Check out this old chestnut I just found on my hard drive:

Blizzcon World of Warcraft Prediction Mania

Below are my predictions for Blizzcon 2011. How could I pass up the opportunity to look completely ridiculous in two  one days' time?

• Mists of Pandaria is the new expansion.
• No new race. Pandaren are NPCs.
• New Hero class (defined as starting at high level, not in general overpowerdacity): the Monk. 
• Taught by Pandas on some far-off island . 
• Any race can be this class.
• Similar to the Death Knight starting area, Horde and Alliance are together here.
• Wears cloth. Maybe leather. 
• Maybe either! (two armor specializations)
• Shares resto/melee leather with druids and rogues
• Shares resto cloth with priests
• Can heal or melee.
• Melee: Unarmed or using a staff
• Healing: Uses some new and interesting heal mechanic, like having to be in melee range. If so they'd need to be highly mobile, like having a heroic leap-like ability on a short cooldown.
• Maybe add a new kinds (or kinds) of weapons to coincide with the new class
• Talent system revamp. 
• I can't imagine what this might be, but they have indicated that they would design it differently given a re-do. 
• Also, numerically it's been shown that the system is not sustainable. Adding more talents makes the game worse, not better, though it looks good on a box.
• The minimum they'll do is to fold more "boring" talents into the base and add a similar number of new talents.
• Raid content: I'm leaning toward Azshara, Neptulon and the Abyssal Maw. 
• I don't think they will risk another major underwater zone given the cool reception of Vash'jir (which I loved, but many didn't)
• I don't think this will be all there is. Maybe only the starting raids will be water-related.
• Hopefully some new bad guys that we have never heard of before will be introduced. We have killed most of the previously-established ones by this point.
• Graphical upgrade of some kind. 
• It might not be a player model update for reasons they've previously stated, such as player attachment to their character's "look".
• I think it will be more radical than previous approaches of "fix one thing", like fire or water. The graphics have a strong need to be brought into the present day, and the lowest level of hardware has been raised since the game launched.
• No Alleria and Turalyon yet.
• Tanking gets a redesign. This isn't rocket science to discern since they've been talking about it openly.
• Release date is early next year, maybe summer at latest. No way we're raiding Deathwing for a full year.

What are your predictions?