A lot's different, a lot's the same.
Lockdown hasn't changed much, instead of millions of people in Skolver with BTBs and Gran Fausts, it's millions of people in Skolver with BTBs, Gran Fausts, and Warmaster Rocket Hammers, with the odd gunner and bomber thrown in for good measure.
Elevator pass is nice, can't imagine why it took so long for Three Rings to include it.
Missions take some getting used to... I'm a bit mixed on them. It's nice that you don't have go through 4+ floors of random crap to get to boss stratum, on the other hand non-boss missions are mostly deserted. So is the Arcade - I did Dauntless Delver today with my shiny new elevator pass and didn't see a soul except for one person I made friends with yesterday even though we did Snarbolax on the way down. My new friend managed to survive all of Tier 3 in 3-star gear though. Granted, we avoided the harder strata but it's still impressive.
Accessories seem a lot more common. CE prices aren't as high either. With the elevator pass I don't think there's as much demand for CE since there's really no reason to ever use it on anything except crafting and weapon/trinket slots once a month.
Not sure if I'm going to get the expansion mission. I'm surprised it's not available for CE. Same with the elevator pass. Maybe they want to keep CE prices down.
"I'm surprised it's not available for CE"
Most of us are. Firstly it was announced to be purchasable with CE but just before update Nick decided to change it to "avaliable with purchase"
"Maybe they want to keep CE prices down." Well, nothing stopped them from relasing sonic stuff (a promo while ago) both as a CE purchase and avaliable with $$$ purchase. Same with Shadow keys, they are always as a CE purchase.