PTR Impressions

 Having spent the evening playing on the PTR, I've been looking at some specs, the appearance changes, and some of the early pre-expansion events.

Specs first:

Looking through my more frequently played characters, it seems to me that Shamans (specifically Enhancement and Elemental) feel the most changed. The removal of Maelstrom as a resource makes both specs all about tracking stacking buffs (like Maelstrom Weapon for Enhancement) and really makes you have to rethink a lot of what you've learned in the past four years.

What is definitely noticeable is that every class feels like it's gotten a ton of abilities back - which is mostly fun, though you'll really need to sort through your keybinds and action bars to figure out where to fit everything.

Protection Paladins feel a bit different because you'll actually need to build up to use Shield of the Righteous again, rather than leading with it. Additionally, Word of Glory has returned as the HoPo-driven heal for all specs, which you'll use for your self-heal. Ret also gets Consecration baseline now.

Rotationally, at least at level 50, DKs look pretty similar, though having Death and Decay as well as a 1-minute ghoul on a 2 minute cooldown for Frost (and Blood, though they had D&D before) does make me wonder a bit about AoE rotations. The absolutely wonderful thing, though, for me, is that Frost can now use two-handed weapons again. There are also several new runeforges to pick from, and while I'm sure that the theorycrafters will have that all figured out... by now, it's nice to potentially see some new options (and possibly have some new knobs to turn to make sure that they can keep dual-wielding and 2H frost both viable.)

Following a pattern, Havoc DHs get Immolation Aura baseline, though their rotation was never super crowded, so I think this shouldn't be hard to work in.

Rogues are going to all have poison again, as well as Slice and Dice, which I'll be honest, I'm less happy about (its duration is fairly long, so it'll be just something to track with a weak aura.) (Actually, I didn't see if Outlaw uses it, or just has Roll the Bones with an option to talent into S&D like it is on live.)

It looks like Frost Mages are pretty much the same (ain't broke, don't fix, I guess) though Arcane has gotten a little more with a new active ability called Touch of the Magi.

Warlocks get a ton of curses back, which are sort of utility debuffs. Also, Corruption is class-wide (well, Demo has it.)

Moving on:

Some races definitely get more new options than others in terms of appearance. A big aspect to the changes is that things like facial hair are broken into separate categories like mustache, beard, and sideburns, and you can choose eye colors independently from the face. I was able to give my Draenei DK a full beard while maintaining his overall facial shape, which is nice.

Worgen can customize their wolf and human forms separately, though I've noticed that some of the new heterochromia options have good counterparts between them - I gave my Warrior a glowing green left eye and cloudy blind right eye (and injured right ear) in his wolf form and then a similar, but less glowy, set-up for his human form.

A lot of races can get tattoos - Orcs actually get both tattoos and war-paint, which layer on top of one another.

Undead can choose from a number of glowy eye colors, as well as one just grey non-glowing eye (and the usual empty sockets.) They can also now choose whether their bones are poking out, which is something I think my vain Rogue would probably actually care a lot about. Notably, without poking bones, your armor is no longer frayed or broken either.

Night Elves seem to get a lot (though I was primarily looking with my DH) including some potential scars including one that, painfully, is just called "Teldrassil." You can also have leaves running through your hair and beard, for the full-on Green Man look. Also, thanks to the separate beard and mustache options, you can actually have a full, thick set of facial hair. Also, ear length and thickness can be adjusted.

The thing that really makes it a lot easier is that you can see menus of various options when making your selections. Mousing over various options in a menu lets you compare and contrast a lot more easily.

Next:

I finished Exile's Reach - I think it's a fantastic tutorial for various WoW systems - really teaching you to play the game if you're new to it. On the other hand, having just one experience feels like it might get old (though the whole thing doesn't last too long.) To reiterate, it's a generic-enough story as well that it will probably age a lot more gracefully than the Cataclysm-era changes.

Finally:

The expansion-opening event begins with a short quest chain that sends you to various guards to collect reports, and ends with a world boss fight against... spoilers. I doubt that this will be the whole opening, as it doesn't have you heading to Northrend, but it remains to be seen. However, the really big deal is that the Zombie plague is back, which means that if you want to get ordinary stuff done while the pre-launch event is going on... uh, good luck. I don't know if they're going to have a sort of gradual rollout of the plague like they did for 3.0, but it seemed that as soon as the PTR was up, the zombies were everywhere.

Other than Exile's Reach (which, sans rested experience, gets you to level 10 right as you finish the quests and arrive in SW/Orgrimmar) I haven't done much mid-level questing. However, checking in on mid-level characters, you're definitely going to notice that you're missing some abilities - the level squish is intended to make every level feel significant, and that means that they need to spread out abilities over that range. That being said, with greater overlap in abilities (like having multiple AoE tools) I don't think that'll feel as bad as it might otherwise. An Enhancement Shaman might not have Crash Lightning, but they'll have Chain Lightning to use with their Maelstrom Weapon procs.

This being a test, things are broken, and I've gotten disconnected almost as much as I do playing MTG Arena, but it's all up there to check things out.