Are there any surprise goodies in 1.1 that were not in 1.0.9W BETA?

A quick XML comparison should tell us, once it is released.

It won't require internet connection to play

I believe they did mention that a lot of the diagnostics is being pulled out in the official release (for instance, in the betas, every single action in tactical battles was recorded to a log file to help identify crashes), which will result in an overall speedier, less stuttery game.

I think frog said they fixed the late game bug that wasn't letting monsters spawn late game.

The biggest ugliest bug you ever saw.

I was wondering about this too. I think what the OP is trying to ask is similar to my question:

Is 1.1 just the beta 'W' released to the public or was there any added features or fixes between W and 1.1?

Considering one of the biggest mistakes they made was not releasing a full version to the beta folks because they didn't want to ruin the content for those players I would really hope that we are getting complete version. i also hope the don't cave to any for of release pressure, end of year, clamoring fans/press. They need to follow some good release management practices and the SDLC and stop releasing these daily patches which probably should be internal development stuff and give their internal testers as well as us time to test, submit bugs, and recieve fixes that are verified byt the person submitting the bug. You can't do that with the version changing daily. I fear their relying far too much on their load testing. They need to get us to a relatively stable 1.09 version, stop development, and leave it in the testers and communities hand for a minimum of 2 weeks while they do nothing but respond to bug reports and implement fixes.

Surprise! FPS rate has been reduced by at least 20%. Merry early Christmas, or slightly late Channuka.

Monster spawn tier fix. It's been posted in the forums.