The tone of the panel was wholly casual, with the panelists joking amongst themselves and with the crowd - and not being above tossing out a jab or two at their own expense. Many of the questions covered well-treaded ground, with attendees often bringing up specific concerns pertaining to the specific class (or classes) that they played themselves.

The developers discussed the difficulties they faced in trying to walk a fine line when balancing classes and different talent trees within those classes - while they didn't want certain specs to feel like entirely separate classes that mandated a player spend all their talents in one tree, they were wary of making it absolutely essential for players to spend points in multiple trees if they didn't want to.

Of course, this isn't to say that the panel was wholly without a surprise or two. In response to a question about whether or not players would be able to use mounts indoors or in caves, Jeff Kaplan revealed that in the first content patch after Lich King - Patch 3.1, presumably - players will no longer be dismounted when entering water, because their mounts have learned how to swim.

Some of the most interesting responses came from WarCraft lore-master, Chris Metzen. While J. Allen Brack confirmed that their relationship with China and their Chinese players - a very significant portion of WoW's million-strong userbase - made it problematic to introduce the Pandaren race into the game, Metzen softened the blow. The Pandaren were near and dear to Blizzard, according to him, and they were very interested in fleshing out their lore and story at some point in the future.

When asked about where the WarCraft story would go next after Northrend and Wrath, Metzen was understandably evasive, joking that if he said too much "[he] would be shot." He did hint, however, that players shouldn't just think in terms of continents - and that whatever was coming next would be "bold."

Personally, my money's on the Emerald Dream.