Blues, Blues, Blues - World of Warcraft Realm History

Voice Chat Launch
In the upcoming patch we will be introducing voice chat, which allows players to talk to each other in-game with the use of a microphone. To ensure that we provide the quality play experience we’re committed to, we will be ramping up the voice chat feature in multiple stages. Currently we are scheduling voice chat to be available on patch day for a limited number of EU realms. While all realms will still receive the 2.2 patch, and all the content and changes therein, only some EU realms will have voice chat enabled at the start. We plan to then enable voice chat for a limited number of European realms and the remaining EU realms the following week, and one week later we will plan to enable it for the remaining European realms. This ramp up release will help us to test the voice chat feature in a live realm environment before enabling it on all realms.

To read more about the upcoming Voice Chat feature, click here:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=612223263&sid=1.

The initial set of realms that will have voice chat enabled the week after patch day:

English: Earthen Ring Ravencrest Runetotem Shadowmoon Shadowsong Shattered Hand Silvermoon Skullcrusher Spinebreaker Stormrage Stormreaver Stormscale Terenas Thunderhorn Turalyon

German: Aegwynn Alexstrasza Alleria Antonidas Baelgun Blackhand Destromath Die Silberne Hand Eredar Frostmourne Frostwolf Gorgonnash Gul'dan Kel'Thuzad Kil'Jaeden Madmortem Malfurion Mal'Ganis Mannoroth Nathrezim Nozdormu Perenolde Proudmoore Zirkel des Cenarius Zuluhed

All other realms are scheduled to have voice chat enabled two weeks after the patch release week. Source.

Death Knight available to all races
The Death Knight class is still being developed, but it is possible it will be available to all races. We will provide more details on this class and many other things when we are closer to launching Wrath of the Lich King and the details become finalized. Source.

Player Housing
Player Housing, like a number of other things, is something that we would like to add to the game, but we have no estimate on when or if it will be implemented. Source.

Surnames
The developers would very much like to add surnames to the game at some point in the future, but there are no immediate plans for this on schedule. Source.