Burning Crusade Clarifications from the Q&A

Today during the Blizzconline WoW Q&A we were able to get some extra information about the rollout of TBC. Here are the highlights:

Characters that are copied get the version of the character as they are as a snapshot that takes place at the release of the prepatch.
The character (including gold, friends, etc.) is identical on Classic Era as TBC as captured at the snapshot.
At launch for TBC, optimizations for servers took place, however the goal of the game is the competition for spawns. Layering may be used for the early part of TBC to help with the enjoyment of play.
Character names are saved in Classic Era as well as TBC. This will probably resolve to a “Name-Realm” style naming system with most likely less servers existing for Classic Era.
In general there will be no class tuning. They will be using the final TBC patch for the entirety of the game. The notable exception to this is the allowance of the faction specific paladin spells will be available to both factions to not cause faction imbalance.
Summoning stones will be available and functional at launch in TBC.
“Battlegroups” won’t exist as they did in TBC. Instead titles will be awarded for a general top percent of players.
Arenas may start at phase 1, while phase 4 might not have an arena season. This is still undetermined.
There will be no fresh TBC servers. It is possible down the line that there will be fresh Classic servers but not until after TBC has released.