Pre-Warlords of Draenor patch hits WoW on Tuesday

World of Warcraft will be prepared for Warlords of Draenor with the Iron Tide update next week.

WoW's Iron Tide is a huge, hefty update which introduces a swathe of rebalancing changes ahead of the release of Warlords of Draenor, the game's sixth expansion. It also does a bunch of delicious quality of life polishing, with UI updates and fixes for various quests and raids.

But the real meat of the update is a series of major features: new character models, a better Group finder with premade groups, a quest log and an inventory overhaul.

Most importantly, it delivers the Iron Horde Incursion world event.

"The Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands has turned blood red. Hundreds of strange-looking orcs are violently pouring into Azeroth, killing everything that stands in their path. Nethergarde and Okril’lon have already fallen, and while the Horde and the Alliance moved as quickly as they could to get reinforcements to their people, they are too late. The Iron Horde invasion has begun," Blizzard wrote on Battle.net.

"In this desperate hour, King Wrynn and Warchief Vol’jin have called upon their greatest champions to join the front lines in the Blasted Lands and do whatever they can to stop the Iron Horde ... before the rest of Azeroth falls before them.

"Word of this surprise attack sends players rushing to the Blasted Lands to reckon with the barbarous infiltration. After the fall of a high ranking Iron Horde general named Gar’mak Bladetwist, you’ll report what you’ve witnessed in the Blasted Lands to King Wrynn or Warchief Vol’jin. It’s apparent to both the Horde and the Alliance that this is only the first salvo in a much larger conflict, and the only way to win is to take the fight directly to the Iron Horde ... by journeying through the Dark Portal into Draenor."

There's also a second taster of Warlords of Draenor content - the Infiltration of Blackrock Spire. It's a revamped, five-player version of Upper Blackrock Spire available to level 90 characters for a limited time.

This patch was released onto the Public Test Realm - Blizzard's beta servers - in September. If you want, you can browse the full patch notes on Battle.net, but you'll probably need a day off work to get through them all.

The Iron Tide is due on October 14. Warlords of Draenor hits November 13.