For example, when you meet Narolakk, the bear/troll boss, a chase sequence will initiate, and he'll begin launching troll trash mobs at you as you continue to pursue him towards the area where you'll eventually do battle. We also got to witness a ring of trolls playing keep away with a skull, tormenting a helpless dragonhawk. Draw aggro from these trolls, and they'll launch the skull at you, knocking you down and adding the item to your bag. The skull works like the Happy Fun Rock or Heavy Leather Ball, and you'll be able to use it for a casual game of catch the next time you're waiting for a party to form.

Things like trolls playing catch with skulls or running past you to ring gongs for reinforcements give Zul'Aman a more lively and lighthearted feel than the darker confines of some of The Burning Crusade's more serious high-level dungeons.

As an aside, we were also able to confirm that a rare bear mount will drop in Zul'Aman. While we couldn't get Stockton to confirm whether or not it would drop from Narolakk, you can expect it to be about as rare as the Swift Zulian Tiger  mount which drops from off High Priest Thekal in Zul'Gurub.

Above: Zul'Amand's outdoor setting with lush jungles and trolls gone wild make it seem like a spiritual sequel to Zul'Gurub

But don't expect future patch content to be limited to new raid instances and the usual tweaks to class skills. Stockton hinted at some additional and much needed features for future updates. An integrated voice chat system is now in the works, and should put an end to the hassle and drama larger guilds go through to set up and pay for private Ventrilo or TeamSpeak servers. Also scheduled in for future features is a new guild bank system which should help alleviate the cumbersome process of sharing materials, recipes, and gold with your guildmates via bank mods.

With the possibly of a new expansion  around the corner and a juicy new instance to sink our teeth into, there's a lot to look forward to in WoW 's near future. In the meantime, visit the Images tab above for the latest screens of Zul'Aman and make sure to check back here for more breaking news from the frontlines of Azeroth.