Once the Shaman talents released, I announced to my GL/class that I was rerolling for the expansion (as I had raided with a shaman for a year in a very successful guild on a small server that died to the AQ debacle). Since I am also the co-class leader, I made the decision at the same time that I would pass on T3 even though we continue to push through Naxx (1% Loatheb wipes grrrr). The reason for such is two fold: 1) It shows that even though I am in a position of authority in the class, I will not take drops that will benefit the other members of the class (even if they get replaced in 2 wks after BC); and 2) it shows my willingness/committment to the reroll.

As a priest, I can only increase my healing efficiency so far anyway...T3 is not that much of an upgrade from the AQ/BWL drops that I currently equip. This would be different for dps classes, perhaps, as their continued use of AQ/BWL dps would potentially hinder raid progression.

That being said, I still have a 85% raid attendance, and a lot of that is work related, not from BC angst.

On the other side, I have invested 2-3k gold in gear/ore/enchants for the shaman. Fun!

Planning on switching my UD mage to a BE for pure cosmetic reasons. If only there was a barber shop to rid myself on the emo mask /sigh.

With my current tier2.5/3 gear becoming obsolete i don't see it as a horrible plan. My main concern is if i am able to get to 70 with a new character before we start raiding as i don't want to be left in the dust for raid spots simply because i leveled slow.

The nice thing about playing a druid is that if you're tired of a certain playstyle you can just respec. Why go through the trouble of levelling a rogue and getting good blues for him when I can just respec to feral and use my epic gear to do as much damage as a blue geared rogue? :P

That's a frightening amount of prep. Twinked gear all the way to 60? My investment in twinking my impending Paladin switch amounts to a blue weapon every 9 or 10 levels. I guess if you've got the gold, use it, right? I'm on something of a spending spree in anticipation of the inflated expansion economy.

A new one every three levels and 2 epics thrown in for fun for me! After seeing the staggering difference a Bow of Searing Arrows made for leveling my best friend's hunter I am sparing no expense to get my hands on the best weapons I can.

If cosmetic change is the only thing you're looking for, you can save yourself a lot of time by just swapping models. It's not hard at all. However, if you actually want BE Racials, that's a different story.

I imagine gear will certainly get outdated, but I can't help but feel some people have visions of looting green "Dark Edge of the Gorilla" items in Outlands...

That screenshot of blue quest rewards probably went a long way towards those visions.

Yea i had a guild member remove all bondage masks for UD females but it still irks me that my face is still retarded as hell to other people. Giving up all my rep/pvp rank items will suck but it will just give ma a new drive to pvp once more.

I feel out of touch, what are these bondage masks everyone is talking about?

The leather studded criss-crossed undead face, probably.

when people truly understand that the gear from aq/naxx is going to get tossed fairly quickly, I wonder how many healers are going to reroll to DPS classes? Will the reverse hold true as well, will many rogues/hunters/etc reroll healers?

The first few months are going to be pretty chaotic, with loads of BE paladins and draeni shammies that don't have any healing spells on their action bars.

Its strange Blizzard brought up 4 new servers today, woulda thought they would have waited until expansion to bring out a bunch at once.

The main issue I see with rerolling for the expansion is simply raid numbers.

We're already seeing a decrease from 40-25 man so all classes are going to be overpopulated unless your guild decides to switch to 2 x 25 mans instead of 1. With 5-8 of all classes currently on our roster, how am I going to justify a place in front of those people on a reduced 25 man roster for my reroll?

If you go the 2 x 25 man route it shouldn't be so much of a problem or if you reroll your faction's new class it's a no-brainer but other than that it's problematic.

Jonno, that's kinda what I'm wrestling with. Old guild was blowing up anyway, had a few opportunities to join raid guilds w/ the rogue, but deferred in order to take some time off and rep up my warlock and gear him in some pvp type stuff - with the eventual hope that I could get back into a guild come tBC and do some raiding. Now that I think about it, I'm kinda left with no rep (outside of PvP) for the warlock. I'd like to think I have a good rep as a PvE-kitten rogue, but it's not really what I'm looking to do. So, I'm basically left in the lurch trying to figure out if I should wait for splinter raid groups to break off when the 25 mans are the name of the game, or if I should go back to the rogue, or try something entirely new.

i've seen blue lvl 65-66 instance gear from TBC alpha test 5 men instances and that gear seems equal to T3. i am considering to reroll druid or paladin as well, casue we have way too many good and active priests for 25 men instances atm and i really don't think that gear is going to be an issue.

I assume they want to get the new servers up and running and make sure all the hardware works before the wave of poeple come in at the expansion. They'll have enough to worry about with the introduction of a massive player base on new program software, they wouldn't want to deal with their new population servers crapping out of them on release day.

If you want to reroll, now is the time. The big thing is that the level 70 raid game is probably going to be initial MC all over again. The initial raid instance's difficulty is not going to be any more complicated than current ZG or MC. Simple fights with light damage overall and few aggro issues. It should be easy to semi-pug through those groups to get a reputation with a brand new character.

Established raiding guilds will also be in a heavy state of flux. There's going to be splinter groups of 7-15 people who are going through Kharazahn and trying to pick up the people to get into MC 2.0. There will be tons of recruiting going on.

That's just a cruel policy to even think about putting in place. Healers constantly get the "If you don't like healing, reroll" mantra. And you want to replace it with "...but make sure you reroll another healer..."? Ouch. Just ouch. :P

On a serious note, I don't see why it would make a difference at this point. You are very likely to have too many healers, too many rogues, too many Warriors, etc. anyway because of the 40 -> 25 change. Given that class balance will be completely out of whack, you may as well mix everybody together again and sort them out based on how good they are as players rather than for their characters. To have special rules for players of healers is just a kick in the teeth for them. It implies the players of non-healing classes are more important than they are.