Yes, it's real. Some of it's been in effect for weeks and hasn't been rolled out to the live servers yet (which is why all the Ret paladins had better enjoy 6 sec CS and 15% Vengeance while they can). They're still tweaking so who knows what will be kept or change again.
Furthermore, it isn't just Engineering and Blacksmithing specialties that can be changed for a fee, but Leatherworking, Alchemy and Tailoring too.
As for Cider's rep, there will supposedly be repeatable quest NPCs outside the goblin towns that will permit regaining rep with some effort, though not impossible.
Also, Shadowstep is so cool and so wrong in so many ways.
Lastly, while they're in code/feature freeze atm (or so I've been told) there's still quite a few bugs left and some dungeons to open, as well as some quests to refine for Blade's Edge and whatnot. I'm going to be very surprised if we make Jan. 16th release date.