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. Kiro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    All I seeing is a "It's cool to be on the hate bandwagon and troll forums" post here. Oh and a lot of ego aswell. If you actually bothered to get some facts straight, instead of claiming your own tinfoil hat nonsense to be the truth, you'd be quiet. Compare the customer support of Blizzard to any other company, say EA, Mythic or whoever is in charge of that odd thing called Age of Conan. There exists hundreds of examples of how terrible their customer service is, it's mainly just "O you have a problem, well I don't so bye bye now!", while Blizzard atleast tries to talk to the players. However, you are right that the players are to blame... The frenzied mob that wanted to hate Blizzard and see WoW crash since day one, but kept playing, just so they could see more stuff to fuel their rage, instead of realising how pathetic they were. Players, such as you, you are to blame. C wut I did thar?
    Over 1 million monthly-subscribing players have left this game in the past 6 months, this number is against their 5-6m monthly subscription users. There's a problem, they know it, most of us know it, you're just being ignorantly bliss still. Nobody really wanted to see Blizzard fail day one as Blizzard "used" to be the most respected developer for PC out there, tied with Valve. Now though, since they merged with Activision, the quality of the game has dropped significantly as they put the almighty dollar ahead of their players. When they removed their "A-team" off this game to work on Titan, they pretty much wrote off the game, but they knew people would probably keep playing. Unfortunately they guessed the amount wrong of players who had stockholm syndrome such as yourself. Now they're losing unhappy players at an alarming rate, their holders are not happy, Bobby isn't happy, they are scrambling to act like they listen and they care. But blizzard doesn't really care actually, and their "Dev Q&A" proves just that with the questions they select to answer. They avoid the hardball questions all the time.

    And yes, here's a good example of blizzard "talking" with their players. "Oh, you guys want new content? Here's a bunch of recycled old instances and item models, enjoy". Get over it kid. The game's coming to an end, enjoy what's left of it with the your fellow heard of sheeple. One day it'll sink in that you yourself have destroyed your favorite game, and not those that were paying for years, were upset how things were going, and left once they realized blizzard doesn't care about their players. They're not the blizzard of old. They're Bobby Kotick's blizzard now.
  1. Williamgood's Avatar
    Rushing patches for the moneys... and xpacs....
  1. Dblbaconator's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    Over 1 million monthly-subscribing players have left this game in the past 6 months, this number is against their 5-6m monthly subscription users. There's a problem, they know it, most of us know it, you're just being ignorantly bliss still. Nobody really wanted to see Blizzard fail day one as Blizzard "used" to be the most respected developer for PC out there, tied with Valve. Now though, since they merged with Activision, the quality of the game has dropped significantly as they put the almighty dollar ahead of their players. When they removed their "A-team" off this game to work on Titan, they pretty much wrote off the game, but they knew people would probably keep playing. Unfortunately they guessed the amount wrong of players who had stockholm syndrome such as yourself. Now they're losing unhappy players at an alarming rate, their holders are not happy, Bobby isn't happy, they are scrambling to act like they listen and they care. But blizzard doesn't really care actually, and their "Dev Q&A" proves just that with the questions they select to answer. They avoid the hardball questions all the time.

    And yes, here's a good example of blizzard "talking" with their players. "Oh, you guys want new content? Here's a bunch of recycled old instances and item models, enjoy". Get over it kid. The game's coming to an end, enjoy what's left of it with the your fellow heard of sheeple. One day it'll sink in that you yourself have destroyed your favorite game, and not those that were paying for years, were upset how things were going, and left once they realized blizzard doesn't care about their players. They're not the blizzard of old. They're Bobby Kotick's blizzard now.
    Stop it. You're making an ass of yourself. To prove it, a numbered list! Because they're fun.

    1. Where exactly did you get the number of 5-6 million subscribers? Last I heard, it was at 11 million. Which is STILL far more than any other MMO out there. I know you WoW doomsayers just love to express how happy you are whenever WoW loses another subscriber or two, but they went into Cata with about 11 million. Cata bumped it up to 12, a lot of which I'm sure were people coming back for a little while to see what's new. Expansions always have a temporary bump, followed by a dropoff as people leave again. It wasn't a permanent thing anyway.

    2. I'm just gonna throw this out here. How many developers focus almost entirely on the PC? Just like you said, Valve and Blizz. But you could say the same sort of thing about Valve, to be honest. Look at the item store in TF2 (or Portal 2 as well, never thought I'd see that). They're both companies, they both try to maximize profits. And again, Activision DOESN'T have any hand in Blizzard. Blizzard is completely independent, their decisions are theirs and theirs alone.

    3. Now that I know where this whole "A-team" business got started, I get to correct you on that too! The only reason that rumor got started was because of a blog post talking about one of the Blizz devs moving from WoW to Titan, then insinuating that it meant the top devs were being moved from one project to the other. No facts save for the first, just conjecture. Then all of you doomsayers took that as Word of God and proceeded to flail on your keyboards about how everyone's leaving WoW for dead.

    It was OPINION. A blog post from someone who doesn't even work at Blizz. Just as he couldn't be sure what goes on behind the scenes at Blizz, neither can you. Fact is, at any dev with multiple projects, it's not uncommon for devs to move between projects. Hell, I would bet that there's a dev who used to work on Titan who's back on WoW again. No company has an "A-team" or a "B-team," primarily because anyone who found out they were on the "B-team" wouldn't work there anymore. Not good for morale, see?

    (And on a side note, if you're gonna make claims, back them up with actual facts, hm? Like I did, up there, see?)

    4. Just gonna throw this one in for good measure: Take a chill pill, for the love of all that is holy. You CLEARLY don't play WoW anymore (and if you do, I'm gonna laugh), so none of this affects you. Stop bashing on your keyboard, calling people moronic, and spreading your hatred of everything Blizzard all over these forums. You have a right to an opinion, just like everyone else. You do NOT have a right to spread it around as fact, then insult anyone who disagrees with you.

    You are everything wrong with the internet. Good day.
  1. Carpetmouth711's Avatar
    In my personal opinion... you shouldn't be given the opportunity to just change the appearance of the gear so it looks like some older content gear. It should stay the same basic gear as the gear normally is... but in saying this they should have implemented this years ago, where you could manipulate color schemes. Like a primary, secondary, and tertiary color that you are able to customize and change to whatever you want. This would not only make the player base happy, it would also provide something much needed for inscription. Seeings how essentially the profession is dead every expansion after people can get better trinkets than the ones made, glyphs are bought on a 1 time basis now, and nothing else is worth making for profit; they could be given the opportunity to make dyes and such. Of course some dyes would cost more than others and whatnot, they can figure all that out themselves. Shit RIFT, which has been out for less than a year has already implemented this service to their player base. It i also a booming moneymaker. Take a hint Blizz...
  1. Kobomino's Avatar
    According to Kotaku: "The Deathwing
    fight will be the most epic boss
    encounter to date, including a battle
    phase that takes place on the
    massive dragon's back as he flies
    through the sky."
  1. Venziir's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    Over 1 million monthly-subscribing players have left this game in the past 6 months, this number is against their 5-6m monthly subscription users. There's a problem, they know it, most of us know it, you're just being ignorantly bliss still. Nobody really wanted to see Blizzard fail day one as Blizzard "used" to be the most respected developer for PC out there, tied with Valve. Now though, since they merged with Activision, the quality of the game has dropped significantly as they put the almighty dollar ahead of their players. When they removed their "A-team" off this game to work on Titan, they pretty much wrote off the game, but they knew people would probably keep playing. Unfortunately they guessed the amount wrong of players who had stockholm syndrome such as yourself. Now they're losing unhappy players at an alarming rate, their holders are not happy, Bobby isn't happy, they are scrambling to act like they listen and they care. But blizzard doesn't really care actually, and their "Dev Q&A" proves just that with the questions they select to answer. They avoid the hardball questions all the time.

    And yes, here's a good example of blizzard "talking" with their players. "Oh, you guys want new content? Here's a bunch of recycled old instances and item models, enjoy". Get over it kid. The game's coming to an end, enjoy what's left of it with the your fellow heard of sheeple. One day it'll sink in that you yourself have destroyed your favorite game, and not those that were paying for years, were upset how things were going, and left once they realized blizzard doesn't care about their players. They're not the blizzard of old. They're Bobby Kotick's blizzard now.
    Oh lord where to start.... Right, first of, the whole "A-team is gone the sky is falling!!!" thing is nothing but paranoia, Blizzard themselves has said plenty of times, that it's bullcrap. Same goes for the "OH NO ACTIVISION IS TAKING OVER AND THEY ARE EBUL!", again, Bull-shite. As for the "here's a bunch of recycled derp herp", first of all, it's called "story-progression", not a hard term, it comes when you try to have a story with myths and lore okay? Oh, and not to mention how much people CRIED when they took the old ZG away, A PLACE THAT WASN'T USED, and they turned it into something THAT IS USED. OH THAT'S EVIL!!! Not to mention that most people constantly whine over how much better previous content was, and how much better previous set of gear looked. So just stay in your little cave of paranoia, and leave this thread, leave this forum, and leave the game once and for all.
  1. sjwolds's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Oneirophobia View Post
    Dungeon 1: Heroic Ragefire Chasm. Dungeon 2: Heroic Wailing Caverns. Dungeon 3: War of the Ancients. lulz.
    oh god please not Wailing Caverns.................
  1. Kiro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dblbaconator View Post
    Stop it. You're making an ass of yourself. To prove it, a numbered list! Because they're fun.

    1. Where exactly did you get the number of 5-6 million subscribers? Last I heard, it was at 11 million. Which is STILL far more than any other MMO out there. I know you WoW doomsayers just love to express how happy you are whenever WoW loses another subscriber or two, but they went into Cata with about 11 million. Cata bumped it up to 12, a lot of which I'm sure were people coming back for a little while to see what's new. Expansions always have a temporary bump, followed by a dropoff as people leave again. It wasn't a permanent thing anyway.

    2. I'm just gonna throw this out here. How many developers focus almost entirely on the PC? Just like you said, Valve and Blizz. But you could say the same sort of thing about Valve, to be honest. Look at the item store in TF2 (or Portal 2 as well, never thought I'd see that). They're both companies, they both try to maximize profits. And again, Activision DOESN'T have any hand in Blizzard. Blizzard is completely independent, their decisions are theirs and theirs alone.

    3. Now that I know where this whole "A-team" business got started, I get to correct you on that too! The only reason that rumor got started was because of a blog post talking about one of the Blizz devs moving from WoW to Titan, then insinuating that it meant the top devs were being moved from one project to the other. No facts save for the first, just conjecture. Then all of you doomsayers took that as Word of God and proceeded to flail on your keyboards about how everyone's leaving WoW for dead.

    It was OPINION. A blog post from someone who doesn't even work at Blizz. Just as he couldn't be sure what goes on behind the scenes at Blizz, neither can you. Fact is, at any dev with multiple projects, it's not uncommon for devs to move between projects. Hell, I would bet that there's a dev who used to work on Titan who's back on WoW again. No company has an "A-team" or a "B-team," primarily because anyone who found out they were on the "B-team" wouldn't work there anymore. Not good for morale, see?

    (And on a side note, if you're gonna make claims, back them up with actual facts, hm? Like I did, up there, see?)

    4. Just gonna throw this one in for good measure: Take a chill pill, for the love of all that is holy. You CLEARLY don't play WoW anymore (and if you do, I'm gonna laugh), so none of this affects you. Stop bashing on your keyboard, calling people moronic, and spreading your hatred of everything Blizzard all over these forums. You have a right to an opinion, just like everyone else. You do NOT have a right to spread it around as fact, then insult anyone who disagrees with you.

    You are everything wrong with the internet. Good day.
    You rike numbers? KK:

    1. 12million users does not mean "12 million paying monthly subscribers".
    2. Mike Morhaime or however you spell it directly reports to Bobby Kotick. There is direct correlation between WoW's quality and focus decline soon after the merger.
    3. Blizzard themselves have said it in articles which I deleted the link from my bookmarks as it was used so much I thought people all knew this by now. Blizzard themselves said "Our veterans that made WoW moved onto Titan, but we left WoW in the hands of people that have been working on it for 6months-1yr". This means the people that long worked on WoW left to work on Titan, and there's newer people on WoW now, simple hey?
    4. Other people STARTED calling me names first, go at them bro instead, or are you on their side since they attacked me first?

    Your closing is indicative of your stance and inability to look at things balanced and rationally though. GG sheeple. Thanks for ruining my old favorite game.
  1. Ais's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    You rike numbers? KK:

    1. 12million users does not mean "12 million paying monthly subscribers".
    2. Mike Morhaime or however you spell it directly reports to Bobby Kotick. There is direct correlation between WoW's quality and focus decline soon after the merger.
    3. Blizzard themselves have said it in articles which I deleted the link from my bookmarks as it was used so much I thought people all knew this by now. Blizzard themselves said "Our veterans that made WoW moved onto Titan, but we left WoW in the hands of people that have been working on it for 6months-1yr". This means the people that long worked on WoW left to work on Titan, and there's newer people on WoW now, simple hey?
    4. Other people STARTED calling me names first, go at them bro instead, or are you on their side since they attacked me first?

    Your closing is indicative of your stance and inability to look at things balanced and rationally though. GG sheeple. Thanks for ruining my old favorite game.
    As much as I think that wows quality has steadily decreased it still doesn't mean that correlation implies causation.
  1. Biggiej's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    WITH no less content during the expansion, so same amount of content at a faster pace. See the problem here?
    No, they have ignored this idea completely until rift came out and they started losing subs to Rift, now they look at what rift is doing and they are trying to do what they do in some ways, they want to ignore a lot of what other games are doing, but now that they have finally noticed people will leave over little things like this, they have finally decided that maybe they should quit saying"Maybe, some day, we'd like to but no"They are now finally doing something because they realize they can't do that or they will lose other subs to games that are actually competitive on the market now.
  1. mmoc8eb592856e's Avatar
    Damn it would be cool if them make this patch something realy different from previous patches, maybe will buy a game card then Maybe them need to include something totaly new what ppl have never seen, trans modi modifier is a god start.
  1. mmoc90812ed98f's Avatar
    The developers are considering whether they should only allow using the models of equipment that has already been obtained.
    This sucks.
    Void Storage * 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. * It will hold 100-150 items. Anything stored there will lose all gems and enchantments.
    Gems and enchantments lost? That also sucks.
  1. Venziir's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    You rike numbers? KK:

    1. 12million users does not mean "12 million paying monthly subscribers".
    2. Mike Morhaime or however you spell it directly reports to Bobby Kotick. There is direct correlation between WoW's quality and focus decline soon after the merger.
    3. Blizzard themselves have said it in articles which I deleted the link from my bookmarks as it was used so much I thought people all knew this by now. Blizzard themselves said "Our veterans that made WoW moved onto Titan, but we left WoW in the hands of people that have been working on it for 6months-1yr". This means the people that long worked on WoW left to work on Titan, and there's newer people on WoW now, simple hey?
    4. Other people STARTED calling me names first, go at them bro instead, or are you on their side since they attacked me first?

    Your closing is indicative of your stance and inability to look at things balanced and rationally though. GG sheeple. Thanks for ruining my old favorite game.
    1: According to official charts and statements from Blizzard, yes.
    2: Tinfoil hatting
    3: Oh you deleted them, how convinient........

    Oh and again, you are the one who's ruining the game, you and your kind.
  1. mmoc8eb592856e's Avatar
    I dont think we would've got shit like Trial of the Crusader or ZA/ZG if Blizz wouldnt sell out.
  1. Deadmedic's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dblbaconator View Post
    I love how people spew some vitriol about Cata not having as much content as other expansions. If you really look at it, it's probably better this way.

    For starters, Cata is a 5-level expansion. We got five new zones (I mean zones you can experience at any time, unlike Gilneas/Kezan), a good number of dungeons, and some of the craziest raid encounters ever seen. But to think that you'd want to stay at 85 for a year and a half from now is pretty crazy to me. Assuming 4.3 comes later this year, do you really want another ICC? As much as I hate to reference the product slate and kill a kitten, I do think Cata's got about a year to go. And like Gurbz said, six months per tier would mean ~4 months more of Firelands, then 6 for Deathwing, then new expansion. Six months is a pretty good number.

    And yes, you can complain about not getting a WotA raid all you want. I'll admit, I was looking forward to that too. Same with the Abyssal Maw. But note that the only time they really talked about WotA is at Blizzcon last year. They even said, frequently, that their plans were subject to change. It's not Word of God or anything, people. They tell you their plans at the time, make that disclaimer, but you still take it as fact. Stop doing that.

    Also, 3 tiers per expansion still isn't that far-fetched. Classic and BC had three numbered tiers. You could even say Wrath did as well, with how short T9 was. They had in-between tiers of course: AQ for Classic, SWP for BC, ToC for Wrath (haha). So if T13 is the final Cata tier, you can't say there's no precedent.

    Finally, Deadmedic, I know you're probably having fun with counting bosses and such, but let's be honest here: Would you rather have 20 bosses which are little more than tank-and-spank, or 5 which offer you complex mechanics and a real challenge? Quality over quantity.
    heres the issue, BC, had many very original fights, and it was a fun climb up the raiding ladder, like, i just killed the 6 first bosses in FL as well as both BH bosses last night, while yes, that means we have a whole week on rag, which is still not down for us, it sucks that after a day, 1 Day! raiding is over, i liked doing a different raid every night, im not asking for a ton, really just 5 more bosses for 4.2 would have been fine, but, ah well.. i guess lets go mists of pandara? : /
  1. echo808's Avatar
    liking the idea of void storage...hopefully it'll be for any type (white, green, blue, or purple) and wont cost a arm and leg.

    with the transmogrifier...too bad about being the same armor class and not what your class can use...but its still cool.
  1. Lord Cenarius's Avatar
    Good chance the War of the Ancients dungeon will just be that part where Mal, Brox, and I believe Rhonin or Krasus all go into Deathwing's lair to retrieve the Demon Soul. So I'm expecting no view of the former Night Elf capital or any cameos from the high ranking demons. I was really looking forward to flying over the Well of Eternity to see Sargeras fall back into the Twisting Nether or wherever it was that he went to after the portal was closed. A very much lost opportunity.
  1. Knighthonor's Avatar
    oh my my my
  1. daburton's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dblbaconator View Post
    Stop it. You're making an ass of yourself. To prove it, a numbered list! Because they're fun.

    1. Where exactly did you get the number of 5-6 million subscribers? Last I heard, it was at 11 million. Which is STILL far more than any other MMO out there. I know you WoW doomsayers just love to express how happy you are whenever WoW loses another subscriber or two, but they went into Cata with about 11 million. Cata bumped it up to 12, a lot of which I'm sure were people coming back for a little while to see what's new. Expansions always have a temporary bump, followed by a dropoff as people leave again. It wasn't a permanent thing anyway.

    .
    And where exactly did you get your number of "12 million". Warcraft reached its milestone, ie, the top number of subscribers during Wrath, NOT with Catyclysm. IF and thats a big IF they actually reached 12 million it would have made a big announcement, but I think thats highly unlikely that they reached that number. Granted 5-6 million may be low, but it doesnt discount that they have lost almost 1 million or more subscribers since Catyclysm, and this number is documented by many different blues and in many discussions that have gone on to talk about how they've lost 2 waves of subscribers in the 400-600 k per wave. Sometimes the frog needs to get out of the pot to see if its boiling to really see whats going on.




    "(And on a side note, if you're gonna make claims, back them up with actual facts, hm? Like I did, up there, see?)"

    I would suggest doing the same thing. Wow is in decline, take that however you will. Is it in permanent decline? Who's really to say. Depends on how much effort blizzard wants to put into the game. A lot of people. The poster is obviously upset over a game he cared about and is venting his anger in the only way he knows how. While I don't agree with all his comments, i do agree that the quality of wow in terms of playability has been compromised. Catyclysm has, so far, fallen far short in my book. On one hand Im counting the days till the next expac hoping its going to be better, but on the other Im dreading that its going to be either more of the same.
  1. Joarrak's Avatar
    Deathwing raid makes sense to me. For those who think they are rushing it, remember it has just been announced, Firelands came out two months ago so it will be at least two more months til this raid would come out (if that soon, probably not cause they want people to farm the legendary I would think). WOTLK came out in November 2008 (11/08) and patch 3.3 with ICC came out December 2009 (12/09). It only took 13 months, and then it was out for a whole year of 12 months until Cata came out in 12/10. Especially due to all of the new features, I would imagine that it will take a few months to come out, and it will fairly follow this same pattern. Don't forget, they skipped one raid content patch and opted for the two troll heroics instead, which probably gave them extra time to also develop these new dungeons and raid. Also due to the fact that people are getting bored very quickly now and subscribers are dropping over time (not going up and down based on patch releases, I mean overall), they know they need to do something exciting and quick. For me, that explains the cosmetic change, which has been fought for for years.

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