I read acknowledgement of a few problems, which was nice:


  • railroaded questing (actually got this one spot on, IMO)
  • lack of options for gear progression (right but for the wrong reasons; see below)
  • lame talent rework


I also read what seems to be a disappointing misunderstanding of why certain things were disliked:


  • The Justice / Honor badge system in Cataclysm cleaned up the crazy system from Lich King. Uh, everyone I talked to loved the badge gear availability in WotLK and disliked having to grind the more difficult heroics in Cataclysm or LFR to progress. I suspect his characterization of this as awesomesauce had more to do with Squeaky Wheel Syndrome combined with "cleaned up" meaning "easier for limited devs to maintain." Granted, LFR was pretty universally liked but that did NOT resolve the complaints about the changes to the badge gear system.
  • Heroic "difficulty" changes != more challenge. From everything I read and experienced, this "challenge" was primarily just them adding gratuitous amounts of AoE stuff you don't want to stand in. That didn't feel like challenge to me -- just abuse. I'm sure 5 individuals probably didn't notice it as much but as a boxer I sure did.


But what do I know -- I'm just an armchair wow design guru.