I'll go over the most exciting changes here from Patch 2.3 to save people from trawling through it all, but if there is something I don't mention that you feel is big news, feel free to add it in comments:

Zul'Aman: A new 10 man instance in the Ghostlands area, a horde controlled region, just south of Silvermoon City. The instance has a similar feel to Zul'Gurub, contains 6 bosses and has a plethora new loot including a Bear mount.


Guild Banks: Guild banks go live in 2.3. A max of 98 slots available, and a facility to allow guild members to pay for repairs using the guild bank. Also in there is news that all merchant NPCs can repair your items.


Experience Change: The ammount of xp needed to level between levels 20 and 60 has been reduced, and the xp reward for quests has been increased for levels 30 - 60


Expertise: This new stat has replaced weapon skill rating, changing the way your skill with a weapon is calculated. Weapon Skill Rating used to increase your crit chance, decrease your chance to miss and decrease your target's chance to parry, dodge or block. Expertise only reduces the chance your attacks will be parried or dodged. However, effects of weapon skill rating was 0.04% per point, expertise is 0.25% pp, therefore having more impact. We'll have to run with this a bit to see the difference it makes in-game. Ranged weapon skills have not been replaced with Expertise, instead with additional +hit / +crit.


+Healing items: All items with +heal now provide 1/3 +spell damage.


Vendor Discounts: All faction vendors now give a discount based on your standing with them. Eg:

Friendly: 5% discount
Honored: 10% discount
Revered: 15% discount
Exalted: 20% discount


Dressing Room:You can now see what an enchantment will look like in the dressing room facility, by ctrl right clicking it.


Engineering Flying Mounts: Engineers can now build their own mounts.


Leatherworking: The craftable drums have had their radius of effect increased, as well as many other changes, making them more useful.


Items: All old world instances have had loot buffs, all loot dropped in now "Superior Quality".


Unique Items: You may now own more than 1 unique item, such as rings, trinkets etc, but only 1 may be equipped.


Low Level Cloth Items: All Agility and Strength has been replaced with other stats on low level cloth items.


Instances: All old world instances have had the elite mobs outside removed and replaced with non-elites and the level ranges for these instances have been narrowed. Quest rewards for these instances have had their faction and experience increased.


Dustwallow Marsh: The new town of Mudsprocket has now opened its doors to players, introducing new quests.


Auction House: The AH interface has been improved, removing categories that no not exist, ie plate cloak, changing others, and adding more sub categories. The time for auctions are now 12, 24 or 48 hours, the 8 hour option has been removed.


Useable Objects: Items that can be interacted with now glow slightly, and have a name over them, to make them easier to spot.


Inspect: The range of inspect has received another increase to 30 yards, and players can now see the talents of the characters they are inspecting.


Mailing: You can send 12 items in one mail now, with the option to right click items in your inventory to add them to the mail. You can also mouse over your unopened mail icon to see who the latest mail item is from.


NPC Speech: The useless speech page that pops up at the bank and flight masters, as well as some other NPCs, is now gone.


Quests: Low level quests will be tagged when talking to quest givers, so you can judge whether to accept the quest or not.


Loot: You can now set the loot threshold in parties to rare or epic items. Also, corpses with loot available to a party member will display which party member is entitled to the loot, helping skinners in particular.

Gotta love the changes.

Yes those changes sound good....

Awesome changes - When does this patch go in?

Thanks for the excellent summarization, Maddux.

Can I cross post your post Maddux?

My posts are all masculine... sorry no cross dressers here.