Cataclysm Screenshots, Blue Posts

Battle.net Facebook integration
There has been some confusion over the implementation of this feature. We announced the addition of Facebook integration with StarCraft II and as such, it's actually integrated as a part of Battle.net as it is tied in to that game. When StarCraft II goes live, you will have the option to import the friends you select from there as long as they too have a Battle.net account. (Source)

Scorchling Pet
As is evident by now, Ahune’s Scorchling pet of yesteryear has been replaced with a new Frigid Frostling, but the Scorchling might just make an appearance elsewhere in the future.

[...] Hehe. I know, I know. I'm not speaking about other pets/mounts/titles. But as I said in this case, the Scorchling will return elsewhere along with some friends representing the remaining elements. (Source)

New Class
In any event, we have no plans to add another class in Cataclysm. We don't want to saturate the game with new classes if they start to feel and play way too similar to existing classes. We came up with some unique class mechanics for death knights we ultimately think work very well. It's a much younger class and took some times to really fine-tune, but we're happy with the role they play in World of Warcraft now.

With two new races and a number of new race/class combinations available in Cataclysm, I have a feeling you're not going to see newly created characters overwhelmingly death knights. (Source)

Cataclysm
Premades group for Rated Battlegrounds
We feel like 5-player dungeons are the kind of thing we can more-or-less randomly assemble and give you a reasonable chance of success. Even in that case, however, we make sure you have a tank and healer and look at gear and experience and that sort of thing.

Putting together groups for BGs is much taller proposition, especially when rating and epic gear are potentially involved. We want players to individually decide what kinds of classes and mechanics they need to be successful. We want players to decide what gear or experience requirements they are looking for. Most importantly, we want players to organize themselves -- we want you to decide who is the leader and / or what your strategy is, and we want you to have a mechanism for handling players who refuse to follow those goals, just want to argue, or are refusing to be team players. Randomly assembling groups would require many additional features, tools and rules that are very tricky to design in order to enforce these things. When someone else does the inviting, they can set the ground rules, and you can choose to live with them, challenge them or look for another group. It does require a little more work on your part up-front, but you'll have a much better experience in the long run. (Source)

[...] To be clear, you can still solo queue for normal (i.e. non-rated) Battlegrounds and still earn honor points to purchase gear. If you want conquest points (which we call Arena points today), you will need to enter rated BGs and you will need to form a group to do so. This is the same requirement we make for raiding, which provides similar rewards. (Source)

Low level quests itemization in Cataclysm
We have reitemized every quest in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. We have also spent a great deal of effort on the leveling experience of every class. Even classes that traditionally struggled with low-level leveling should feel dramatically better. (Source)

UI Improvements in Cataclysm
We are working on many raid / party improvements for Cataclysm. The challenge is that different features or layouts are "mandatory" for different players. Thus I would not at all be comfortable saying that you won't want UI mods for Cataclysm, and that's not our goal anyway. The default UI could be improved a lot though. (Source)

Cataclysm Beta Opt-in
It will be coming "soon". It's important though to make sure those interested are signed up with their correct information so that when it does start, we can get you in should you be selected. We also want to make sure that those that are looking forward to the beta are aware that they will be activated via their Battle.net account and will not need to follow any links to any other sites. We are aware there are some phishing scams out there trying to take advantage of people's desires to be in the beta. And there is only one place where signing up to or activating a beta should happen (your Battle.net account via the main login on the site. ) Please be safe and we'll be getting the word out once we actually do enter into the beta. (Source)

Cataclysm Talent Trees
First off, I think your actual feedback hit the right mark. I try and advise players when giving feedback to imagine that we are making bullets on a list of things to discuss in a class design meeting (because honestly that is often exactly what happens). If I go into a meeting and say "Some players said they were bored by the talent trees," the other designers might ask "What do they mean by that?" and I would have to answer "I don't know." On the other hand, if I go into a meeting with a 20-page list of someone's redesigned talents, we're not going to make a lot of progress either. If I say, just to give a couple of examples, Subtlety rogues are worried that the tree is changing focus, or Combat rogues think they don't have any cool, new mechanics, then that's the kind of thing that can launch a brainstorming session.

Here's a secret about game design: ideas are cheap. Coming up with something clever isn't really the hard part. The hard part is thinking of all the ramifications of your idea, including how it will impact various parts of the game, whether it will be understandable by players, whether it's consistent with the rest of the game design, how difficult it will be to implement and maintain, its propensity for bugs and so on. That's a long way of saying many times we can't use the actual suggestions, but from the suggestions we can tell what problems the player is trying to fix, and then we can decide whether we think the problem is legit and explore ways to address it.

As far as the actual Cataclysm talent trees, they are early. We are exploring some new ideas now but I'd be very surprised if the shipping versions look anything like this. We still want to remove more passive talents and we want to make sure there are more meaningful decisions. Now, sometimes meaningful may mean slightly painful when there are two things you really want and can't afford both. (Source)

Patch 3.3.5
"Unable to Connect" error
Looking at the technical support forum it appears the majority of people are resolving their 'unable to connect' error by deleting their realmlist file, running the repair tool, or making changes to their firewall.

Turn off chat pop-ups
There is a new option in the UI panel under Battle.net (new section): Show Toast Window. Disable that if you don't want the pop-up alerts. (Source)

Zalazane's Fall / Operation Gnomeregan
Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall will work similarly to standard holiday events. They're available for a limited time. The only difference is that they don't come around annually. These events lead to new starting experiences for trolls and gnomes in Cataclysm, so you'll need to participate while they're active for a chance to be a part of the activities.

[...] We will do our best to give some sort of relative time frame. The circumstances by which we intend to start and end these events might make providing set dates a little tricky, but we don't want to be so vague that players won't have any idea whether the events last for two days or two months.

One big difference though between these events and something like the zombie plague is that there is a finite number of quests to complete on a single character. So it's not some indefinite event you can choose to do however often you want. It's closer to the Battle for Undercity, with the exception that players will have a limited time to participate. (Source)