I had a chance to sit up close and follow the WoW Dungeons & Raids Panel. You can read my rundown of the entire panel after the jump.

The second day of BlizzCon 2009 kicked off with an open World of Warcraft Q&A panel, and Tom Chilton revealed in response to a question that "we will be doing race changes, they're just coming after faction changes."

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street said during the second class panel later in the day that you'll have to pay for the race change, just like you'll have to pay to change your faction. Throw in a barber shop and the newly announced race/class combos and it looks like players will soon have almost free rein to completely change their character whenever they wish. The only question you'll truly have to consider at the character creation screen is what class you want to level.

You can read more answers from the open Q&A after the jump.

For those of you just waking up, getting off work or getting online for the first time since BlizzCon 2009 began on Friday afternoon; I promised you a quick-and-easy round-up of the most important news and announcements from "day one" of the convention. The biggest news of the day for most fans was the confirmation of the World of Warcraft's upcoming third expansion, Cataclysm. It turns out the rumors and "leaked" info we've been reading about was spot-on, for the most part. The Old World of Azeroth will indeed be permanently changed forever; the landscape of many low-level zones like the Barrens and Darkshore will be completely altered by the event, as will the rest of Azeroth's zones, to some extent.

Our next two playable races will be the Goblins and Worgen, aligned with the Horde and Alliance, respectively. The level cap will be raised to 85, and professions will increase by another 75 points. Archaeology will be a new secondary profession that everyone can use, and Azeroth will be retro-fitted to allow flying mounts the ability to traverse the skies. You can read about all this and more at Blizzard's newly-launched, official Cataclysm website.

Blizzard also announced Diablo III's next playable class, the Monk. Attendees saw a video of the Monk in action, and had the chance to play the game shortly after the announcement. The StarCraft, Warcraft III and WoW Arena tournaments raged on as the developer discussion panels began...the Class, Item and Profession panel proved extremely interesting; Zam's own Togikagi attended and reported a recap of the panel. Finally, returning MC Jay Mohr closed out the night and hosted the costume, dance, and sound-alike contests. Check out a few pics of the winners and other contestants at Blizzard's own TwitPic photo stream.

Check out the official recap of BlizzCon 2009 "Day One" after the jump, with all the links you need to find out more.

As the first day of BlizzCon 2009 comes to a close, the live news reporting and blogging slows to a temporary halt, until tomorrow. For those of you just waking up, getting off work, or getting online for the first time for whatever reason, we will be posting a recap of today's BlizzCon 2009 events shortly. In the mean time, you can always bookmark and visit our BlizzCon 2009 news tag, which allows you to see all the convention-related news and media we've posted so far. We have to give credit to our BlizzCon 2009 reporting team, which did an excellent job of covering today's announcements and events.

After the jump, you'll find a brief list of some of the more notable media that other fansites and journalists across the blogosphere were able to capture today. Whether it's a video clip taken from a hand-held camera during a discussion panel or a collection of interesting screenshots, you can rest assured there will be even more media out there by this time tomorrow...

Blizzard posted a link to its own photos from the BlizzCon Costume Contest, via its Twitter page. You can check out the photos here, at its TwitPic feed. The online photo stream includes photos of this year's grand prize winner, "Mistress of Pain." A pretty cool-looking Kel'Thuzad costume took second place. The album feed features a few other random participant costumes, including Mother Shahraz and Bloodsail Buccaneer. You can also check out pictures of the crowd and some other nice shots by scrolling down through the feed.

The World of Warcraft classes, items and professions panel just wrapped up, and we learned that Cataclysm is bringing a ton of changes: warlock soul shards will now be part of the UI instead of being in your inventory; hunters will use focus instead of mana and ammo will no longer be an item; stats like attack power, defense, spell power, block value, MP5, and armor penetration are gone; talents that improve buffs are gone; Shadowmourne is the new legendary two-handed axe; abilities will now scale with level instead of using ranks; and you will be able to track more than one gathering profession at the same time. And that's just the most noteworthy stuff!

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street started things off by discussing the goblin and worgen racial abilities. As I mentioned in my look at the goblin starting area, goblins get a rocket jump, rocket barrage attack, +15 to Alchemy, 1% increase to attack and casting speed, access to your bank on a 30-minute cooldown, and the best gold discount on all items.

For racials, worgens get Darkflight, which lets them increase their movement speed by 70% for six seconds every 3 minutes. They also get +1% damage, reduced duration of curses and diseases, and +15 to skinning without the need to use a knife. Changing worgen form is strictly visual; you can be human or worgen out of combat, but you're going to automatically change to worgen in combat.

The new Cataclysm trailer can be found on the official WoW Media site, if you haven't seen it yet. The video showcases fly-bys of the Old World zones that will be ravaged by the Cataclysm event, including the Barrens and Darkshore. The trailer also shows off some impressive in-game footage of the new Goblin and Worgen classes, and their respective starting zones.

Screenshots, artwork and wallpaper media are also available, including an epic-looking glimpse at Deathwing, the character that the upcoming expansion revolves around. Stay tuned for more news and media, and remember to check out our Cataclysm Wiki for the most up-to-date info regarding the upcoming expansion.

The official Cataclysm website is also live. It doesn't feature too much additional info and media beyond the aforementioned vids, screens and artwork, although it will serve as a repository for any upcoming official announcements, so you'll want to keep it bookmarked.

As you all already know, the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft will open up goblins and the worgen as playable races for the Horde and Alliance, respectively. Well, playable demos of the new starting areas for both races are available on the BlizzCon floor, and I got the chance to try out the life of a goblin first-hand.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead. If you want your starting area experience to be a complete surprise, you may want to stop reading. Also, I wasn't allowed to take photos of the screen, but you all know what goblins look like anyway, right?

If you're a fan of Blizzard's novel series, you might be happy to find out that Christie Golden (author of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, among others) will be writing the upcoming "Cataclysm" novel, as recently reported by WoW.com. Unfortunately, there are no other details about the upcoming novel available yet, although if it follows the same pattern that Arthas did, fans can probably expect the book to hit shelves a couple months after the Cataclysm expansion launches.

As you've probably read in our announcement earlier today, the most recent character class for the upcoming Diablo III was revealed at BlizzCon that the Monk. Blizzard's official Diablo III website has now been updated to reflect the announcement, with a full class breakdown, including artwork, screenshots and even in-game video trailers of the Monk in action. Check out the Monk class info page.