Coming from a one role class, that has no option to heal or tank, and that has to respec for pvp just like everyone else, I don't think reglyphing, especially in the way I described, is that bad a price to pay (my other two characters are a paladin and a shaman incidentally). As it stands, you will get a free spec's worth of gear in wrath (moonkin/tree gear being basically the same), and all the benefits of raiding as if you had your alt in your back pocket for loot. After all, how many of us have wished a drop that got disenchanted could go to an alt? Every resto shaman I know has at least one full raid level offspec set. If you are respeccing between bosses, you're probably switching flasks/elixirs as well. You at least have that option. As a warlock, if dps isn't needed, or if there's just another dps of any number of other classes including all the hybrids that can do the job as well, I'm sitting at home, rerolling a healer. Each side has advantages and disadvantages, they all exist today, the glyph system does not make that worse.

I'll repeat again more concisely, they will never make glyphs removable and reusable, as it trivializes the entire system to the point that it is simply adding 6 new trinket slots to the game. The original system of "enchantments for spells" made them sound more permanent, but the way they have implemented them is not that way. The best we can hope for is them as a reasonable cost consumable.

Hybrid or not, the ones hit hardest by this will be people who both hardcore arena and raid, and have to respec frequently as a result. Don't be too surprised if the solution to that is just to make Glyphs not work in the arena at all.

I think you are making some big assumptions.

Right now, you have 61 talent points to customize your character.

Taking paladins as an example, the talent spec you chose basically determines your role.

Trying to heal as ret or protection is a huge loss of efficiency and capability, probably 35% or more loss of healing.
Try to tank as ret or holy healing spec is similar, probably a loss of 35% or more survivability.
Trying to dps as a healing holy build or protection build, probably a loss of 35% or more dps.

How much of a difference do you really think glyphs will make? 3%? 5%? Maybe some really amazing glyphs will be revealed in a couple months that make me change my mind, but what I have seen so far is far less powerful than what you get from your talent spec.

I think the reason for the multiple talent specs is to make offspec stuff viable. You might have a minor disadvantage because you didn't replace all your glyphs, but you will certainly be able to heal as holy spec with tanking glyphs, and you will certainly be able to dps as ret with healing glyphs. You will be ever-so-slightly disadvantaged compared to a perfectly optimized character with the best glyphs, but isn't that how it should be? If there is zero penalty to completely change spec at will, there is no reason to ever stick with any spec. This would actually hurt hybrids in raids, because raid leaders will demand that you fill 2 roles, and collect gear for both roles, and your gear for either role is going to be inferior to single role players in any sort of DKP based loot system.

Glyph swapping could easily be a more significant problem than the current talent swapping mechanic if glyphs cause fundamental gameplay changes. As a member of a small guild, I switch regularly between PvE healing and DPS. Arena play translates to a third frequently-used spec for me. Even if they allow me to actively switch between two glyph templates, I'd still be unable to address my varied needs.

I will certainly not complain about having the option to fulfill multiple roles, but at least the tax of talent respecs can be accounted for through a variety of options. If glyphs fundamentally change gameplay, then I would need to rotate between glyph selections depending on my role at the time. As a financial burden, that's undesirable. As a logistical burden that's a nightmare. If I need to track down an inscriber every time I switch content/roles, I will be very very frustrated. In that case I would almost prefer that the glyph mechanic is like an elixir mechanic with a limited duration, so that they could be stockpiled and be readily accessible for any occasion and everyone would be in the same boat.

I think the Blizzcast answered it. Its only worth one or two talent points. As such its just a tweak and not a rewrite of the characters ability. It really will come down to how much it costs. If its on the order of elixirs or even flasks then I don't have a problem here, now if its on the order of some of the higher end enchants then yes I can support your view. Using flasks as an example, I have no qualms about the 50 to 60 gold I will shell out in one way or another for the measly two hours of benefit and if I switch roles its more than likely I will need to switch which flask stack I use; especially coming from a hybrid class and in some cases a dps class.

Here's the problem as I see it.

Flip back a few pages, to the old 'Potion Sickness' discussion. (Bear with me, I'm not rehashing old news here.) What were the two combined arguments against the current system of Potion use?

A) It's a boring mechanic.
B) The time and expense of farming materials.

Now we're looking at another profession that will require herbs, and one has to factor in the min/max crowd. If a raid is already willing to have their raiders portal out, spend the gold to respec, and come back between different bosses, it logically follows that those same raiders, if allowed, will swap between glyphs depending on the role they play in the next fight. Once again, after the first time of seeing a fight and knowing what's needed, it won't be a tactical decision...it'll simply be a 'Oh, I'm going Holy for this fight...time to slap in Glyph Set A....there's another 240g down the drain.' (Price is completely random and should not be any notion of what I expect price per Glyph to be in WotLK...just used for illustrative purposes.)

This is not taking into account the rumored swap-between-specs that still has yet to be implemented. With that in play, even more people will be willing and able to switch roles in a fight (if it's at all possible to do while in a raid, i.e., any cooldown shorter than 4 hours). And, since Blizz has to plan around the maximum raiders can do to optimalize themselves (because they WILL do it if possible), Blizz will most likely tune different fights to different different raid comps. Once spec-swap is in place, what's the only other variable to optimization? Glyphs. Each and every swap of a spec will see those who have the capability to replace their glyphs do so. Content gets tuned around that fact, and at that point Glyph swapping becomes mandatory...at least, for the same level of raiding where chain potting is currently mandatory.

Now, the impact on the raider in question is much less, I'll grant that. If we go with an average of 5 Spec/Glyph swaps per night, and 6 glyphs all get changed out (which is possible, since the Glyphs haven't been finished up yet), that's 30 Glyphs per night of raiding. Even at just a stack of herbs per Glyph as was discussed earlier, that's a lot of herbs per night of raiding. Throw in soloing, throw in Arena/BG's for those who like to maximize their fun, and that's a fair amount to gather up for each night.

Of course, if the cooldown for either spec or glyph swapping is large (12/24 hrs, say), then this won't be an issue nearly so much. This does affect those who do like to do both PvE AND PvP, though. Imagine two druids going head to head, both identically specced Feral, both wearing identical gear...but one has all Feral Glyphs, the other has Resto Glyphs in place, because he's healing Naxx in 2 hours. Who is more likely to win here?

Oh, and what about the difficulty of finding someone to craft your Glyph? Looking at how specialized each one is, it may be very hard to find someone that can craft your specific Glyphs...especially in the early stages of the expac when everyone and their brother is pushing for first kills, or for the low pop servers regardless of stage of expac.

I'd much rather see Glyphs be very expensive to craft, but NOT be destroyed if you're pulling out of your spellbook (perhaps the page has some sort of magic velcro that allows it to be easily melded back in or something, for the lore peoples out there.)

Also, while this will hit hybrids the hardest, for the pure DPS classes, it will still hurt. I know there are times on my lock that I really wish I was Affliction for some fights, and Destro for the others - while in the same raid, depending on the requirements of the fight. Can the pure DPS'rs get by with only a single set? Sure...but I would expect that spec-swapping for those classes will still be prevalent as one spec of a class is determined to be optimal for specific fights...in which case they're feeling the same pinch as the hybrids.

TL/DR version - this has the capacity to be as much of or WORSE of a headache for people as the current iteration of potion usage, and is going to be dependent on cooldowns of spec-swaps, cooldown of Glyph-swap, and expense of the Glyphs to craft.

Honestly at this stage we don't have any real indication that they are going to manage to get the swappable specs into the game by launch. Given all the other things they have on their agenda I would expect them to have the basic mechanics being put into the game at this stage and I have seen no official commentary about this for months. Until we do it's safer to work under the assumption that respecs will still exist for everyone. This will even out the cost of full PvE spec/glyphs --> PvP spec glyphs amongst the classes and roles.

As for the reglyphing cost I can't say that I've seen much for priests that suggests that you would have PvP and PvE spec glyphs, glyph choice is black and white for any given role healing/dps etc. Your mileage may vary based on class but as it currently looks glyphs are a one time character tax that will never change simply because there aren't enough good ones. This is because each glyph is tied to a spell as opposed to how the idea was originally sold as "Glyph of power" that increases throughput on a spell of your choice.

I think that's more because the Priest glyphs seen so far suck IMO. I also have a druid and they have some great glyphs, and I could easily see myself making some hard choices for pvp/pve assuming all the good ones are Major Glyphs (which makes sense).

If they add more, good, glyphs for Priests (which I think is a safe assumption) then we, too, make hard choices and have to 'glyph respec'. I'm firmly of the opinion that Glyphs should be something you can swap out without destroying them, and Inscriptions profits be damned.

Let's say you only need to respec your greater and lesser glyphs, since the minor ones are mostly cosmetic. Someone who arenas every week and does pve would need 2 full respecs per week. Someone who both does arena and helps their guild by respeccing to holy from retribution when they're low on healing might do 4 full respecs per week. I know a lot of people who are already doing this now, and it isn't unheard of to respec on an encounter to encounter basis either.

Someone who only does one aspect of the game will buy their inscriptions once, and never bother with it again. The second person in the above example would go through 16 glyphs per week, while the first one only 8 glyphs per week. In the first year after the expansion comes out, they would need to pay for 832 and 416 glyphs respectively. The guy who only raids or arenas pays for 4 lesser/greater glyphs. The costs of inscription aren't in any way comparable to enchants or gems. If I need to gem or enchant for 2 specs, I'll end up paying about twice as much as the other guy. While I'd agree that it's reasonable to pay more, do you think it's reasonable to have to pay 200 times more? Even the person who only respecs once a week for arena pays over 100 times more, and it'll likely take more than a year for the next expansion to come out.

Um, actaully gems and enchants already are swappable. Here's an example: I swap out my PvE helm with PvE Gems, Metagem and PvE enchants and I swap in my PvP helm with PvP Gems, Metagem and PvP enchants.

Because these effects are tied to items, which we do swap, they are inherently swappable. Let me carry 2 spellbooks around and I won't complain, I'll gladly purchase twice as many inscriptions. But asking people to re-glyph twice a week at least is ridiculous. Your analogy is ridiculous, if you did have to re-gem and re-enchant all of your gear twice a week would that be alright? So why is this?

No. A priest is never going to put healing gems and enchants on their shadow gear. They are not going to put PvP survivability gems on their PvE healing gear. EDIT: whoops, got beaten to it.

Much as I dislike them in general...
<Stupid dumb-ass personal suggestion>
Restrict the six Glyphs to 2 per talent tree. Eg, two feral glyphs, two balance, two resto (and the free Inscription glyph is a wild card). Then your glyph setup is relatively constant between respecs of different roles, and sort of defines a meta-identity by defining the roles that you prefer to respec between. The major problem would be if, say, PvE holy and PvP holy required different holy glyphs. The major frequent or semi-frequent glyph changes would be for Glyphologists (inscribers? inscriptors? insciptionists?) themselves respecing the one wild-card slot.
</suggestion>