New pre-WotLK zone announced: Sunwell Plateau

ActionTrip cornered WoW Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan and Art Director Chris Robinson today at the Leipzig Game Convention in Germany (E3 for Europe.) And boy, did they get a lot out of those two about Blizzard's plans for the future. Here are the highlights:

• The art for the expansion will look more like classic Warcraft (gothic fantasy), and less like Outlands art (high fantasy)

• Sunwell Plateau will be coming in a patch before the WotLK launch. It will include both a 25-main raid and a 5-main instance with both normal and heroic mode.

• WotLK will have "just as much" 5-man instances as TBC and more 10-main instances due to the popularity of Karazhan

• A new PvP area called Lake Wintergrass will combine world PvP (non-instanced) with the new siege weapons and destructible buildings. The faction that controls this zone may receive an effect that not only applies to the zone, but to the whole continent
  

• When asked about class balance, they said they had no plans for any major changes to classes

• The Death Knight unlocking quest will start at level 55-60

If I'm not mistaken, the Sunwell Plateau is north east of Silvermoon city, the Blood Elf capital. I hope Blizzard is planning some kind of Alliance friendly transportation into the area with the introduction of the Zul'Aman raid zone in Patch 2.3. If not, they are definitely going to need it for these new zones.

Full interview can be read here.

Via WorldOfWar.Net

EDIT: In regards to #14's comment: Stratholme is the new CoT instance according to this interview with Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan aka "Tigole." It is a 5-man, Level 80 instance. You will travel to the past before Arthas was corrupted and help him rid the city of demons and burn it down. As far as we can tell, the Sunwell Plateau will only be accessible by traveling there physically.

That same article also mentioned that future Hero Classes could be Demon Hunter, Archmage or Blademaster.

He also talked about the Death Knight rune system. What runes the Death Knight carves into his blade will determine what role he plays in the group (i.e tank, dps, a mix of the two, etc.)

In this separate interview, Kaplan revealed another new WotLK instance, Nexus, located in the Borean Tundra zone. It will be split into several wings, one of them for a 25-man raid that must defeat Malygyos, the blue dragon.