Changes are coming...as always.

Overall, I am not unhappy with the Alpha-patch notes. Most of it was already known. The garrisons, the healing, stat-squishing, to name a few. The notes released today did give us a first list of abilities that will be lost, and something called Draenor perks...right.

Most of the removing of abilities, is not actually removing, it's more like assigning them to one specialization. Arcane Blast for example, is now usuable by all mage-specs, and abused at lower levels.. but it seems it will be a arcane-only spell coming Warlords of Draenor.

Especially with the 'pure' DPS-classes, a lot of abilies have been put into the array of only one spec.  I think that will work, making different specs feel different is easier this way. Sometimes it does raise an eyebrow though; "Devotion Aura is no longer available to Tankadins" is one. During TBC, the fact that you had Devo-aura actually meant that you where Protection, and not Retri or Holy.

And some abilities are completely gone. There will no longer be enormous Hunter marks on Void Reavers. Shamans loose their tanking-abilities. Warrior's Cleave is being removed, and the Druids Headache-spell Symbiosis will be gone, to name a few.

But, we will get new stuff, probably to make things interesting while levelling, every level gained between 91 and 99 will give you a random new (passive) ability. Most of these are just simple 'more-damage'-abilities, some however seem more complicated.

Of the 9 abilities Moonkins get, 4 are plain damage-increase one gives more armor, one a chance on instant, two do strange things to energy, and one is a mushroomgrowfarm, basically turning your mushrooms into shrooms of doom for sustained AoE.

I amnot happy with one of the 'perks'; Enhanced Storms. This one will give you 10 energy/sec while you are channeling Hurricane/Astral Storm. The current idea of those two spells is to actually not leave the current solar/lunar state.

But.. as with all pre-release patches we will have to wait till the real launch. Blizzard has shown us their thinking though; less spells, less cooldowns, more diversity between specs.