I honestly have no idea what you mean by "Nintendo-like", by the way.

They also said Hearthstone was not going to be related to Warcraft/Starcraft/Diablo..

This never happened. Hearthstone was a Warcraft property since its inception. When they were internally testing it they used the WoW TCG card art for the cards. They had a whole presentation about its development process at the last Blizzcon where they talked about this. It was announced at PAX a few years ago as a complete and utter surprise with pretty much zero leaks about it beforehand, and at that announcement it was completely Warcraft themed and branded.

I specifically used the term "intellectual property" to convey the fact that it would not be within the Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, or even Rock'n'Roll Racing or Lost Vikings universes. It's a pretty standard terminology for people to use when discussing fictional universes or properties that span multiple media. I didn't invent the term, I just use it. It's a useful shorthand.

I haven't played arena in over a year. I can't really comment on its current state, nor its state in WoD. Last time I played it was dominated by casters. Warlock/mage/moonkin were some of the strongest classes. Warriors were complaining they were underpowered (but still had some of the highest class representation). But this is something that shifts with every content patch as they try to rebalance and as scaling changes, which has been the case ever since arenas were introduced. Unless you're literally competing for Rank 1 Gladiator, improving your play and your teamwork will have a much bigger impact on your success than rerolling a different class.

Intellectual Property.

The basic primary gameplay is still the same. Many class's DPS rotations are actually not even changing significantly.

The changes include things like the removal of hit rating and making all attacks (generally) always land, not allowing flight in the new zone at all, even at max level, and designing the zones in such a way that this does not become a huge inconvenience, but also including things like jump puzzles and making use of vertical space in a way that wouldn't work if they allowed flying (but still designing the areas artistically such that flying could be added later with the flip of a switch). They've also removed systems like Reforging (which allowed you to transfer some of one undesired secondary stat into another more desired one), removed profession-specific stat bonuses completely (e.g. ring-only enchants for enchanters, and have made engineering toys available to all players but reduced their power), completely rethought stat customization systems like enchanting and gemming (enchants are now limited to a few slots, but give a massive amount of secondary stats, and you can choose any secondary stat in each of those slots rather than selecting from a limited number of stats per slot. Gem sockets are now randomly assigned to gear as a low chance "bonus roll" rather than being static, and are more powerful, and do not provide "primary" (AGI/STR/INT) stats).

All armor in the cloth/leather/mail/plate slots now automatically adjust between those primary stats based on your spec. So a paladin can use the same armor to heal, tank, or DPS. Neck/cloak/weapon/ring/trinket do not do this, and are still spec specific. There is only one tank-only stat (bonus armor) and one healer-only stat (spirit) and those stats only appear on those spec-specific accessory slots I mentioned. Set bonuses also automatically convert to match your current spec (so the same Tier 17 armor can be used to tank/heal/DPS for a paladin as I mentioned before, rather than having to gather 3 copies of the set).

A lot of these loot changes are based around the idea of being able to loot an item and immediately equip it instead of having to wait until after the raid and going back to town and going through the process of figuring out your new hit cap and completely regemming, reforging, and re-enchanting all of your gear.

Again, if your problem was with the basic combat, the changes probably aren't going to make you happy, They're mostly systems changes and stat customization changes.

They had very specifically said that Titan was a new IP not related to Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo. They had also claimed it would not cannibalize WoW subscriptions because it was supposed to be a completely new type of MMO, and not use a subscription model. It was definitely not "WoW 2."

The thing about only pushing 4 buttons in combat is a myth. If anything, the classes I play have had their rotations become more complex, not less. The spells that were cut were generally cross-spec skills you rarely used, or attacks that were so niche and specific you almost never used them in a rotation anyway. For most classes, when you log in on beta you'll see empty slots on your bar and genuinely won't be able to remember which spell went there, because you used it so rarely or not at all. I was playing for hours before I realized the missing spell on my Elemental Shaman's bar was Chain Heal. Using Magma Totem as Elemental was almost always a mistake, so it was cut.

The ability cuts are not haphazard nor do they reduce the complexity of the standard rotation for most classes. An exception would be Mage AoE rotations, but those were way too complex and it was silly to be casting multiple spells intended for the other specs in your AoE rotation anyway (e.g. Arcane Explosion as a Fire Mage). And a lot of classes have new level 100 talents that significantly modify their standard rotation in such a way that you can choose to either have more buttons to press than live and a more complex rotation, or a more simple rotation with a passive ability, depending on the talent you select from that level.

Anyone claiming you only hit 4 buttons is being completely disingenuous, or hasn't played the beta at all.

Titan was supposed to be a new IP. Not StarCraft-based. But since the whole project was scrapped and restarted, who knows what it will be now, or if it'll ever even see the light of day.

In case you hadn't heard, Titan was cancelled internally and sent back to the drawing board. Last I heard there are only like 2 designers currently assigned to the project, with no coders, and no artists. All the people previously working on Titan were put on Warlords of Draenor or Heroes of the Storm, which I think is responsible for a lot of the big shifts the game is seeing this expansion. Previous expansions always felt like they were just taking the existing direction of the game and refining and honing it, but generally adding things to it. This expansion features a lot of cuts, deep rethinks of basic concepts, and slaughtering of sacred design cows. I've been playing the beta for a couple months and I'm really excited to play it once it hits live. More so than I normally am for an expansion. I feel like they're making a lot of really smart changes.

Most of the people I know who have gotten bored with WoW waiting for the next expansion have ended up playing FFXIV. Most of them tried Wildstar but quickly dropped it. There's just something about the art style, character animations, and group combat of FFXIV that seems to drag people back to it. I think most of them are going to retreat back to WoW when this expansion hits, however.

Every copy of The Sims 2 sold in the past decade has included DRM. Explain to me why you would possibly believe that this one would not? As a hint, let me tell you that modifying the game to use Origin as its DRM system would take a lot of time and money, so that should be eliminated as a possible option immediately. As another hint: This is EA.

always-only DRM

"Always-online DRM", I meant to say.

The Sims 2 has always used SecuROM since its release in 2004. This wasn't some "surprise." They just failed to remove it for the Origin version, and judging by the hacks and workarounds some people have had to use to get it to run on Windows 7/8 or at a 16:9 resolution, I'm sure they did absolutely no work to update or modify the Origin version. That's why it has SecuROM. Not as some backdoor to install it. It's not some secret. They're just not wasting time modifying something and then having to do new quality assurance on it to give away a free gift as a short term promotion to get people excited for The Sims 4 (which, by the way, will also have some form of DRM, I guarantee you).

And as I said in my original post, if you really are not willing to trade away a tiny amount of freedom for the right to play a video game, you're also highly unlikely to install Origin in the first place (which is an always-only DRM system), and won't have access to this deal to begin with.

It's free. If you don't like SecuROM, don't install the game. If someone hates SecuROM so much, they probably hate Origin even more, so this seems kind of moot.