Everything except the maintenance window is confirmed from Blizzard's development notes of 2 November. The maintenance window is reported: it is a notice in the Battle.net launcher, which we know from a player's post in the forum and from Wowhead, not from an article.
Respawns for the launch crowd
Blizzard has adjusted respawn rates "for many different areas in the world". The goal is to handle large player numbers at launch without hard bottlenecks. Some competition for spawns is "expected and part of the experience". The rates are faster in low-level zones, fastest in the starting zones, and get slower with level, as players spread out. Once the first wave of low-level characters has passed, Blizzard will set the low-level zones back to "more typical rates". Quest experience and quest requirements were also adjusted in several places. Ruins of Lordaeron dungeon quests all start at level 15 now.
Gamepad support is finished
Blizzard's launch guides of 28 and 29 October still called controllers "in a beta state". The notes now say gamepad support "has entered a complete functional state": movement, spells, interaction and interface navigation all work with a controller, and it is set up in Edit Mode and the options. Among the additions are ground-targeted items, a focus target (LB + RB + Face Down), ending a flight early, pet placement, and a reworked bag view with free slots and ammo count.
Small things you will notice on day one
- Bags no longer equip themselves into free bag slots. You have to put them in yourself.
- New spells no longer land on your action bars. You have to drag them over.
- Base stats were wrong for some races: a tauren warrior now starts with +5 strength over a human warrior, not +2. The Skyborne were fixed as well.
- Roots from procs such as Frostbite, Entrapment or Improved Hamstring now have diminishing returns.
- In the Darkspear Islands, dropping the flag no longer gives you the "Recently Dropped Flag" debuff.
Launch day
According to the launcher notice, maintenance starts on Wednesday, 4 November, at 10:00 a.m. PST, and the game is expected to be available again "at approximately 3:00 PM (PST)". That matches the launch time Blizzard announced: 23:00 UTC, midnight on 5 November in central Europe. See the launch times by region.
What this changes here
The item on launch times quoted the guide's "beta state" for controllers. It now carries a note that support is finished.