With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade's release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

We want to provide some information about the direction of the Arena system. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players will find they are still able to access the Arena system at level 70 for rated matches. Those competing in the Arenas at 70 will still be able to attain items using Arena points and rankings; however, we do not currently plan to offer new items or titles for this bracket. Players who level past 70 will have their Arena points reset to 0 and be removed from all Arena teams in the level-70 bracket.

Two new skirmish brackets (71-75, 76-80) will be available for players who wish to hone their Arena skills while leveling in Northrend. Those who reach level 80 will once again have the opportunity to create new Arena teams and play in rated matches once a new season starts. New items, titles, and end-of-season rewards will be offered to the most successful teams at level 80. Additionally, the sets released for the Arenas in Wrath of the Lich King will no longer share aesthetic similarities with tiered raiding gear. We want those equipped with the best PvP rewards and those with the best raiding sets to stand out from each other. Players at level 80 will also have the opportunity to compete in two new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles.

In response to the recent interest in Lake Wintergrasp, we’d like to take a moment to share the current developments with the zone.

As many of you have noticed, it is currently half implemented. We’re working as quickly as possible to get it into a fun and enjoyable state. To help provide better feedback for PvP testing, we’ll be temporarily providing Honor and Arena gear from a vendor in Wintergrasp. The rate at which you receive honor has been accelerated to help players gear up quickly while helping us test the zone. In addition, we are also providing Arena points during the beta for testing purposes so that players can PvP in a complete set of PvP gear.

We’ll let you know when the zone is in a completed state. Please keep in mind the current zone and reward structure are temporary.

BlizzCon Ticket Drawing Opt-In Period Ends
The opt-in period for the BlizzCon 2008 Ticket Drawing is now over. We will be randomly selecting winners within the next few days and will announce when selections have been made on our websites. If you are chosen, you will receive an email from Blizzard containing information about how to purchase up to two tickets to BlizzCon 2008. If you haven’t done so already, please go to Blizzard Account Management and update your contact information. For more details, see the FAQ. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Typhoon
It's not finished, no. We're still working on the new graphic for it, and also considering a different design path for it. (Source)

Improved Moonkin Form
The plan is for it to go raid wide. Given the talents avaiable to deep Balance, I hope it's obvious that we are trying to make the Moonkin a very competitive spellcaster. Some of the concerns from BC (e.g. running out of mana, lack of AE or CC, not enough group synergy) should be aleviated by now. (Source)

Feral spec in WotLK
We do want to give Ferals who want to focus on being cats some excellent melee dps. We do want bears to be end-game tanks. We want to see serious guilds with a bear MT and a death knight OT.

What held us back from that before was that the kitty could turn around and tank almost as well (and sometimes better) than the Prot dudes who abandoned any hope of competitive dps in order to be able to tank for their guild. Clearly (I hope) a class that could do rogue-level dps and warrior-level tanking with the same talent build is the kind of thing that makes other players a little miffed.

But we're reevaluating a lot of old (and some admittedly tired) decisions for Lich King. Not only will tank-spec classes be able to do a lot higher dps (not the highest in the raid mind you, but higher), but we think it's fine for a Feral to nerf their tanking ability a little in order to go for high dps, or lower their dps a little in order to be amazing tanks.

We don't think it will take a complete overhaul of the Feral tree. To be honest, I think it's a pretty fun tree. But it will definitely take some changes to the tree you see on beta today. Imagine 5-10 talent points that significantly increase your survivability but do nothing to your dps. Take those points and you're a tank. Ignore them and you're melee dps. Take a few here and there and you are as flexible as you are today. I'm not saying that is the final or even only sollution. But that implementation gets brought up quite a bit. (Source)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Retribution Paladins
I meant that we can't assume Vengeance is up 100% of the time so we can't assume paladins will always have that 15% boost. Yet if we balance them without that 15% (or we try and estimate it at something like 5 or 10%), we'll start to run into trouble when paladins with lots of +crit do manage to keep it up all the time. And if it really is up all the time, is that interesting an ability anyway?

As to the death knight, we only gave them that talent to mirror the paladin one and catch a hint of the "anti-paladin" vibe. Whatever treatment Vengeance ends up, Bloody Vengeance will almost certainly get as well.

I agree there are several things driving Retribution to be bursty. To some degree, bursts can be fun. We all like seeing a crit with a big number flying up. But we'd probably all agree that there comes a point where you feel like you're just rolling a dice -- maybe I'll do crazy dps on my next few hits and maybe I won't. I think we can stabilize Retribution a little bit while still letting you see some big numbers sometime and have very competitive dps. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Upcoming Penance Changes
Some changes to Penance are incoming:
- The first tick will be virtually instant (so overall the channel is now 2 seconds, not 3)
- The mana cost has been cut roughly in half.
- There's a new Discipline talent that will make it more interesting (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Demonic Circle
The looping and sound issues will be fixed soon, as well as some other random bugs with the ability. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
AoE Tanking
I totally agree. It's depressing to see how excited a 5-player group gets with a paladin tank just because they know they're going to get a good experience.

There are plenty of excellent warrior tanks out there -- don't get me wrong. But we think we can make the experience a little more fun for both the warrior and his or her group.

Generating a little more dps will help.
Not being rage starved all the time will help.
Being able to generate enough threat on groups will help a lot.
Having a few more fun buttons to push certainly wouldn't suck either.
We would also love, love, love to be able to merge and pack some of the mitigation talents together so that you have enough points to get some more fun talents*, so long as we can avoid any nerf to warrior survivability when tanking.

* - this is totally true of the other Prot tree too. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Anti Magic Shell = WIN!
That is by design. Now, it might end up being too powerful and ultimately getting tweaked, but it isn't a bug. (Source)