After untwisting my panties a little bit, I've came to the following conclusion:

I like that they're taking out the meaningless talents to make a new talent point actually meaningful, but hate they're locking you into a talent tree until 31 points are spent.

There's hope in me that they get rid of that requirement, but I have a feeling that's the true motivation. The real problem Blizzard was having was with having a high-mid teir talent mixed with another high-mid teir talent in another tree causing too many combinations that they couldn't balance around.

Again, I see their point... I really do. I just don't want to look like every other moonkin/priest/warrior out there. Hopefully there's a ton of variability in a single tree allowing for variety.