World of Warcraft patch 4.3 to add Deathwing raid, Transmogrifier and Void Storage. Real ID party system now live

World of Warcraft - Real ID friend invites

World of Warcraft lead developer Tom Chilton has been talking to Gamona.de about the contents of WoW's next big patch. MMO Champion spotted the article, which confirms that patch 4.3 will add the long awaited Deathwing raid, as well as a couple of intriguing new NPC vendors.

Yes, the Deathwing raid is incoming, though apart from the colossal dragon lord, we don't know precisely what it will contain. The patch will also add three new five man instances including one set in The Caverns of Time. The Abyssal Maw dungeon, however, has been confined to the abyss for now.

The Transmogrifier is a new NPC that will let you change the appearance of any piece of armour while keeping its stats. It's not known whether you'll have to own the piece of armour with the appearance you want to steal, but Chilton says that it will be impossible to change an item into a completely different armour type or class armour set. Hopefully the system will save your character from some of WoW's most ludicrous costume pieces.

The other NPC vendor will provide Void Storage. It's a new type of bank designed to hold old inventory pieces. How much this will cost and the limitations of the kinds of items you can stow away haven't been announced just yet.

In other WoW news, the Real ID party system has finished beta testing and is now available to all players. The system lets friends of the same faction invite each other into 5-player normal or Heroic dungeons irrespective of what Realm everyone is on. It's a free addition for everyone who has RealID enabled. For more information, check out Blizzard's Real ID FAQ .

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.