It's definitely going live with 3.0. I don't think anyone's talking about it because it's been set in stone for so long.

With the Blizzcon timing (right before the patch) and the stated reason for DKs being added being that tanks were too hard to find- I'll actually be more surprised if they don't activate them alongside 3.0.2 (and relock them when WotLK comes out.)

They won't, for the same reason that they didn't allow Draenei and Blood Elf characters in the Before the Storm (2.0) patch.

The zones, character models, quests, etc that will be added for DKs are simply too large to be included in a content patch, and are also one of the biggest Drawcards/selling points for WoTLK. It's highly unlikely that they will add this type of "hyped" content in a patch for the existing game.

By necessity, 3.whatever must already include all Death Knight armors, textures, voices, models, et cetera; non-LK clients have to be able to correctly represent DKs that happen to drop into Orgrimmar or Ironforge. The additional resources necessary would be Ebon Hold itself and anything inside the Hold that's not taken outside of the instance.

I doubt experiencing Ebon Hold would cause anyone to pass on Wrath of the Lich King. After seeing how masterfully the Death Knight quests are executed, players would be rabid to see Northrend.

On an unrelated note, Outland leveling after 3.0 is very pleasant. I averaged 2h15 a level with your basic "stack good quests, skip bad ones" strategy.

It doesn't really matter because they already specifically stated DK's would not be available in 3.0.

I've played a bit of pvp on the PTR with my prot warrior. I'm happy with prot's pvp ability now. I could kill any class and spec with big shieldslams, stuns and reflects.

Is there a bug or something with melee range? I was totally unable to land yellow attacks on moving targets (it happens in pve too, only on the PTR), sometimes even immediately after a charge (stunned target!) I can't land attacks because the target is reported to be out of range. This is extremely frustrating. I've played prot pvp on live too, I never had such a huge problem hitting moving targets.
Is this because PTRs are laggy or is melee range currently broken?

I'd say it is caused by lag.

There's an inaccessible part of Un'goro crater that has some mobs for a Sholazar Basin quest, but, well...it's inaccessible.

I don't think that there's anywhere else with new mobs.

With the PTR/Beta servers in the US, there's significantly higher lag compared to EU servers.

For example, I get roughly 100 ms on live, while on beta it usually hangs around 400.

There seems to be a funny bug with warriors on PTR. Maybe it's related to armored to teeth talent. I got crit with victory rush for 29K in def stance, 17K armor. That requires about 90K AP, surely something is wrong here 9500 WW crits and 4500 MS hits also feel a "bit" out of place

It's actually a bug with regards to Two-Hand Weapon Specialization - the 6% damage bonus is being re-applied over and over if you keep re-equipping your two-handed weapon.

As for 6:49 PM PHT, it still hasn't been fixed, and is really making any kind of testing impossible on the PTRs, primarily from all the lag.

Did they unnerf undead shadow resistance, or is the PTR not current? I was just there and it's showing 2% in the spellbook.

They're decreasing the amount of experience needed. It's also the case that it remembers your absolute amount of experience, not relative amount of experience. So if you're on, say, level 62 and have more experience than is needed now to get to level 63, you'll end up at 1 experience before getting level 63.

? Seriously, that worked on your server? To this day those mobs drop very low level grey/white items for me and between 2.0 and TBC when I killed those ghosts (yay for glancing) I got level 60 drops only.

It definitely used to work for a while, can remember seeing some of the level 70 BoEs on the Auction House before the expansion was released. Can even remember someone being crazy enough to ~10k gold for a [The Bringer of Death] in that time because he figured it was "really imba".

Is there a handy post anywhere listing all the changes to buffs? E.g what's now raidwide, what's still party only, what stacks with what etc?

Edit: Thanks, Liar.

World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking might be a good start.

EDIT: The second class that provides the BF debuff isn't listed but we know it's the Rogue by now.

The background downloader is pushing out more info - 1.1GB total at this stage.

Out of curiosity, how big was the 2.0 patch? This one seems a lot bigger.

1.12 to 2.0 was 680MB.

[Winterfall Spirit Beads DEPRECATED] and [Deadwood Headdress Feather DEPRECATED] got they reputation gains doubled.
From 150 to 300 for turning in 5.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but PTR Kara trash drops Northrend level lockboxes (Froststeel). Possibly other drops, but didn't come across any.

This doesn't really help much, as level 70 Rogues don't have enough Lockpicking skill to open them, and the Engineering bombs don't work either.