The trolls aren't really natural and giving them a druid class was a poor move.  Also, I wanted some motivation to take a troll for something.  Looks like if I take a goblin, I'll reserve the warlock for them....

Regardless, the new combinations just don't make any sense.  A friend of mine mentioned how the result was likely due to some product manager bowing down to the wishes of the community as opposed to understanding true RPG game mechanics (well, I guess you can call financial motivation true RPG game mechanics, but that's a different story).  I would've preferred if they made the races have progressive improvements on their existing abilities as well as gaining more racial abilities in leveling.  At the moment, the inherent racial abilities are only meaningful and useful at very low levels.  At a certain point, they simply don't factor into the game as the classes' inherent abilities become the only measuring factor in terms of strategy.  As a result, outside of the bling factor, there isn't any motivation to choose one race over another, especially now with the increased class combinations.

Then there's some huge revamps to classes.  Hunters will lose mana as a stat and use focus like their pets.  I think they should've gotten rid of the term focus and called it energy, thus grouping them with the rogues and simplifying the naming conventions of that system.  I believe they're revoking the ammo part as well, which I'm ambivalent on.  I know some games do this but I think in those games you don't go through a thousand rounds in an hour as quickly. Regardless, the change is that ammo will become something like a resource similar to how totems work.  For god's sakes though, I hope they don't make you go on a friggin' long chained quest just to get an ammo bag (the shaman water quest is the worst!!!!)

Warlocks will lose their soul stones, which I think is going to make it better.  Originally, an interesting concept but it's too much micromanagement for a class that seems to require a LOT of micromanagement.

Now, there's the whole talent mastery side.  I'm still unclear how that mechanic will work.  But just from reading about the basics, I think WoW should allow all classes to re-spec for free once that implementation is in place.  The problem is that there's too much that gets changed and all the veterans, who are very keen on their talents, will end up getting confused once the new system is in place.  Considering that some talents will disappear altogether, it only makes sense for everyone to get a free re-spec immediately, regardless of whether they buy the expansion or not.  But I kinda like how the deeper you enter into a talent tree, the more criticals or improvements you will receive for that category of a talent.  However, this simplification makes spells and abilities fall into a very limited range of game mechanics (e.g. healing, damage, fire, etc.).  There was a very old game by SSI that did something similar.  At the end of the day, spells were defined into three categories: ice, healing and damage.  I hate this idea because it oversimplifies game play and makes things seem more generic.

The guild advancement sounds great though.  Right now, the guild mechanic is just for banking and attempting to have regular groups of gamers show their fidelity.  But in essence, the guild advancement system adds a social focus to leveling.  Definitely, it'll give more incentive for people in a guild to work together as a team and I applaud this move on Blizzard's part.  I'm not 100% sure of the mechanic, but it does sound like you'll have an incentive to do active recruiting.

The statistics changes and automatic weapons skills are hit and miss with me.  I'm still not familiar enough with the basic item statistics contributions, but perhaps that the point of why they're changing this aspect.  For now regardless, it's meaningless to me since my guys are too low level to really notice.  However, the automatic weapon skills is something I think is good and bad.  For starting players, it's great.  Or if you just want to pick up a weapon and use it, it's great.  In a way, this system is akin to the Dungeons and Dragons game mechanics.  If you were a warrior, you didn't need proficiency in a weapon to be able to use it.  You can had enough knowledge to figure out the 100 million variations of polearms that most people NEVER used in the game.  However, I was very found of games like Wizardry (6-7) and Interplay's old Wasteland, where you improved your skill by using it.  In many ways, that makes tons of sense.  However, the way the current weapon leveling system works is fairly silly.  Lets say you decide that your warrior wants to use a 2-handed sword (like I did the other day).  So you purchase your 2-handed sword skill, grab your new blue sword from the end of the Ghostland's quest, then head out to Durator to slaughter some pigs.  Within say 30 minutes, your skill will probably be around 100 just from killing low level pigs.  They could've made it more challenging such that, like experience, your weapon skill would improve after the monsters you're killing are still orange to green.  But after killing your 30th boar, it would stop because the monster is a gray to your character (and then to your weapon).  After that, you would have to find more monsters that match your current level or your weapons level, just like how you need to find higher level ingredients to make potions and other items.  From a game mechanics point of view, this is poorly done and just lazy programming.

The other big thing is the advancement to level 85.  Hmmmm....3 years after the release of the Lich King and only 5 levels worth of advancement?  Hopefully, the other 5 levels come with a 3 month new expansion release!  One thing I'm glad about is that there aren't going to be more depth to the talent tree.  So you can further spread your talents down the trees.

Finally, we get to the most controversial aspect of the game: the massive content changes.  The world is going to change.  The land will be fractured with lava, water and even new life.  It's kinda interesting actually.  I'm kinda wondering if the decisions made in these landscape changes were a direct result of statistics gleaned from the servers.  For instance, in Hillsbrad Foothills, the Horde eventually overrun that area whereas Camp Taurajo gets overtaken by the Alliance.  If these decisions weren't statistically gleaned, it would be kinda cool to see more decision making processes on the effects of these areas in the future being made from the actual impact done by players (e.g. the number of successful quests done by the Horde or the number of times the Alliance raids a town).

Probably, the content sections will be better designed.  I'm surprised that it took them this long to fix some of the more erroneous game play.  For instance, the vast level difference in a spot like Ashenvale or Stranglethorn which are being revamped.  One of the my personal pet peeves was running my poor n00b tauren hunter his first time from Mulgore, across The Barrens to Orgrimmar.  Now, I was fortunate to have my friend run me through that time.  But I can't imagine what it was like back in the day before they had the Zepplin....oh yeah, I can imagine because I didn't realize that there was a Zepplin when I took my poor Tauren Druid across!  You've got no mount, you're slow as crap, you're wandering through an area where there's creatures that are around 17-20th level (and you'll probably be 10-11th at best coming out of Mulgore) and your only hope is that you can make it through the road without some wild dog spotting you as it's Puppy Chow.

Two of the more interesting parts are that the gnomes and trolls will get their own city, it seems.  My interpretation of this event is that the game designers were too lazy or under too much pressure trying to release the original game that they FINALLY had a chance to amend this issue.  I was reading the passage on the new upcoming events leading to the trolls re-conquering Echo Isles.  There's one section that was funny to me:

Over the years, members of the Horde looking to test their worth have braved the Echo Isles to confront Zalazane, and many of them even returned seemingly victorious with his severed head. These victories, however, proved to be nothing more than illusions created by the twisted witch doctor's dark magic. Days after these trophies were taken to Sen'jin Village, they reverted to their true forms: painted rocks and coconuts adorned with wooden tusks, or even the heads of Zalazane's enslaved trolls.

The way you interpret this passage is simply: a cheesy excuse to explaining how this Zalazane guy was able to get killed probably a billion times and make his return for this final event.  Well, I guess this explanation beats a Days of Our Lives episode where a returning cast member is the twin sister of the second cousin of the guy that fucked some tranvestite.  Anyway, I for one am looking forward to seeing a real troll city.  I think everyone is considering that they got shafted in this dinky little village next to the coast.  They don't even have a flight path.  No wonder trolls get heat in the game.

Anyway, I'm totally hyped up about the upcoming expansion.  I'm glad I was able to get onboard before the release just so I can sample some of the old content.  Unforunately, I'll be missing out on all the Alliance content and only have my little (crappy) guide book as a token of remembrance.  But who the hell wants to play with zit pock marked kids who only are beginning to discover snippets of a lawn on their pubic zones while munching on Hot Pockets.  I prefer to play with the older crowds munching on those Hot Pockets instead ;)

See ya'll on Cataclysm.  Remember to join us on Ner'zhul and look up my friend's guild Deaths Right Hand so we can all level up and go raiding down the line!