Question: I'm looking mainly at things like new SQL syntax, new kinds of locking, new capabilities etc. Not so much in the surrounding services like data warehousing and reports...

Answer: 
Filestream blob storage is the biggest bonus to me
Sparse indexing for those with lots of NULLs. Also the DATETIME2 data type that a lot of people have been waiting for 0001-01-01 through 9999-12-31.