WoW’s Sixth Expansion Hype Train

[Smitten]

Update:
The next expansion WILL be announced at Gamescom.

Merely a month after the release of Patch 6.2, speculation, so-called leaks and theories surrounding the future of World of Warcraft have been popping up all over the Internet.

There are three popular theories or “leaks” at the moment: “The Dark Prophet” - a supposed leak about revolving around Zul and the Zandalari Trolls allying with the Naga under the command of Azshara, “Eye of Azshara” talking about bringing back Illidan from the Twisting Nether, teaming up with Gul’dan to ally with Sargeras, and the more recent “Council of Glades”, only showing a PDF of a trademark that is claimed to be filed by Blizzard in New Zealand.

Bashiok, a Blizzard employee, posted this today. A hint, or trolling?

Screenshots of Patch 7.0.0 clients,WoW's beta servers coming online in the last few days, logos and zone screenshots are all thrown in the mix, but when there are so many different stories going around, it’s impossible to tell which is real - if any.

It wouldn't be the first time that expansion leaks have occurred. Before Warlords of Draenor was officially announced, there were some posts around the Internet that were largely written off as just another fan-made “leak”. In hindsight, they turned out to be very accurate.

The now infamous Cataclysm leak by Boubouille that Blizzard asked to be removed is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, showing screenshots, zone fly-throughs, models and all sorts of data from the Alpha client.

With the Gamescom trade fair opening on the 6th of August, these topics have been incredibly popular. It’s well known that Blizzard has hired out large parts of the venue, and will have their largest presence at the annual fair to date, and that Blizzard have invited a number of WoW Fansites to attend a press conference.

German World of Warcraft fansite Vanion posted the invitation they received for the event. It states that members of the Blizzard Development team will be presenting news, and that Blizzard must be notified in advance if they wish to film.

Destil from Blizzplanet further explained the situation. They will be interviewing a WoW developer specifically, but they don’t know who the developer is, or what it will be about. However, they do know that it it will be WoW-specific.

Further fuelling the speculation fire, Blizzard has historically only held press conferences for new games and expansions. The last press conference held at Gamescom by Blizzard was in 2013, where Diablo 3’s expansion - Reaper of Souls was announced.

Theories aside, this time next week should be interesting. While hope for the expansion of the next chapter of World of Warcraft is high, only time will tell what will come of it.

With the amount of unfinished story lines in WoD and huge amounts of theories floating around the Internet, what do you think the next expansion will be about? Are you hoping for a continuation of WoD's storyline, or something completely different?

[zycamzip]

Yah, Blizz does like to leak and feed false data into the mix. I remember some years ago them trademarking and leaking other information on expansion names, one which was Darkmoon Faire. I think the handiest information in terms of leaking information, is the type of currency that a game is going to have. Like Star Wars Credits - because then you can buy a domain, or bunch of domains and then sell them. buystarwarscredits, starwarscredits, starwarsleveling, etc (insert .com .net, .co.uk, etc). I had several (let them go/sold them over the years) for many games.

[Dovah]

Blizzard announced this about 30 minutes ago.

[Vcertno]

Nevermind.

[Dovah]

All the 3 popular "leaks" are wrong by the way and the real name of the expac is a zone name.

Care to share?

[Torpedoes]

Care to share?

Council of Glades... Glades... Tirisfal Glades... INB4 undead expansion where Sylvanas is the bad guy.

[JD]

Safe to say we were not invited to attend.

[Vcertno]

https://i.imgur.com/qty5ywZ.jpg (first seen on MMO-C)

Could this be real? I mean look at the herb details in the foreground (Cataclysm revamped zones don't have that).
Bladestorm on low lvl, old rage icons (alt+7), shoot icon on warrior?
Arathor rep on undead? Council of Glades.

Tamini exists in Guild Wars 2 but could blizz re-use that name (or just placeholder, like in all Alphas)? Maybe.


What do you guys think?

[Vengfull]

Council of Glades - you know the trademark was a photoshop right? - Look up the ID / Client REF <3

[Hazzbazzy]

Wait for the slip-up(s) like the one at 2013 Blizzcon

(Warlords of Draenor CONFIRMED.)

[Kenneth]

So I just found out Bashiok joined Carbine studios. So I wonder if the pic in the OP was more of him just posting a goodbye type deal or maybe hinting something big on his way out? Who knows.

Also here is the schedule of the blizz stuff at Gamescom. Blizzard at gamescom 2015 ? Blizzard Entertainment
Seems like pointless junk until the expo release. Multiple quizzes? Da fuk

[Bulo]

from mmo champion thread:

Not really much to show but here is something.

Being a web guy I know that blizzard web team usually slips up every now and again and leave issues with the site launch. Earlier in the thread I talked about how Blizzards web cms changed.

My watcher watches for when the version of the cms updates, this is usually to include new changes in the code for JavaScript and the page template.

They filter images and revisions by releasing them into a sub folder and JavaScript version at the end.

Example the class icons were v34/iconname.ext?=cdn pull.

I can confirm this morning that thre sites code was updated to v35 and the icon folder is larger than before using my crawler on mrgl mrgl.

V35 included 3 new JavaScript page includes which are still encoded and I am trying to decompile it but it takes some time since they use a smush and obfuscation method which changed in Mop and is hard to tear down.

Here's what's changed:

3 new JavaScript controllers
Class icon folder is now 2.2mb vs the 2.0mb
Page archive is now referencing 7 new webM files which are not available due to content lock. I will post the links as soon as I can get them out of the actual JavaScript includes.
A new page is referenced in the JavaScript for includes: /classes-extra/expansion06/content.htm [class-selection] [hero-class-eligible]

Note* hero class eligible references the Death Knight which means there's a reference to Death Knight onto the page, more than likely stating x race can be one. This is included in all pages of expansions which show class combos when the announced a new race.

[Trixiap]

This was proven to be product of digestive tract of bull yesterday in Bawx

[bestBotter]

Am I the only one who gets very exited before a new expansion and then is let down when it comes out?

[dropset]

it would be great