Cataclysm:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/

Two New Playable Races Adventure as one of two new races--the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.

Level Cap Increased to 85 Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.

Classic Zones Remade Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.

New High-Level Zones Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj'ir beneath the sea.

More Raid Content than Ever Before Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.

New Race and Class Combinations Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations.

Guild Advancement Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.

Archaeology Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before.

And much, much more...

Tom Chilton: I would say the biggest reason is because we're always pushing ourselves to do as much as we can in every patch. We're never really satisfied with what we have in the patch versus what we didn't have. Maybe the developers get a little out of control - but in a good way as that's good for players. More than anything else we want to make sure that in a patch we have content for everyone.

We feel like one of the things we didn't do so well in the past was to deliver content for everyone, we would deliver content for different parts of the player base at any given time like a 25-person raid or a 10-person raid or here's a new battleground, back in the day of Arathi Basin. However we didn't really hit everyone at the same time so we're trying harder to do that while at the same time maintain our pace of Expansions ... our blindingly rapid pace of Expansions.

Why did you decide to implement the Argent Tournament?

The Argent Tournament we saw primarily as a more Azerothian style event. We've got a lot of world events, like in-game holidays, at this point but we're going to continue to improve those and refine them and we will add more of them over time. But we wanted to spend a little more time doing something which was a little more Azeroth.

So we built the Argent Tournament and we knew that with a lot of our world events, we wanted them to be very solo friendly, very casual player friendly but we didn't want it to feel like another set of daily quests that were the same as any other daily quests people where already doing. We wanted to make sure the activity felt a little bit different and kind of new and fresh so that was one of the reasons behind doing the Argent Tournament the way we did and it's part of how we came to the idea of doing jousting in-game.

.... read more

On the North American test realms:

Mimiron - Friday Night, March 13, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. Hodir - Saturday Night, March 14, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. Flame Leviathan - Sunday, March 15, starting at 2pm EDT/11am PDT. Ignis the Furnace Master - Monday Night, March 16, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. XT-002 Deconstructor - Tuesday Night, March 17, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. Kologarn - Wednesday Night, March 18, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT.

On the European test realms:

Mimiron - Friday Night, March 13 at 19:00 CET. Auriaya - Saturday Night, March 14, at 19:00 CET. Flame Leviathan - Sunday Night, March 15, starting at 19:00 CET. General Vezax - Monday Night, March 16, starting at 19:00 CET. Thorim - Tuesday Night, March 17, starting at 19:00 CET. Freya - Wednesday Night, March 18, starting at 19:00 CET.

This schedule could change at a moment’s notice due to server, bug, or patch status. I’ll try to keep everyone informed as much as possible. Ulduar and the bosses to be tested will remain also open a variable length of time. How long they stay open depends upon a host of factors including designer availability, bug status, etc.

We’re very interested in seeing combat logs and parses for all raid testing on the PTR.

Tigole has confirmed that content patch, known as 3.0, which will hit live servers before Wrath of the Lich King, will also include a decrease in XP to level from 60 to 70.

Here's a reminder of what else we'll see in 3.0 (which is yet to hit the Public Test Realms, so might still be some time off):

Blizzard Quote: (Source) 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've been very forthcoming with the truth. Let's look at it from this angle. Downranking added a lot of extra considerations to design and balance. When people downrank, it changes the complexities of different encounters and how those complexities play into the design. We don't want to penalize people using low ranked spells because this doesn't quite address the issue of downranking either. So what we're doing instead is finding a consistent cost of mana across the board and making it so that when you rank up, you get more benefit out of that higher ranked spell. The cost should remain largely consistent as you go along.

What Zarhym has said and what Wryxian has said are not at odds with each other. One is simply saying "this wasn't intended" the other was saying "if you're going to do it, this is the strategy people are using" and highlighting someone elses' post. We are not advocating downranking, but we are now making it a thing of the past.

See forums post, under information, for more details.