Power to the Forsaken!
Amen to that, brother. I’ve enjoyed my Undead Death Knight (doubly undead!) way more than my hippy-dippy Tauren from a lore perspective. 
It can be fun to play the evil guy… but let’s just not pretend the Forsaken are anything but. Yeah, there are some exceptions, but the Forsaken are just selfish bastards otherwise. Major quests for them include massacring random civilians (gotta make room, ya know), testing horrible poisons and plagues on unarmed prisoners (including civilians), actively throwing away mementos of their former lives because they’d rather not remember their humanity, and now assaulting and randomly murdering the long-suffering people of Gilneas.
Truth be told, I had a lot of respect for the Scarlet bunch just by contrast. Yes, many of them were stir-crazy and violently psychotic, but after what they went through and lived, I expected that. And they were being driven even crazier by the Legion’s power. But the Forsaken, instead of contradicting their beliefs, actively embraces the image of evil, murderous monsters out to destroy humanity!
… What? They went nuts because they couldn’t unlock the doors to SM or something?
There are sites–I tried it out this weekend in Un’Goro and Tanaris. The concept is cool, but so far it’s kinda boring (I’m only at about Archaeology 7, though, so I suspect it gets better). You go to a dig site, click “Survey,” then a little surveyor telescope appears along with a beacon in a color (they were all red for me initially). You follow the direction the telescope is pointing (this was not intuitive for me at first) and then dig again. The telescope continues to point you in the right direction, and the little beacon eventually turns yellow and then green. Eventually you get something–in my case, it was always one or more fossils. I think you’re supposed to combine the fossils into artifacts, but I didn’t get that far–I was on my way to Uldum at the time so I didn’t want to waste a lot of time with it. I think you can dig four times at any given site (find four fossils/artifacts/whatever) before it disappears, but I had to do the “Survey” thing probably ten times each. People who like fishing are going to love this. 
Death to the Living!
Also, if it hasn’t been mentioned here, 4.0 is out on the PTR (not beta) realm right now. So if you wanna check out the new talents and what-not (but not new zones or races or flying in the old world or other Cata stuff) go for it.
Just a bump for a question - any hunters in the Beta or PTR that can give a feel for how the new resource is working? Is it feeling like a rogue or feral druid? I like the slow-drain type feel of mana better, so I’m hoping it’s not as bouncy as energy-using classes. The GCD is still 1.5 sec for hunters right?
The new hunter pet buffs are looking awesome though. It will be very nice to have a stable of pets to fill buff holes (Kings, BL, AP debuff, Bleed debuff, Armor debuff, etc…).
There was some talk a while back that Blizzard was going to redesign the Shaman somewhat to remove the “buff totems” they have. If anyone knows if this has been something that changed in the beta or with the 4.0 patch, could you let me know?
So far, the only difference I’ve seen between having focus and having mana is that I’ve joined the lines of the water-totalers. It makes a bit of a difference until I get going, so I figure it will on bossfights, but that’s it. I’ve seen much bigger changes from having different shots, and those poison things, and I swear to Og my pet’s growl doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it used to (seriously, if I don’t start a fight with an MD and sometimes after I have, I need to hug the floor right fast), than from focus. Different-colored bar.
Got back in briefly after Elune crashed last night, noticed that the loader says “data for the next patch is available, download will start when you exit WoW”. Didn’t see any download start when I exited, though, so dunno if that is working. Figure that has to be 4.0, and I guess it will be going live soon…maybe next Tuesday when they do the maintenance thing…
That’s what I used to think, but background downloading starts a good month or two out. November is still likely.
There’s always been discussion about changing Shaman buff mechanics (or, more frequently, players complaining about Shaman buff mechanics), but I haven’t seen anything to indicate that they’re removing totems from Shamans. It’s considered a pretty integral class mechanic, and the wide range of buff coverage is balanced by the fact that it’s a static AOE effect.
… What?
I’m guessing “water-totaler” is a riff on “tea-totaler”, meaning he doesn’t drink water to regen mana anymore.
Ah, I was imagining “water totaler” to be “someone who sums up how much water they have to drink during the encounter,” which would make zero sense for a non-mana user. Contributing to my confusion is probably the fact that the word is teetotaler and has nothing to do with tea, per se.
Add whatever they call them charges for Unholy DKs to empower their ghoul. And hunters have a stacking thing going on too.
Lots of classes are getting abilities/talents/resources that require stacking and unleashing in order to allow for more variation in play than a 1, 2, 3 rotation. The goal is for you to be making active decisions in order to increase DPS rather than it being more a function of latency and gear. More reactive, if you will.
I don’t think any of them are as severe as the combo points for rogue/feral, however (where if you don’t know how to use them you can’t do any sort of reasonable DPS). Just a way for you to vary your play and perhaps a larger gap between “good” and “bad” DPS for a given class with the same gear set.
The example for the DK is that as you (or it?) crit you build up charges and once they stack to 3 (5?) you can empower your ghoul into a monstrosity (think Deformed Fanatic in Lady Deathwhisper in ICC).
NOTE: Posted here cause Skammer recommended it.
If Karana, apparently known as Cenarious to the people of Azeroth, expected me to be able to spell, he would not have given me a secretary. 
Slight hijack: It’s actually “teetotaler,” and it has nothing to do with tea. 
Ahem ahem cough cough cough:
You even used my same cite!
Oops! Sorry about that! Can I plead sleepiness? 