What’s New In ‘World Of Warcraft’ Patch 5.4, Siege of Orgrimmar?

We’re just a week away from the launch of the newest patch to World of Warcraft, 5.4, which goes live on September 10th.

In it, Hellscream finally breaks from the Horde of Thrall; the remaining Horde must join forces with the Alliance and embark on a Civil War which looks to change the face of Pandaria.

In the official trailer, Hellscream poisons the wells and drains the Vale of its water–taunting his enemies to come to his fortress; and threatens anyone who would rise against his ‘new horde.’ Orgrimmar, of course, is the new raid, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the new and updated content in this patch.

A complete, in-depth look at all the changes can be found here, but here are some of the things we’re most excited about:

1. Flexible Raid Difficulty: with this feature, 15 or 22 or 13 man raids are possibly. The difficulty of the encounters and player’s spell range will adjust depending upon the number of people in the raid; the loot will be somewhere between LFR and normal. Players will be able to invite Battle Tag and Real ID friends.

2. Proving Grounds: A one on one instance where a player can test their skills/spells/gear against mobs designed at five different difficulty levels. Finally a way to figure out new rotations without having to apologize the the 24 people in LFR.

3. Noodle Vendor: A player with maxed out cooking will get a quest, which once completed, allows them to set up a noodle cart and sell powerful soups to their faction.

4. New Area: Timeless Isle; New world bosses, new gear, new rewards. Also, this intriguing sentence: “The Isle is filled with secrets and mysteries, many of which dynamically become available to explorers. Keep an eye on your minimap!”

5. Significant Class Changes: Blizzard took a hard look at the classes and made some significant changes, especially to hunters and paladins.

6. Linked realms: Low population realms will now be permentantly linked, allowing players to interact with each other as if they were on the same realm.

We’ll be online bright and early next Tuesday  and get you some on-the-ground coverage of what the changes feel like. Let us know if you’re looking forward to the Siege of Orgrimmar!