Allied Tribal Forces - Hero Classes In Expansion

Eh, while the conept presented is intriguing, it's got so much stuff wrong with it that I'd be quite willing to say it's bunk. If I see a Blizzard employee say it's true or we later find out that it is, feel free to bump this back up to the top.

However, my reasoning for why it's bunk:

1) Most of the "classes" described bear striking resemblance to classes found in other MMOs. This gives the whole thing the appearance of a "copycat" nature...especially when the "50" amounts to minor variations (a la, a Night Elf Assassin vs. a Gnome Assassin).

2) That a few of the classes are available to only certain races, and some of those are downright useless. Dwarf rogues can be pit fighters? Read that..."a rogue that gives up stealth for substantial offensive and defensive bonuses"...that'd be a warrior folks. Really, a rogue without stealth would be almost as stupid as a hunter without pets...why, lookie there! They have that too! However, restricting certain hero classes to specific races would cause an insane uproar. Imagine if you rolled a gnome and discovered simply because you felt like a gnome that day you couldn't be the hero class that really fit what you wanted to do.

3) Blizzard can't get 9 classes balanced right, and they're aware of that (hence why classes tend to get overpowered during reviews as they tweak). Nobody in their right mind would truly attempt to balance that many different classes.

4) The "one-time only" clause. How the HELL do you know based off a description if that's what you wanted to do? So you spend 2-3 months getting a character to 60, pick a hero class and find out it's the wrong one for how you play (how many times have people picked a talent and found out it was wrong for them?)...now you're stuck with it forever? Not likely. The fastest way to lose players in an MMO is to screw around with people's characters and "break" them. Blizzard isn't the swiftest bunch, but they're not stupid either. Only SOE and EA are that dumb.

Really, it reads to me like a mish-mash of ideas and concepts that are in other MMOs (so it'll seem familiar/logical) combined with old WoW features/lore (so it'll tie in) and designed to get people in a furor over hero classes so that Blizzard can't come out and say "Oh, we're not doing them for the expansion" because people will have this expectation in their mind that there WILL be.

That doesn't mean it isn't true, but the fact that the above things are true of this article really, really reeks of hoax/wishful thinking.