Emblems of Frost and Triumph previously earned from raids and dungeons have been converted to the new system of 'Justice Points.' Any emblems your characters had for lower tiers have been changed to gold, so enjoy that. you could choose to take down half of Icecrown's bosses with a 10-man group one night and get the other half with a 25-man group the next night). Now you have to choose one or the other, but you can switch back and forth for different encounters (i.e. Previously, players were allowed to tackle the bosses once a week in 10-man and once a week in 25-man mode. A new raid lock system means that players can only defeat each boss of a raid once per week. This is sure to lead to a whole new level of crazy theorycrafting and min/maxing on the forums. By visiting a special NPC, players can take 40% of one of an item's stat bonuses and turn it into something else of their choosing. This allows players limited control over the stat bonuses on their armor and weapons. Here's a rundown of some of the biggest additions to World of Warcraft in today's patch 4.0.1, as per the patch notes:

Today Blizzard has released the first of a series of major patches that will add in some of the changes Cataclysm is bringing to the game. Dedicated WOW players won't need to wait until December to begin seeing changes in Azeroth, though.

We're now less than two months away from the December 7 release date of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the third expansion for Blizzard's behemoth MMO.

World of warcraft cataclysm