When Cataclysm hits, the questing experience from 1-60 will be greatly improved. How we viewed questing when initially developing the game has changed drastically in numerous ways. A couple things to remember, the original design had only 100 horde quests, 100 alliance quests and 100 neutral quests planned for the whole game.

We started seeing people report being out of quests as a bug during the earliest phases of internal alpha testing, and revaluated how questing would fit into World of Warcraft. Also, we started questing early when only a few zones existed, so that's why some areas seem to send players from zone to zone more than others.

I was really just trying to give everyone a basic idea of how things have changed, not only since the game launched, or even beta -- but from my earliest memories of the game eight years ago.

Moving onto your point though, you're right -- the class specific quests and such were designed with the intentions of having a more epic feel. That involved having players do many different things in a quest chain, and given that back then, our quest tech was limited -- there were only a few quest "types" available, e.g travel/delivery quests, kill quests, etc...

Edit for Additional Comment: And I'm with you on the Cataclysm comment. I really can't wait to begin sharing more and more information with you all. I know there are some changes that at this point in time aren't fully understood -- such as the stat/system change post I made yesterday morning. And that's to be understood, as we've not released other details (such as class specific information) that will help players make more sense of things.

I was excited about Burning Crusade, and even more excited about WoTLK. I'm significantly more excited about what we have in-store for Cataclysm.

If the class quests were designed to have an epic feel, why have the quests been nerfed so hard? Why make them optional? That doesn't really leave them to have the epic feel when people can just be lazy and skip them..

I think you're misunderstanding. Our idea of what makes a quest "epic" has changed considerably. Those quests ended up feeling like a burden to most players. We made them optional for those who do love them. I also think it's a little unfair for you to refer to players being "lazy" by skipping them. The game is designed to be fun, and for many players -- those quests aren't fun -- especially for players who are on there fifth, sixth, and seventh alt (etc...).

We're announcing these changes now to pave the way for other information to come. It's important that people don't freak out. We're not going to break your class -- though there will be many changes to the game - ones we believe are positive changes. For now we ask that you just digest the information, try and absorb it, and wait for more specific class information to release before you scream that the sky is falling.

But what if I want to make some bread for my lower level friend? Will it automatically downscale so he can use it?

We're not sure how buffing lower level players, or handing out lower level food/water will work out at this time.

We'll make a mastery post soon much like the recent stat conversion post.

Think of talent trees as giving three passive benefits for spending points in that tree. A rogue tree might grant 1% damage as a primary benefit, 0.20% crit as a secondary benefit, and some percent of Energy regen as a tertiary benefit for every talent point spent in that tree.

The third bonus, in this case Energy regen, is unique to that tree. Furthermore, the mastery rating on gear will boost that bonus. Mastery rating on gear won't show up on current gear. You'll start to see it at higher level.