‘Leaks’ for WoW expansions are nothing new but there has been quite a flurry of them in the past few months as Blizzcon is up and coming.
Yet even when one of the first supposed leaks for 8.0+ came out it didn’t take long to see that there was quite a bit of bullshit in there.

I would presume that the ‘leakers’ after this first 8.0 one had read what had been said there and used that as a kind of template for future answers to questions as for the past year there have been some pretty consistent answers given for certain topics. Yet there have been glaring inconsistencies too.

Lets have a little look and see what the fortune tellers had predicted and have a little flutter on if any of this is remotely likely to be true.

8th November 2018

BFA: Who dies?

• Genn, implied that Jaina accidentally has a hand in it as she “hurts the alliance but not on purpose”
• Rastakahn dies at the hands of his own daughter.
• Saurfang dies at the hands (tentacles?) of N’Zoth.
• Rokhan  is killed by Anduin.
• Malfurion is corrupted by the Nightmare and Tyrande “puts him down”…
• Almost everyone introduced in Zandalar and Kul Tiras.

 

Plotlines?

• Jaina hurts the Alliance more than the Horde, not on purpose though.
  Anduin falls in love with Tess Graymane but begrudgingly marries a Kul Tiran.
• Sylvanas is going to be show as being manipulated by Wrathion in 8.4.
• Lich King will have a minor part to play in the Gilneas/Hiji areas revanp/intro.
• It wasn’t the void telling Alleria to kill Sylvanas.
• Talanji only leads the Zandalari up until the N’Zoth patch.
• Sylvanas goes back to leading her Forsaken War Council.
• Sylvanas makes a bargain with the awoken Yogg-Sauron and uses Zandalar as part of that bargain.
• Anduin will be revealed as a ‘balanced’ priest as he picked up shadow in secret inn MoP.
• Apart from Wrathion, all other Dragon leaders are killed by N’Zoth. Humanoids are then placed as the leaders for the Dragonflights after undergoing a ritual to turn them into Dragons. Jaina becomes a Blue Dragon.

 

Zones and Raids?

• Gilneas – revamped to a lvl 120 zone that is phased from questing area. Going to contain a raid
• Hiji is added as a new zone.
• Tanaris – turned into a revamped lvl 120 zone that is phased from the levelling area, going to contain new storylines.
• 8.1 will see Azshara, 8.2 = zone revamps, 8.3 = Hiji added, 8.4 = N’Zoth
• Eternal Palace raid > Gilneas raid > N’Zoth raid.

 

Gameplay?

• Prestige Classes added.
• “Tinker” planned as a Mage flavour class for Gnomes and Goblins.
• After the expansion ends you get the chance to become ‘neutral’
• Undoing ‘neutral’ to go back to your faction costs a lot of gold and resets your reputation.

 

Future after BfA?

• 9.0 sees the return of Yrel and a redeemed undead Garrosh who serves her.
• Lightbound and Yrel become Alliance heroes, including Garrosh.

So this post was three months after the launch of BfA and Rastakhan didn’t die until January 2019. So theres one plot point that we can discount as bollocks and that is him dying because of his daughter. The rest of it neatly swerves around anything from 8.1-8.2 apart from the fact that 8.1 didn’t send us to Azshara (although she had been hinted at in Stormsong Valley questline) and 8.2 didn’t give us revamps of zones, it gave us new ones…

The bit about Malfurion being put down? Well, the questline for the essences shows that the Dream is being overrun by void. But he doesn’t seem to be fucked over any time soon, that and the fact that we haven’t seen anything of her save for her going off to become the Night Warrior and making an appearance on the Boat that Jaina gives to Anduin.
Which would also imply that she’s not going to be making much of an appearance any time soon let alone enough screen time to lead up to why shes going to take Malfurion to the vet for the last time…

Safe to say that on the face of it, this ‘leak’ is hot garbage and likely some internet inhabitant looking for their 15 minutes of people ‘worshipping’ them…

But then, fast forward to June and we have another supposed leak…

16th June 2019

Plotlines?

• Elune caused Vol’jin to name Sylvanas.
• Elune has made a bargain with the Goddess of Death. Shes doing all she can to honor that bargain and not forsake her people.
• Bwonsamdi’s boss is female.
• Murozond was trying to kill Chromie.
• Lilian Voss is slated to take over the Forsaken.
• Alliance don’t get revenge at the end of the expansion.
• Tyrande’s retribution was slated for 8.3 but people were impatient.
• Baine and Anduin make peace.
• Sylvanas goes into hiding with her loyalists.
• Sylvanas doesn’t die but goes off to Ny’alotha.
• Baine is made Warchief.
• Saurfang was slated to die to save Sylvanas.
• Moira was supposed to play a large role in the Alliance but no one knows who she is so it was canned.
• Wrathion has been on the backburner since MoP.

 

Raids and zones?

• We are going to fight Sylvanas but she’s trying to keep N’Zoth in his prison and “save the world”.
• 8.3 will have Ny’alotha zone with final raid.
• Ny’alotha will be huge with 2-4 zones in it.
• There will be a gateway in the sea to Ny’alotha.

 

Next expansion?

• There are three expansions being worked on at the moment. 1 is being developed, 2 are still in the concept stage.
• Next expansion is going to bring the Dragon Isles, rise of the Dragonflights.
• Wrathion is coming back, dealing with the forces of death (Lich King, Bwonsamdi, etc…)

 

Anything else random?

• Azeroth isn’t coming out of the world anytime soon as there hasn’t been any concept art for her to be seen.
• Yrel possibly will come back next expansion.

 

Gameplay?

• Player housing has been worked on constantly, it just never gets approved.
• Tinkers will start a lvl 50 as a prestige class. Tanks/Dps/Healer. Wear Mail armour. Tanks get ‘power armour’, Dps get stealth/bombs/mines and guns, Healers have a heal robot that aids them to heal but also dps.
• Talk about loosening the faction barrier, doubt that it will go anywhere.
• There are prototypes about a faction merger.

So 8.2 launched on the 25th of June. Just over a week after this was written.

The OP said that they had worked on 8.3 stuff before being moved into new expansion work within the past 6 months. They also said that everyone on their team had not played wow any earlier than Cata.

So to recap:
The ‘leaked’ 8.2 stuff hasn’t come into fruition.
The Hiji area that we were supposed to have was said to have been canned even though the November post puts it in the same time frame as the supposed 8.2 revamp of Gilneas but also as part of 8.3… (eg: it’s bollocks…)

Tinkers in this leak are sounding here more like a Hero Class, much like Death Knights and Demon Hunters, the only explanation I can think of as to why they would say that they will be released at lvl 50 is due to the stat squish.
However that doesn’t cover the glaring inconsistency that the November post said that they would be a special Mage specialisation where that class would have a fourth option to play (Fire, Arcane, Frost, Tinker) yet here they are supposed to wear mail armour while the rest would wear cloth? This sounds like the June poster has read what the November one has said and tried to elaborate, but ended up completely turning the ‘Prestige Class’ into a ‘Hero Class’ that has nothing to do with Mages at all… Why the fuck would a Mage need an engineer specialisation is also beyond me at the moment!

We also have gone from Yrel being a plot point for the next expansion to the Dragons. I don’t know how Yrel would even fit into a dragon expansion unless it’s to fuck her over for going Space Nazi on everyone. (If she does come back, please for the love of fucking god, kill her in the most horrible way possible…)

The other bit that made this sound like bullshit was the bit about Azeroth. Saying that there’s not been any concept art for her yet when you go into the Chamber of Heart, M.O.T.H.E.R shows you Azeroth as a Titan. Admittedly, I didn’t get a screen shot the first time around but she was there, in all her warrior glory but the cutscene is on Wowhead.

So there had to be some concept art for her floating around… as they have made a cut scene for her in the Chamber.

Murozond was trying to kill Chromie is the only part of this I can get behind due to my own speculation of her scenario that I did back when it was released but, many people had this speculation when you look into it… so… it’s not really worth crowing about.

Onward!

30th June 2019

Next Expansion?

• EU style Union after the battle for Azeroth ends with both sides as losers

 

Gameplay?

• Squish level 120 to level 40, we will be questing to level 50 first then after 9.1 to level 60. This is so that 9.0 does not have to be delayed for too long.
• Wrath trees are coming back with a few tweaks, current talent system removed, raid drop legendaries with crazy abilities coming back, giving players a reason to want to raid, since similar loot can be obtainable from all kinds of sources, this would differentiate raids from any other source of loot, legendaries being super powerful.
• Original Glyph system is back, this time the player has to buy books that drop in older raids that are toggled as scaled.
• Flying is now auto-enabled once 9.1 content is completed, no more gating.
• Ability to unlock new allied races via cash shop.
• Class rotations back to having more buttons and abilities since the redesign is based on Wrath classes, with class identity being brought back. Possible class changes include spell skins tied to race and a new hero class.

 

Faction Stuff?

• Ability to chat with opposite faction via a new neutral language if we choose to enable it, off by default.
• Players can turn on or off the ability to group with each other, horde/alliance players who choose to side with Sylvanas/Tyrande cannot group with each other, those who do not, can do so. This can always be undone / redone. This does not apply to PVP.
• The third faction will follow the same new system of “for war” or “for peace” choice (Sylvanas horde vs Tyrande Alliance=for war) still keeping the same actual Horde/Alliance numbers.
• This third faction would give players the choice of being neutral to horde/alliance, without siding with Sylvanas/Tyrande or Baine/Anduin.
• Aim to expand the pvp system and create more pvp-centerend lore and events, the same is true for the pve game. In the end players get a richer pvp / pve overall game experience. Ultimately allowing players to distinguish themselves between being PVP focused and PVE focused. PVE is defensive minded players fighting forces that threaten the world, PVP is offensive minded players fighting each other.

 

Raids and Zones?

• Complete revamp of the classic trio (Vanila/TBC/Wrath) zones, wrath coming out in patch 9.1. LK returns.
• All zones now scale from 1 to 40. New players can choose to level in any of the previous expansion areas. For example 8 alts, each following a different story line / quests, every time feels like a fresh game from level 1 to 40 + new zones from 40 to 60. The most re-playable content WoW has ever had. Mobs now hit as hard as they do in Vanilla and take as long to kill.
• Previous end-game questing zones such as Suramar can now be done while levelling alts, and still barely lead up to level 50.
• Older raids all scale to level 60, giving players a reason to play all raids, not only new ones….raid scaling is off by default (setting them at level 40, xmog/mount runs still possible).
• Friendly AI NPCs can be used to do old raids, LFR is only enabled for current content raids without AI. AI-based raids mean the player can only be a healer/tank in this scenario. If the player dies, GG. DPS players get a generic tank or healer ability bar.
• Non-rated BGS can now be done against AI if the player is also using an AI based team, however they give half as much honor and are challenging to win. Basically 1 real player on each side + 9 AI.
• Solo Q for Rated BGs finally in! Players are treated just like in non-rated, however they only get matched with players of a similar rating. Unrated PVP is once again used for honor-based gear, while rated is only used for titles, cosmetic gear and mounts.
• Can pve with and pvp against both at-war horde/alliance (pro Sylvanas/Tyrande) or at-peace horde/alliance.

 

Even further next expansion?

• WoW 10.0 will feature a new “faction” with completely new races and lore, that can’t be be played.

Now this was all supposed to be the drunk ramblings of someones ‘friend who works at Blizzard’

The idea that the original glyph system is back kinda relates to the 16th of June post, but it was talking about it in relation to the Heart of Azeroth traits… not actual glyphs. Which in this ‘leak’ seems to imply that Inscription is pretty much being thrown under a bus if you can only get glyphs from old raids now.

The mention of a new Hero Class nicely sums up the evolution of the supposed Tinker Prestige/Hero class.

There seems to be a lot of ‘stuff’ that just implies solo content with all the AI parties (like the proving grounds scenarios where you had all the missing members of the party as AI’s. Which lets face it, were shit at their jobs… They didn’t improve them over two expansions, lord knows how they’re going to make them so good that you can do an old raid with them at max level difficulty…

The faction thing with Horde and Alliance not being totally split up but more on their standing for war and peace makes sense. We already knew that the ‘stand with Saurfang’ things was coming (except that one of the leaks said hes going to die) yet hes part of the Horde and so is Sylvanas, if the Sylvanas loyalists are hostile and the Saurfang neutral this would keep the Horde together without needing a third one that may be tiny in comparison…

Buuuuttttt….

13th July 2019

Who dies?

• Nathanos as hes trying to aid Sylvanas as shes the final boss.

 

Plotline?

• 8.2.5 will deal mostly with the factions and the aftermath after N’zoth being freed and Azshara’s “kind of retreat”.
• 8.2.5 Sets the pieces up for the final patch taking place mostly in Mulgore.
• 8.3 will be centred around Sylvanas’ planned attack on Thunder Bluff; Mulgore will be turned into a battlefield and new high level zone with world quests (very similar to Mechagon), ongoing progress unlocks week by week towards the raid taking place in the city.
• No release schedule for the patches yet, everything during BfA’s development took longer than expected; 8.3 this year is the plan but it might get delayed

 

Raids and Zones?

• Sylvanas is the final boss with Nathanos aiding her; N’zoth’s minions teleport into the fight and turn the scenery into darkness, they attack both sides yet focus to take down Sylvanas and Nathanos.
• Nathanos will be killed whereas Sylvanas will be severely wounded and is then captured by the Horde and Alliance forces;
• Sylvanas will be imprisoned and both Alleria and Vereesa will act as her jailer.
• Partial revamp of the Old World: this only unlocks after finishing the pre-quest for Age of Darkness; for new players it will be the same as live until they do the pre-quest at level 50
• First starting with the continent of Kalimdor: Un’Goro, Feralas, Desolace and Mulgore as the new high-level zones with Silithus as the endgame zone;
• Eastern Kingdoms planned to follow piece by piece in later patches (something very special planned for Gilneas, Tirisfal and the Plaguelands, players that are well aware of the lore know what lies underneath)

 

Next Expansion?

• Age of Darkness, but that’s our working title
• N’zoth unleashes darkness over Azeroth as foreshadowed in the Nighthold raid encounter with Star Augur Etraeus. Starting point is the attack on Thunder Bluff raid where he interrupts the Horde and Alliance forces in the final battle. Kalimdor is his first goal as the strives to revive one of our oldest foes, C’Thun in Silithus. To do this he’s seeking to destroy the Bronze Dragonflight and turn Nozdormu into Murozond so he alters the timeline where C’Thun doesn’t get defeated and the battle of Ahn’Qiraj is lost by Horde and Alliance in consequence.
• Some well-known Dragon faces will return but there’s not too much emphasis on the other Dragonflights except the Bronze and Infinite which will play a major role.
• Xal’atath will play a major role as she’s the main antagonist of the Old Gods; she’ll act as neutral evil and be our guide. She’s the reason why Sylvanas is alive and doesn’t get executed after the events taking place in Mulgore. She commands us to not kill her as she (Sylvanas) has a major role to play.

 

Gameplay?

• Level squish: 60 being the new max level. Will work like this: Vanilla leveling 1-20, TBC / WotLK / Cataclysm 20-30, MoP / WoD 30-40, Legion / BfA 40-50, AoD 50-60.
• The essence system implemented in 8.2 will carry over as a new base game system you unlock at level 50 with new expansion: every class can unlock several new skills/traits from 50-60; it’s very similar to the old Glyph system and right now looks like this: 5 major sockets, 2 for passive traits, 2 for active skills and 1 for an ultimate ability.
• Reshaping of the talent system: offensive + defensive talents per bracket; new brackets at 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50; 4 talents per bracket (2 offensive + 2 defensive).
• Conquest points: alternative levelling system unlocked at level 60; each new conquest level gives you points to spend for passive bonuses in a variety of areas (increasing your damage on targets below 25% health, increasing your run speed to name few); this acts as a replacement for the artifact levelling systems implemented in Legion and Battle for Azeroth; once unlocked it’s account-wide and can be used by every character that’s level 10 or higher; conquest level only increases when doing max level activities at level 60.
• Mechagnomes and Gilgoblins as the last pair of allied races coming in 8.3 / 8.3.5 (not yet decided due to the late schedule).
• 8.2.5 will introduce new heritage armour and new models.

 

Faction merger?

• Factions won’t merge or be removed but they’ll become neutral towards each other with inter-factional group play and communication enabled (one of the reasons for this is the major discrepancy between Alliance and Horde on most servers and in the raiding community)

 

Tinker Class?

• Tinker will be the next class. Starts at level 1 and will be Tinker pre-purchasable with Mechagnomes / Gilgoblin allied races in the last patch of Battle for Azeroth.
• It’s exclusive to Gnomes, Mechagnomes, Draenei, Goblins, Gilgoblins and Forsaken.
• It will have two specializations, Explosives (ranged damage dealer) and Combat Medic (healer)

So a mere 5 days ago there was another ‘leak’ about the game.

This one states that the Tinkers will start at lvl 1 so not a Hero Class at all but more of a standard class, like Paladins or Hunters…
There is only two specialisations, not the three stated in the June leak.

But the 9.0 level squish here is different to the one posted only 13 days previous. While the 30th of June said that 9.0 make you start at lvl 40 and then you are levelling to 50 and then 9.1 allows you to level to 60… Not only is that’s 20 levels in half an expansion, this newer ‘leak’ states that you will start 9.0 at lvl 50 and level to 60.

The faction issue is a complete 180 on what was said 13 days prior. Everyone will be neutral, not some. So in fact it seems here that there will only be two factions still and none of the race leaders splitting off etc…

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What have we learnt?

That if these are all true, then the people working in Blizzard don’t know what the fuck is going on as shit is changed completely ever 5 minutes.

Or we take it as intended and these people are just normal internet weebs who are looking to spice up their notification list by putting some speculations about how they think the game should develop and waiting for the comments to roll in so they can feel like gods for the day…

These types of posts are interesting as they are different to the usual speculation threads where people put out what they think might/should happen. These anons are posting this as it is fact.

What is clear is that due to the ‘leaks’ being posted in a multitude of places, there is no consistency with what is reportedly leaked. As shown above, a mere 13 days went by and there was already contradictions with what was happening.
There’s been contradictions, huge ones, about what 9.0 is going to be about. One said it’s about the Dragons, the other said it was about the Void, with hardly any dragons. That’s a big fucking change and likely a lot of time sunk into it to be slung out the window in a matter of months.

What makes it worse is that Blizzcon is around the corner, the hype train is being mobilised and people want to now what is coming up next. There is a hunger for information that the Dev team wants to keep hidden and that ultimately leads to people lapping up ‘leak’ posts and everything in them.

If you want to understands what might be happening in the next expansions, you would be better served reading quest text and doing the content from the current one. There are plenty of clues in them and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put them together, especially when you have resources like the Chronicles or Wowpedia available to you.

An example would be the ‘leak’ on the 13th of July about “something very special planned for Gilneas, Tirisfal and the Plaguelands, players that are well aware of the lore know what lies underneath”
The Shadow Priests artifact weapon comes from there, that was Legion stuff right from the beginning so the secrecy over this isn’t really needed unless it’s to avoid having to go into details that they can’t keep the lie alive over. But, the lore is that Tyr is under there and the corpse of a void henchman sent after him by Loken.
What does that have to do with Gilneas or Plaguelands?
Well, Scholomance is under Western Plaguelands. Tyr’s Hand is a city in Eastern Plaguelands. Gilneas… well… it just sits as a ravaged city…
One can only imagine that they have looked up the Shadow Priest quest line, looked at the Wowpedia pages for Tyr and pulled something out of their ass that is vague enough that they don’t have anything that they can be tied down to but lore based enough that they look like they have a developers insight.

This can mean that some of the things ‘leaked’ are not so much leaks as they are common sense due to whats been revealed already.
The problem then comes from people who have posted ‘leaks’ pretending to be Devs then get adoration for being ‘right’ when they had just played the game and put two and two together to get four. It just spurs them on to make posts about speculation that they state as facts which takes up forum space from actual discussion about what is fact in-game and what it could possibly mean.

Speculation is never a bad thing, baiting people to get excited about lies is.