Sam's Blizzcon thoughts

While I was not lucky, rich or motivated enough to trek cross-country for Blizzcon, I had to be happy with refreshing MMO Champion every 5 minutes trying to get the latest news.

So, I have a few thoughts on the announcements made this weekend.

First, the non-WoW announcements.

Diablo III's Wizard? Love it. Blizzard described the Wizard as a young, untrained mage not yet worthy of the title "Sorcerer." What does this mean for us players? Lots of explosions. The Video is a must-see.

Starcraft II brought the biggest bomb of the show, announcing that it would be split into 3 separate games, with each game's single-player campaign focusing on one of the three races. Some see this as Blizzard's way of milking more money out of us, but, honestly, I'm all for it. So as long as they're willing to distribute 3 full games' worth of content, I'm willing to purchase 3 full games. Think of it as Blizzard's usual "one game and one expansion" method, with a second expansion thrown in to complete the story.

World of Warcraft took up most of the show. Here's some highlights.
Dual-Spec System: I like this and hate it at the same time. I like the concept. Personally, I would love to be able to respec my Shaman to Restoration for an instance run, then back to Enhancement for leveling. If they can implement the item-rack feature to allow you to carry around a second set of armor, great. Binding hotkeys and Glyphs to each spec? Brilliant. My main issue with the system is that it's too flexible. Currently, as planned, you will be able to switch specs at any time outside of combat. This seems like a poor decision to me. It takes away all the individuality of the different specs, by allowing someone to constantly hop back and forth. In my opinion, they should make an NPC in major cities that will switch your spec. That way, players will actually have to choose which spec will be the most useful for what they want to do. Obviously, this system is still pretty far off, so I'll withhold final judgement until then.
Death Knight Talents: I would love to see this philosophy spread to other classes. Originally, Blood was the DPS tree, Frost was the tanking tree and Unholy was the PVP tree. Now, any spec will do for each purpose. The talent trees just dictate HOW you go about it. Blood is about pure damage and healing, Frost is about Crowd Control, while Unholy is about Diseases and Minions. Surely, there will be a "best" spec for each situation, but an Unholy Knight will be able to tank decently, and a Blood Knight will be effective in PVP.
Freezing Shot: This allows Hunters to CC without setting up traps ahead of time. This will allow Huntards to be useful, but I can't wait to see it in the hands of a good Hunter. I'm very much looking forward to the possibility of keeping multiple enemies trapped for extended periods of time.
Affliction Warlocks: Bliz acknowledges that the Affliction tree is a bit complicated, without a true focus, and I agree. While I am an Affliction 'Lock for life, I'm not crazy about the 3.0 tree.
Swimming Mounts: While it's nice to be able to cross rivers on my Dwarf without dismounting, when my Draenei never had a problem, I'm a bit disappointed. I would have preferred actual water mounts.
Tenacity Pets: Hunters with pets specced for tanking should be able to off-tank instances, but not main tank. Awesome.
DoTs: Being able to tag a mob when the DoT is applied, not when it ticks would be huge. Not implemented yet, but it's nice to know they're working on it.

Plenty more out there that I'm not going to comment on, but I would love to hear your input!