Once a great Highborne city housing some of the most revered night elves of Kalimdor, Vashj'ir was swallowed by the Great Sea during the Sundering and thought to be lost forever. Queen Azshara, formerly a beloved leader of the night elves, escaped death in the depths of the sea when the Well of Eternity imploded.

Such salvation came at a great cost, as the queen and many of her fellow Highborne were forever transformed into the monstrous naga, doomed to wander the seas for thousands of years.

Their existence mostly remains a mystery to the peoples of modern Azeroth, though the Earthen Ring has learned of Azshara's naga seizing Vashj'ir for an unknown purpose as the cries of the elements echo across Azeroth from the abyss.

The Sunken City Vashj'ir is a level 78–82 zone in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm where players will be called to explore the depths of the Great Sea and stop the naga from seizing immeasurable power from the realm of Neptulon the Tidehunter.

This expansive underwater zone will feature an unprecedented fight for survival against the naga overwhelming the area, several new quest hubs -- including Alliance and Horde naval ships and submarines -- all-new underwater travel and combat mechanics, several pocketed undersea caves free from water's grip, two new five-player dungeons (Throne of the Tides and Abyssal Maw), and the first-ever opportunity to explore the remains of the once-majestic city of Vashj'ir! Follow link for more details.

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.