The last major WoW patch to be released before The Burning Crusade expansion pack comes out on January 16 will be called "Before The Storm". Blizzard has now published the public test realm patch notes for this patch.

Here are the most important changes you should now about at the moment. Of course, the patch is subject to change until it’s released.

Looking For Group Interface Tool 
Through a new interface you will be able to specify which instances, battlegrounds, quests and zones you are looking for a group in. You will also be able to autojoin groups that meet your criteria. And if you are Looking For More players for an existing party, you will be able to do that, too.

General changes

• All classes will have access to new talents and abilities, including 41-point talents.
• Crowd Control effects in PvP will last no longer than 12 seconds instead of the full duration, with a chance of a heartbeat resist.

PvP The honor system will be totally revamped:

• All honor will be reset
• New honor will be used as a form of currency to buy rewards
• Marks of honor will be used as a part of the payment when buying rewards
• There will be two new arenas available, where players can engage in 2vs2, 3vs3 and 5vs5 combat.

Professions

• Your skill level now determines what level items you can disenchant. For example, you will need an enchanting skill of 225 to disenchant level 60-65 items.

User Interface

• Meeting stones will now be able to summon players. It seems like you’ll need two players to summon another player to the stone.
• Enemy Cast Bar. You will be able to see the casting bar of enemy players. Unfortunately, the way I understand it, you can only see cast bars of your target. That means, if several people are casting against you, you will only see the bar of the person that you have targeted, if any.
• Significant changes to the UI customization: All Addons will have to be updated before they will work, some will have to be redesigned.

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My comments:

There are several major changes in this patch actually.

The LFG tool will make it easier to get groups to distant dungeons when you don’t have a warlock. Also, it will be easier to get someone with a key to open a gate, such as Stratholme or Blackrock Depths, since you can summon them and then give them a portal back to a major city (if you have a mage in your party of course).

There will likely be more premade battlegrounds, since it will be easier to find a group for a BG. There may also be more pick-up groups doing end-game raid instances, making it easier for those who have no time for a guild to occasionally raid.

As for the new talents, those are going to change the way we PvP and PvE forever. With many new talents and abilities, but no new talent points to spend, the builds will really be more "narrow". If you spend 41 points in any tree, you will only have 10 points to spend on the other two. So you may get some powerful abilities, but the trade-off is you might lose other good ones, too.

Regarding PvP, since the honor will be reset, you will only benefit from whatever rewards you can get before the patch hits. For example, if you are trying to reach rank 11 to get the PvP mount and you are rank 6 now, you better be certain that you will reach rank 11 before the patch comes out or all your efforts will be for naught (assuming you don’t want any of the other rewards along the way).

The change to disenchanting will probably make enchanting mats rarer. There will be less shards and crystals, and you will no longer be able to pick up enchanting just to disenchant stuff, or have a low level alt disenchant BoE items for you. That probably means the prices of those enchanting mats will go up.

Last, but certainly not least, the UI interface changes will have significant impact on certain mods. From what I gather, it looks like some mods like decursive and others that automatically choose which player to target and which spell to cast will stop working. That will make some raid encounters harder, but it could also mean the expansion pack raid encounters won’t involve events that require such mods…

It will be interesting to see how it all turns out, for sure.