WoW 10.0 Leak, Black Temple Release, and more!

**Kenneth** · 02-07-2022

Welcome OwnedCorenians to another OC Report. It's been a little bit but luckily there has been a ton of news so this will be jam packed and an updater for all those who haven't been keeping up. As Philly D says "let's just get into it."

Blizzard Bans Boosting Communities
One of the biggest pieces of news to come out of Blizzard the last few weeks was this article right here. In this article one sentence is all that needs to be read.

As of today, we will now prohibit organizations who offer boosting, matchmaking, escrow, or other non-traditional services, including those offered for gold. World of Warcraft accounts found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions.

So what does this mean for WoW? Well for starters let's get the obvious out of the way. Yes you can still boost for gold in World of Warcraft. This was not an attempt to kill the boosting option but rather the scene that has run completely rampant and became filled with RMT at the top. What this might change for you in your daily WoW life is a cleaner Trade Chat. If you're on a bigger or even mega server in retail you will notice your Trade Chat has been filled with spam from middle men on these boosting servers to try linking buyer and seller for a cut in the middle. Due to this practice we basically lost a staple chatroom of WoW. Now if you want to boost you have to advertise it yourself which a lot less people are willing to do especially to the extent the middlemen were. In turn I expect a cleaner /2 . Other than that this doesn't change too much. This was a long time coming ever since they banned the largest community about a year ago, Gallywix.

Cross-Faction Gameplay Coming to WoW

Another bombshell out of Blizzard was announced last week. A request from the player base that has grew expansion by expansion. Cross-Faction gameplay. If you're on NA and I assume EU is similar one faction is completely dead while the other thrives. On NA it is Alliance. It takes months for 100 Alliance guilds to get their Hall of Fame Mythic Raiding titles while the Horde ones are done within a week of the World First kill of every tier. Due to this going Alliance is basically a death sentence on NA and in turn the player base has begged for some form of cross-faction play and it seems Blizzard is going to test it out in 9.2.5.

In 9.2.5 Horde and Alliance will be able to party up and do dungeons, mythic plus, raids, and rated pvp together. This is the biggest change to World of Warcraft since mythic plus was added. If I were to guess this is only the beginning. I think 9.2.5 is the test and 10.0 will be the full implementation and will include cross-faction guilds and mythic raiding. It makes sense because in the lore since we aren't even fighting each other but rather a common enemy and it has been that way for quite sometime.

Black Temple and Mount Hyjal released on Classic TBC

The two most famous raids of BC are now out on TBC. Per usual the raids were beaten within a few hours of release but this is to be expected in older expansions. Shattrah City is becoming filled with 1 and sometimes 2 Warglaive equipped rogues and warriors. Next to them, jealous empty handed rogues calling them bad at pvp in /say. The cycle is complete. In this patch also came epic gems from BT, new reputations and mounts to farm and a massive change to the TBC PvP system that makes coming back or getting into TBC Classic very easy for PvP players. Tier 4 and 5 tokens can now be turned into Season 1 and Season 2 PvP gear to help you catch up quicker. On top of this all daily PvP quests give more than double the honor they used to, more marks are rewarded, and less marks are required for the gear. A massive change that has made alt friendliness and new players in the PvP space great again.

10.0 Leak

Alright so first and foremost let's go over the viral 10.0 leak that went rampant the last week of January. We all know most leaks are complete b.s. but there have been some in years past that in hindsight were pretty spot on. Since this one got a ton of traction and coverage I feel like it's worth a look. If anything we can look at this as a "wish list" from a super fan. This leak comes from MMOChampion forums on now banned accounts but there were two posts that basically said the same things were coming.

Rise of the Aspects. This expansion would be based in the Dragon Isles a zone many have seen from the infamous picture above and was unfinished back in original Vanilla never to be seen implemented. The Dragon isles would include 5 zones themed after the dragon aspects. New class: Tinkerer. A mail wearing class with 2 specs. Ranged DPS with turrets and other gimmicks and a Mechasuit for tanking. Level cap raised to level 70, new race Black Dragons, old-world revamp, cross-faction end-game, and more.

To me this seems suspicious strictly because of the Tinker. It's the most "meta" and common guess for a new class in WoW and probably the most anticipated for a long time now. Even the specs and armor type of how the Tinker would work have been beaten down to a pulp and saying it will be mail with a mechasuit tank option has been said by all WoW theorists now. I do think a dragon themed expansion would feel like a breathe of fresh air compared to Shadowlands and utilizing the old world more feels like a great move so these things I can totally get behind and even see happening. Nonetheless this could all just be fan fic so take it with a huge grain of salt. WoWHead even did some datamining recently and found what could be things utilized in the new expansion. Let me know what you think these things are!