My Thoughts on Mists of Pandaria

After watching a quick recap video about Mists of Pandaria, here are my impressions of the real new features of Mists of Pandaria -- not what they're advertising.

Here's the official video:

Notice that they really haven't given much of anything in terms of detail.  New dungeons!  New raids!  New stuff!  Pandas and crap!  After a bit of digging, I found a bit of information on specifics.
Grouping
In addition to the dungeons, they're re-making Scarlet Monestary and Scholomance, presumably in Heroic form.  I don't consider "dungeons" a feature by themselves, as all this means is they're continuing to shoot for par.  I expect new dungeons and raids in expansions as much as I expect new zones.  They have, however, made quick group quests, called scenarios, that mirror Warhammer Online's Public Quests -- you queue for them with the dungeon finder.  There are also LFR versions of every launch raid.

Re-vamped Talents and Class Abilities
Check out your new talents here.  They've redone the whole system to play out more similarly to the talents in Diablo 3, which appears to have gotten rid of "dump" talents and trap talents in order to streamline the process.  I still find it insulting to my intelligence. The Monk class is the new addition for the expansion, and seems fairly powerful.  It's a tank/healer/DPS hybrid class similar to the Druid, with a mechanic that feels quite a bit like the Demon Hunter from D3.

Pokemon Battles
Vanity pets now battle to the death for your satisfaction.
 
UI, Balance, and Reward Changes
They finally, finally included Area Loot in the manner of The Old Republic, so you don't have to loot each of the 10,000 level 10 murlocs you killed with one cast of Consecration.  Resilience is split into offensive and defensive stats.  You get geared at Honored or Revered with factions, and get reputation by running dailies.  Finally, each class gets a Legendary Weapon Chain.

Conclusion
If you love WoW, this expansion smooths the gameplay annoyances out quite a ways.  If you're lukewarm toward it like myself, you might wait for a bit to see how it plays out in actuality, until they come up with some crazy promotion like a free level 80.  If, however, you don't particularly care for WoW, you won't find anything particularly new.  Wind will not suddenly be blown into the sails of players who hate grinding.  My personal outlook: "Well, it can't be as terrible as Cataclysm, right?  Right?"  Between the pet battles and the pandas, I admit, I have taken to calling the game Mists of Furcadia.