I'm pretty sure that Blizzard said the amount of art assets it took to make a new form was beyond what they could do in the short term before launch without just replacing the model with something that already existed, which people didn't want. There are minor glyphs with no functionality or only trivial functionality, Glyph of the Penguin being a shining example, and personally I'm hoping for many more, not less. As it stands most of the minor glyphs are so close to pointless that anyone complaining about not getting to use them is really just complaining for the sake of doing so. If you really lost out on getting new forms just because people didn't want to glyph for them it's a serious case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Just because they have the model for a cat or bear or moonkin doesn't mean they have the animations needed.

It's like the polar bear cub that was tamable for a while by hunters, it looked really bad when sized for hunters and didn't have a full animation suite.

Granted a cat is a cat for the most part but besides dev time, there also is some major design considerations if druid forms no longer had their distinct visual tells (horns or ears).

Think of the PvP advantage if a druid could look identical to a hunter pet with the same name, or hide out in a field of identically skinned NPC animals.

You are aware that, when 1.8 was released, Moonkin had no idea how to loot, skin, herb, make potions, use bandages, or really anything besides dance, cast spells, and whack stuff? And that a lot of those animations didn't exist until fairly close to BC launch? There's a history of giving us new forms and then fleshing out out the details later, and especially since you'd likely be limited to bearish models for Bear Form, Cattish models for Cat/Travel form, etc., the basic animations already exist and would be decent enough until the real ones get added. We've had to deal with the same form model since release, I'm sure most of the Druid community would be perfectly fine with getting something new even if it wasn't perfect.

Ghostcrawler stated that they'd look at forms and implement things when they had the time to get things right. Whilst one can only applaud the intention to do it properly this time round (the previous attempt at a catform for Taurens is truly atrocious), I do hope this doesn't mean it's slated for The Emerald Dream expansion pack...

I for one am glad they didn't implement them as Glyphs though, for reasons stated above. I have no problems with using Glyph slots. But, in the end, it still wouldn't solve the fundamental problem, which is every druid looking the exact same.

As to the amount of Glyphs, GC said they'd be implementing plenty more Glyphs after the expansion landed. What you see now is largely what they could have finished 'in time' before WotLK ships.

[e] To add to Adoriele's post - they blatantly snatched the animations Moonkins did have from the Ogre model. I like the Ogre dance as much as the next person, but they certainly made life easier on themselves with how they implemented Moonkin forms.
Similarly, cats/bears didn't move when skinning or something in form (and I think that went for Ghost Wolves too). That was added later on as well. As were Bear and Catform dances.

Assuming they are using a skeletal system for their animations, then a bear is a bear is a bear (or can/should be). Minor tweaks to make sure that some unusual spike or dodad doesn't clip too badly, and you're done.

Even if the game we play doesn't use skeletals, if they can build the animations that way in the dev tools, then port them over, its a trivial thing to implement similar forms if the art already exists.

It's a skeletal animation system, WoWModelViewer allows you to view the skeletons and animate them, like so: ImageShack - Hosting :: skeletondv7.jpg

I just noticed on the PTR that scroll buffs don't stack with each other. In fact the Low level versions have had their tooltips changed. Is this something new or have I just miss an earlier change?

I believe the tooltip change happened a few weeks ago. As you say, only one scroll at a time, and they are still "over-written" by better player buffs. I keep on checking this, expecting the scroll to either get better, or parallel, but it doesn't change. Meanwhile, the recipes to make scrolls have been using progressively fewer materials each week, as if they are supposed to be a high-volume consumable that people are going to want to use a lot of. The whole thing seems to be predicated on the notion that a 10-man raid won't have a priest or mage or whatever. But that's a small minority of raiding groups, and tends to encompass the "more relaxed" players, who commonly go without many consumables.

Build-by-build, it's been like we're watching a fight between designers. One of whom is trying to give Inscription a viable high-volume consumable. One who is desperate not to unbalance a carefully structured set of buffs. And a third that is terrified of requiring any more work gathering/preparing among the player-base, without reducing the dependence on other professions. And likely days before it all goes live, this does not seem to have been resolved yet.

For a lot of the player-base, the key value of a profession is in what it can make for others: And currently Inscription is a low-cost profession, yet it has no clear long-term high-volume demand. You do the maths.

(edit: typo)

It was stated by the developers a while back that the scrolls made by Inscription would never be more powerful than the corresponding spell/ability to buff that stat. It's interesting that they're limiting the scrolls to only one per character, but it does make sense in that they will be very cheap and probably "too popular" to use, if you could stack them up all the time.

Been reading back quite some pages but can't find the answers, so if someone could clarify.

Interrested in BoP benefits from professions.

Did the BoP shoulder enchantments replace the 3rd major glyph for Inscribtion ? (would be good)
Same for wrist kits replacing the LW only pants kits ? (+nerfed drums +BoP gear)
And for JC, is it still one of each BoP gem or is it 3 BoP gems in total now ? (+ BoP jewelry)

Though note at 80 that everyone gets 3 major and minor glyph slots. You don't unlock the 3rd major slot until 80 though. The third minor slot is unlocked at 70.