Over the weekend Blizzard lifted their Non Disclosure Agreement on a press tour that happened last week. They invited people from several general gaming websites, and some fansites to give them a preview of some of what's in store for Cataclysm.

The most notable changes were not positive. Blizzard is removing both the guild talent system and the Path of the Titans. The guild talents bonuses won't disappear altogether but instead will be rewarded as a guild 'levels up'. The Path of the Titans however will not appear in any form as of now, which substantially nerfs the utility of the new Archaeology ability.

Path of the Titans was a parallel method of powering up your character similar to glyphs (and were to be integrated into the glyph UI) which would be activated by items gained through Archaeology.

Blizzard's rationale for the retrenchment was that it would be too difficult to balance and would make the game too complicated. To many players that just sounds like a cop out excuse for removing something that many were looking forward to.

There are also some major changes in the pipe for raids. Players will be able to split a 25 player raid into 3 10 player raids (but not vice versa). The biggest change is that the 'Raid ID' system is being removed. Instead, players will be locked out of content based on the bosses they have killed. For example: if you kill the first 4 bosses of an instance, you can join another instance with a different group that has 4 or more bosses killed.

There is exploit potential for this sort of thing (for example, you split your main raid into alts and mains and clear 2-3 instances then merge your main raid for the content that you find difficult). I expect that they'll make a bunch of changes and fix some of the loopholes before long, and as always stay tuned here for updates.