'World of Warcraft: Legion' Latest News, Release Date & Update: Pre-Expansion Patch Goes Live, Things To Do Before The Game Drops

It's time for a new "World of Warcraft" expansion, and "World of Warcraft: Legion" is the game's newest earthshaking release coming next month. The game patch that readies your install for the upcoming expansion just dropped today.

That means a lot of changes have been made to the game ahead of the "World of Warcraft: Legion" release, including the improvement of transmogrification, major overhauls of all classes to make each specialization feel unique, you can now have 12 max characters in a realm, and the game's graphics have been made better, most notably with the draw distance of the game world. The full list of game changes have been posted by Blizzard here.

Meanwhile, Venture Beat has compiled a list of things you need to accomplish in the game before "World of Warcraft: Legion" comes out.

While you still have around a month left before the "World of Warcraft: Legion" release, you should, among others:

• Go collect the scaling heirloom trinkets from ridiculously hard mythic five-person instances, as these will stop dropping when the expansion takes over. Be forewarned, though, as Blizzard plans to nerf them. Collect them, but make sure you wear the ones you want when the expansion takes effect.
• Earn new Marks of Honor, the PvP gear currency that will replace honor and conquest points. Every honor and conquest point you've earned before will disappear as Blizzard revamps player vs. player for "World of Warcraft: Legion." The new Marks of Honor can be earned by doing battlegrounds, arenas, and skirmishes.
• Earn the special mounts that drop from Archimonde. These will be sure-fire 100% drops in the instance until "World of Warcraft: Legion" takes effect.
• Farm for gold in "Mists of Pandaria" and "Warlords of Draenor" instances. Blizzard increased the gold drops in these raids and dungeons, and decreased those from "Cataclysm."
• Farm Invasion Event items and Nethershards. The Invasion Events won't go live for another couple of weeks, but when they do arrive, you should go collect Nethershards for Invasion-exclusive gear, and instances will reward nice weapons.
• Visit your favorite main character NPCs. They're going to die, apparently.
• And lastly, preorder "World of Warcraft: Legion" if you want to create a Demon Hunter character before everyone else does. The option to create a Demon Hunter will arrive in a patch a couple of weeks from now.