The internet leak mill has be into overtime again. The 8.2 patch hype train has left and now people are looking for their next hit of hype.
In walks a new set of spoilers.
Bearing in mind that we had a set of spoilers only 2 or 3 weeks ago in the form of leak on the 13th of July which I covered (and all the ones dating back to Nov 2018) here.
If we remind ourselves, the one on the 13th of July said that the next expansion was going to be formed of a revamped current world that you would need to talk to Zidormi to access the past versions of.
There is also timey-wimey stuff involving the Bronze Dragons and altering the timelines so that we don’t defeat some big foes from our past.
It also should contain the level squish (which had varying reports on how much squishing is actually going to happen)
However, another leak has come about, this time going into detail about the 9.0 expansion rather than whats going on after 8.2.
While this leak arrived about 8 days ago, I always hold on to shit like this just in case something gets thrown in for good measure and as it seems like nothing more is forthcoming, it’s about time to just dive in.
Age of Darkness or Shadowlands?
This new leak contained a rundown of whats going to happen in 9.0 and an improvement on the ‘working title’ that we had back on the 13th of July.
However, only 3 weeks previous we were told that Age of Darkness was a working title and here we are with an apparent ‘dev presentation’ to the staff with the actual title and logo. I’m pretty sure that the actual title would have been revealed to the staff long before the presentation… Anyway.
This is the image that we got for the ‘zone map’
So we have one title there, a rather non void looking aqua based one. The title is in the same font as used on the Cata logo. But if you’re looking to mock up your own logo, you can find one that’s pretty close. it’s called ‘Burning Wrath‘ and found at Dafont.com.
While on the subject of logos, there was another one that was thrown into the hat for the same apparent expansion…
This one is a completely different colour and shape to the one on the map.
So it is safe to say at least one person is bullshitting.
The Logo
The logo on the map looks strangely familiar in its base design though. While the edges and what not have been toyed with, the middle looks similar to something…
Oh yes! That’s why!
The glow from behind is absolutely identical to the Legion logo.
So old textures have been reused for this one and Legion is the most likely candidate to use the texture from because it is the most glowey out of the logos we have had so far.
Now, I saw this logo and I thought “hmmmmm, it kinda looks odd”. there are bits everywhere on it and it really goes away from the shape of the traditional WoW expansion logo with the swirls at the side of the ‘World’ section and the eye thing at the top.
But, if you’re going to go all out on a grainy picture you might as well go all out.
Now I knocked this piece of crap out in Photoshop and I don’t have a fucking clue how to use Photoshop, the ‘undo’ button is the most used thing in there. But, it goes to show that something that looks fancy as fuck isn’t hard to make. And I’m 100% sure that there are better versions of the WoW logos that people have made to personalise.
But. This is kinda what the logo on the map picture looks like… and it looks… shit?
Would you really have this for a Void based expansion?
Even if the title is real this sure as hell ain’t it, Chief, with regards to the logo.
The Map
And so to the map.
This one looked really interesting if nothing else.
1 – Why has the logo been placed on top of the actual map so that you can’t see bits of it?
2- Endgame?
3 – _______yout?
4 – Version?
also, what have they blocked off at the bottom that doesn’t run in line with the angle of the rest of the text? Looks like Paint was employed… I can do that!
It’s really fucking difficult to make anything out on here so I went ham in Paint and brought you the super high quality definition you expect!
Now the land masses are going to be a bit wonkey as I just used them as a template but this is what is apparently going to be there.
We have Elune getting some attention in two zones… She has a sanctum in Darkfront and also some meadows in Xiros.
Sylvanas has her own area named after her with the Sylvarian Approach.
The Naga have their own void camp, with the Shirakess Camp.
Vol’jin’s Rest doesn’t really make much sense as he’s not resting in the Shadowlands, he’s gone back to find out whats going on…
Whatever DI Rifts are…
What we can see from this map is that it is a million miles away from the ‘Age of Darkness’ leak that was on the 13th of July (2019). If that was a working title for the expansion, in three weeks they have completely reversed and have wasted millions of dollars on something that has gone straight in the bin.
Or
This leak is complete fucking garbage…
Or they both are…
Lets pretend though that we have a shred of belief in this current 9.0 leak and lets see what the overview of the expansion is supposed to be…
Overview of the ‘expansion’
This was taken from the forums where someone grabbed the gist of it from 4chan (so real reliable already…)
4Chan did it again. We either got new real leaks, or simply another user wants his/her fanfiction to be true. Sadly I cannot include the picture of the Shadowlands itself as I have not reach that level of trust.
“World of Warcraft: Shadowlands”
Two new continents: Dragon Isles, Shadowlands. New class: Tinkerer DPS with turrets, bombs and ‘ghost buster’ gimmicks. Also healer and tank specs. Uses mail armor. Primary stat is intellect. Vestiges of Power (secondary talent system a la artifacts/essences). Level squish postponed. No world revamp. New scaling tech that will do away with the frequent item level & stat squishing. Raid tier sets are not returning, but there will be class-specific challenge sets. Champion system: We will reunite with the spirits of fallen heroes: Uther, Cairne, Vol’jin, Varian, Saurfang, Rhonin, etc. But also certain villains. The Old Gods are not dead. They are sleeping in Ny’alotha. N’Zoth has been redirecting souls to fuel the Old Gods’ ascension back into the world. The Black Empire will rise again very soon. This is what Azshara saw when she died.Forces of death aka “Death’s Vanguard”:
Elune, Helya and others are working together to fight the Void incursion into the Shadowlands. Bolvar brings us there. Sylvanas has been honoring a pact, waging war in Helya’s name. Elune’s night warrior also transports the souls of its victims to the Shadowlands. Alliance has inadvertently helped the war against the Old Gods in the Shadowlands. They will be reunited with all of the casualties (almost). Bwonsamdi is working for Hakkar the Soulflayer, who seeks power for himself, also by consuming souls. Old Gods: The void exploited the defeat of Argus to gain access to the Shadowlands. Xal’atath may have sold us out. Ny’alotha is threatened by the advance of Death’s forces N’Zoth instigated the battle for Azeroth to cause death & consume more souls. Sylvanas propagated the war to usher souls toward Helya instead of Ny’alotha.DARKFRONT:
“Starting point” for Shadowlands. Three minor factions: Night elves, death knights, Helya/Sylvanas. Helya is kinder now & prettier. Main goal is to prevent Ny’alotha from consuming the souls of the fallen. Huge rivers of souls run through each zone.MORBARA:
All the blood trolls we killed in Nazmir are here. Bwonsamdi has been roped into working for Hakkar the Soulflayer. We help him overthrow Hakkar and reclaim his title as the loa of death. ALNIR RIFTLANDS: A crucible for the primordial energies that comprise the fabric of all realities, with portals to each one. Everything is spilling in and out of rifts. Source of void incursions on Dragon Isles and Emerald Dream.XIROS:
Semi-peaceful zone where spirits go to rest according to lore. Main city and sanctuary is here. Lots of questlines and two dungeons. Greek inspired, a la “Hades’ front yard”. Ethereals have a big presence here.There will likely be 9 dungeons total at launch, 5 in Shadowlands and 4 on Dragon Isles. No names for them yet.
Dragon Isles:
Don’t know much, but it has void dragons. We will help rebuild the black dragonflight. Storylines for each dragon aspect.”
Where the plots fall down
Ok, lets pick this shit show apart shall we?
Deaths Vanguard
This seems to be anyone that has anything to do with death.
We have:
Elune
Helya
Bolvar
Bwonsamdi
Sylvanas
So Elune and Helya are working together. Helya, despite being super fucking pissed off at Oydn, has been defeated and her trap broke. But apparently she is really pretty now and really nice! WTF.
One thing to note is that Helya may have been defeated but we didn’t kill her. The island expedition drop Ring of the Reefs tells you that she grows in strength though as you cannot kill death. But the Tide-Lost Champion Kvaldir says something about “she will have the golden liquid, you cannot stop us all” which means that Helya is farming liquid Azerite along with everyone else.
Would Elune work with Helya? I think the bit that lets this fall down on believe-ability is that this person didn’t know their lore…
“Elune’s night warrior also transports the souls of its victims to the Shadowlands.” no she doesn’t, they go across the sky as stars… we saw it happen with Ysera. It’s literally said in game that they are the stars.
Bolvar takes us to Helya/Elune where we also find out that Sylvanas has been waging a war in Helyas name. I can’t get past that Helya is apparently a sexy cutie now… This just isn’t going to happen.
Apart from Helya, all the other people who have interactions with death and should fucking hate Sylvanas because she is screwing up the balance between life and death. Now they are all accepting of her screwing it up?
And the excuse? It’s so she can funnel souls to Helya rather than have them go to N’Zoth. Wut?
I don’t know about anyone else but one way to stop souls going to N’Zoth is to stop fucking killing people!
“Bwonsamdi is working for Hakkar the Soulflayer, who seeks power for himself, also by consuming souls.”
The OP has forgotten that Hakkar doesn’t consume souls. He has people killed in his name so he can feast on their blood which makes him become more powerful.
Bwon couldn’t possibly be any help to him whatsoever as he doesn’t do the killing and souls don’t contain blood.
I think this was one where the OP might have just searched ‘soul’ on WoWpedia and typed about whatever came up…
“N’Zoth instigated the battle for Azeroth to cause death & consume more souls.”
So this would imply that he got Sylvanas put on the throne as Warchief. Which means that he spoke to Vol’jin.
Annnnnd. He convinced her to go batshit at the Alliance because she made the first move. Yes there was the whole thing of her mowing down her own people because they realised the lies she had told them were not true… but that wasn’t enough in the storyline to get the Alliance gunning for her. That moment came when she burned down Teldrassil because she got her feelings hurt.
“Sylvanas propagated the war to usher souls toward Helya instead of Ny’alotha.” She spread and promoted the war so that Helya could get the souls.
This is trying to tie up the pact that those two made back in Legion. While I do think that she ended up with her end of the bargain being gather souls, I don’t think that it was to get them away from Ny’alotha. At that point, Helya was still pissed off with Oydn and with all the souls from Sylvanas she would be able to bolster her army and then do away with him by surging the Halls of Valor.
Sylvanas isn’t one to play pawn, so it has to be for something really fucking worthwhile… like being made Warchief. You’re in charge, you can put your peoples needs first. Or serve your own self interests, like not loosing anymore of your nine lives…
Anyway, at that point in Legion, N’Zoth was still very firmly fucking stuck and not capable of doing anything, plus, we are told that the rest of the Old Gods are sleeping. They’re good for nothing too.
So if this is real, they will have to retcon literally every past expansion to get this through. Or do another WoD alternative reality bollocks.
Even the Zone info is not consistent…
“All the blood trolls we killed in Nazmir are here. Bwonsamdi has been roped into working for Hakkar the Soulflayer. We help him overthrow Hakkar and reclaim his title as the loa of death.”
So does the OP now realise that Hakkar deals with blood?
Before he was eating souls!
The Blood Trolls also don’t worship Hakkar anymore, it’s G’huun.
The biggest significance that either the map, the ‘overview’ or both are shite?
“There will likely be 9 dungeons total at launch, 5 in Shadowlands and 4 on Dragon Isles. No names for them yet.”
There’s six shown in the shadow lands….
That’s right, its amazing what you can see if you open the image up to its actual size.
That tiny bit of red right at the edge is the symbol for a dungeon. Which begs the question.
If the person who wrote the description made the map, wouldn’t they remember that they said there was only 5 dungeons… If the person who took the ‘picture’ wrote the description, wouldn’t they remember that there was 6 dungeons on the map they were shown?
So that means that the map came from somewhere else and the description was added to it later. Or someone is pretty dumb.
Even if the map was truly leaked, it means that it got sent to someone, who sent it to someone (and on and on and on) until it ended up being combined into some 9.0 leak by someone who didn’t quite understand what they were seeing.
And therefore, you can probably guarantee that whatever has been said here with regards to the overview (bar some probable things that we have already been pointed at happening by the actual devs) is pure speculation and not worth the bandwidth you read it on.
Soz bubs.
Zionxi 