Update - Added the translation of the original article, thanks to Treeston!

Patch 4.3 - Deathwing, Transmogrifier, Void Storage
Tom Chilton (Kalgan) answered a couple of questions from Gamona.de on Patch 4.3, and we got a bunch of very interesting news out of it. Patch 4.3 will feature:


  • New Raid - The Deathwing raid, making it very likely to be the last patch before the next expansion.
  • 3 new 5-man instances - Including one in the Caverns of Time. (War of the Ancients was mentioned as a cataclysm instance a few years ago, but a lot of things have changed since then, who knows!)
  • The Transmogrifier NPC, which will let you change the appearance of any armor piece on you, while retaining the stats of your current gear. (= T12 stats, but with the Tier 2 look!)
  • Players won't be able to change the appearance of their armor into another armor type or class armor set, and you might have to own the armor before you can use it to swap the appearance of your existing armor.
  • The Void Storage is a new type of bank where players will be able to store their old armors in order to free up space in their regular bank.
  • The Abyssal Maw dungeon is gone for the moment, the storyline wasn't convincing enough/fitting.

If someone feels like adding information or even translating the article completely, post in comments!

Translation of the original article on gamona.de
We're at GamesCon in Cologne, Germany, and just did an interview with Tom Chilton, Lead Game Developer and Chris Robinson, Lead Art Director, in which they revealed a lot of details regarding patch 4.3 - and it seems that the announcement of it being huge was no joke:

Patch 4.3 will bring us the Deathwing raid instance! This means it's likely that we'll be able to fight the Aspect of Death in an epic encounter within this year. The raid that was originally expected for this patch, the "Abyssal Maw", was cut from the schedule because, as Chilton states, the setting and the story were not convincing enough.

Furthermore, 4.3 will also bring three entirely new 5-man instances - Chilton assured us that these won't contain any re-vamped content, but instead be brand new with unique design and models. Chilton also hinted at one of those being within the Caverns of Time, allowing players to experience another great moment of Warcraft Lore first-hand.

The interview also revealed the purpose of the "mystery ethereals" in Stormwind (and likely other cities, too). The "Transmogrifier" NPC will allow players to change the displayed model of equipment to that of another item while keeping the original attributes: Transmogrification is only possible within an armor class - Plate armor can only assume the looks of other Plate armor, for example.
  • Class restrictions apply to Transmogrification - Warriors cannot transmogrify their armor to look like Death Knight tier sets.
  • The developers are considering whether they should only allow using the models of equipment that has already been obtained

The "Void Storage" is a very large bank-esque storage which allows old equipment to be stored, freeing up inventory/bank slots for players. The developers aren't sure yet about the definition of "old equipment". The cost of the storage (and whether there even is one) is another thing that is not yet decided

Another possible feature that was hinted at is the possibility of "void stored" equipment being available to other characters on the account (NOTE: That part might be speculation from Gamona, not cross-server transfers actually confirmed. Hard to tell.)

Overall, it seems that we've got a huge patch ahead of us - a new raid, three brand new instances, Transmogrification and Void Storage.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 4.3 - Deathwing, Transmogrifier, Void Storage started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 493 Comments
  1. mvaliz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by vizzle View Post
    Told ya so! It's been painfully obvious for a long while that Deathwing would be the next tier after Firelands.


    Edit: and 1st!
    Considering they said that the Abyssal Maw was originally to be this next patch... I'd say "no, it wasn't obvious".

    It's more clear to me that Blizzard is in a "Panic mode" right now - shoe-horning in a clunky "appearance tab" and skipping over two whole raid zones altogether.

    War of the Ancients... a FIVE man dungeon?

    Blizz is panicing their asses off...
  1. VanishO2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kobomino View Post
    Hmm, I'm not too keen on the idea of collecting old items just to get the look. Sure, it's fine for people to got plenty of time on WoW but what about those who have limited time and also like the look of old tier?
    Because facerolling old content is hard and time consuming... lol
  1. Bombkirby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mvallas View Post
    Considering they said that the Abyssal Maw was originally to be this next patch... I'd say "no, it wasn't obvious".

    It's more clear to me that Blizzard is in a "Panic mode" right now - shoe-horning in a clunky "appearance tab" and skipping over two whole raid zones altogether.

    War of the Ancients... a FIVE man dungeon?

    Blizz is panicing their asses off...
    Whats wrong with letting non-raiders see an important even in Warcraft history? =P Only a selfish jerk wouldn't want people to see something like that.
  1. bullseyed's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by PotatoCoffee View Post
    ICC 5man yo
    The new and compelling storyline is that the Lich King is back! He is exactly the same but this time is Bolvar instead of Arthas making the instant ENTIRELY BRAND SPANKING NEW.
  1. Begpo's Avatar
    that will no longer make all people of the same class look identical?
    Really??? T6 warriors, T2 paladins, T5 warlocks etc. all over the place.
  1. mmoc3eb006e951's Avatar
    Man if 4.3 is the last content of Cata, it will have been a truely suck ass expac.Having to own the gear for the transmogriffer would suck, making class restrictions etc also takes a lot of fun out of it, could probably have made some truely awesome/weird combos.The things promised but never made are really stacking up, it should be obvious to everyone wow no longer has nearly the rescourses it used to. Dance Studio, Path of the Titans, Abyssal Maw etc. While they spend time working on shit that is not broken, and neglect bugs/balance etc with the go-to excuse "that shit is really hard to program maaannnn" /sigh
  1. Pendraeg's Avatar
    I...don't get why this is so surprising. We're coming up on t13. WotLK had 4 tiers, true, but Vanilla and TBC both had 3.

    I think the problem they have is actually the fact that they've tried to inflate content with hard modes. This has caused them two problems.

    Number one is loss of interest in the player base because of lack of content, this is exemplified in 4.2, which is the second smallest raid tier/content patch ever, but number two is actually a technical problem.

    With Hardmodes, you see a more rapid climb in statistics with a smaller amount of content possible.
  1. Gurbz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Divine Storm View Post
    toooo sooooooooooon
    Not sure why people are going crazy saying it's too fast. At the same point in the lifespan of Wrath, which is two years back at this point, we were already in ToC. ICC would be out by the end of the year. So the raid containing Deathwing will come out at about the same amount of time from release that we got Arthas in Wrath. Personally, I don't want to spend a year with no more raid content again (Ruby Sanctum doesn't count :P).
  1. VanishO2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalx View Post
    I can believe Deathwing will be in 4.3, but I don't think it will be the last patch. Maybe we'll face N'zoth as the last tier in Cata, just like in TBC, Illidan wasn't the last bad guy, even being the "main villain" for so long. Also, can't wait for the new NPC. More than half of my bank is old gear.
    It's like finding LK discussing things with Yogg in his room in Ulduar in 3.2, we kill both and we're done with the expansion.

    Illidan wasn't the last bad guy in TBC thanks to an error from Blizzard.
  1. bullseyed's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SheepHunter View Post
    Ok, PvE gets alot of love, but what happed to PvP? Can you Transmogrifier the pvp gear? No new BG? No new arena? What the hell blizzard.
    I wouldn't consider this lots of love for PvE. It is a huge disappointment for PvE. They need a new BG style, the current ones are played out. Why make a new map of the same crap? I'd like to see an "oddball" style BG from Halo.
  1. mvaliz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bombkirby View Post
    Whats wrong with letting non-raiders see an important even in Warcraft history? =P Only a selfish jerk wouldn't want people to see something like that.
    Pfft... I'm hardly being selfish considering I abandoned raiding (and left the game afterwards) a 5 man version theoretically would appeal to me MORE than a raid.

    But serisouly, War of the ancients a 5 man dungeon? A WAR with 5 people? It's more like a convoluted argument than a War...

    The ONLY way it can be forgivable is if its your group of five people with a hundred other Nelf NPC soldiers - then I can see this! :P
  1. VanishO2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ashmanx View Post
    Looks like another round of PvP getting nothing and the PvE whiners get to finally slay the big dragon. Shocking! I wonder how much DPS you guys are going to do to Deathwing!
    Let's hope they throw a big dragon in the middle of your sandb... i mean, arena matches. Everyone will be happy then.
  1. Virandile's Avatar
    Who cares about Deathwing when there's no War of the Ancients QQ. Old sets are back - cool.
  1. mmoca172a76622's Avatar
    Hell yeah! Now I'm just hoping that you actually need to have the gear to be able to "wear" it and I'm happy.
  1. Chronoless's Avatar
    I hope 4.3 isn't the last of Cata, because that will mean that Blizzard is going the way of 1 new expansion every year. Which is stupid, players aren't quitting because expansions aren't coming out fast enough, players are upset because wow gets boring after a while, because of constant grind fest.
  1. messi4h's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pendraeg View Post
    I...don't get why this is so surprising. We're coming up on t13. WotLK had 4 tiers, true, but Vanilla and TBC both had 3.

    classic hat aq40 plus aq20 and zg
    tbc had karazhan and za

    EDIT: Quoted the wrong guy
  1. Ashmanx's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by VanishO2 View Post
    Let's hope they throw a big dragon in the middle of your sandb... i mean, arena matches. Everyone will be happy then.
    Lets hope you pasties keep crying about not doing enough damage to ruin what's left of the game so you can see an epic cinematic of Tirion coming and saying "THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A DEATHWING" and puts on Deathwing's jaw.
  1. Sternrage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bobhoper View Post
    Not a convincing storyline, what in cata has been convincing in terms of story/lore!
    Ragy trying to burn everything was sort of convincing, First death wing breaks the planet and then he manipulates ragy to burn the survivors. and since he failed horribly deathwing apparently has no more powerful end bossish servents to kill em, so he's apparently going to handle us himself. btw the first tier of content was meh.
  1. Incelcior's Avatar
    I think implementing an appearance-tab like this won't accomplish diversity. Every class will take 1-2 old sets and wear them, so people who don't change their armor will be more different from each other than all the T2-rogues und T6-warlocks.
  1. VanishO2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bantokar View Post
    Man if 4.3 is the last content of Cata, it will have been a truely suck ass expac.Having to own the gear for the transmogriffer would suck, making class restrictions etc also takes a lot of fun out of it, could probably have made some truely awesome/weird combos.The things promised but never made are really stacking up, it should be obvious to everyone wow no longer has nearly the rescourses it used to. Dance Studio, Path of the Titans, Abyssal Maw etc. While they spend time working on shit that is not broken, and neglect bugs/balance etc with the go-to excuse "that shit is really hard to program maaannnn" /sigh
    Alread played games that allowed that... believe me, it's totally crap, they're right in keeping plate as plate, cloth as cloth, etc.

    And yes, they don't have resources into the wow team anymore, but it's didn't start with this xpac. Just think that the "less complicated" the game is, the "easier" it is to mantain with low resources.

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