wow World of Leakcraft: The Season of Leaks Has Begun

[Stan 5,239]

Today, we're looking at three leaks related to Patch 9.0 and beyond, namely Shadowlands, Age of Darkness, and a "Developer AMA" leak.

Disclaimer: None of the leaks have been officially confirmed, and it is more than likely that they are fake. We're bringing them up to elicit discussion because some of the concepts look interesting. Most of the leaks stem from 4chan and Reddit. All three mention the addition of the Tinker class.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Leak

Shadowlands is probably the most likely leak out of the bunch. It was posted on Reddit recently with a map and logo of what should be the next expansion after Battle for Azeroth. The image seems to have been taken during some presentation or dev meeting.

Main Highlights

• Two new continents: Dragon Isles & Shadowlands
• New Class: Tinker - Tank/Healer/DPS specs.  DPS comes with turrets, bombs, and "ghostbuster" gimmicks.
  • Tinker wears Mail armor, and the primary stat is Intellect.
• From a system perspective, they're planning to add something called Vestiges of Power, a secondary talent system similar to Essences.
• The leak mentions that the planned level squish will be postponed and there will be no world revamp.
• New scaling tech will do away with frequent item level & stat squishing.
• Raid sets are not returning, but there will be class-specific challenge sets.
• We'll reunite with the fallen spirits of Cairne, Saurfang, Varian, Vol'jin, Uther, and certain villains in a new "Champion system."
• Old Gods are not dead. They're 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.
• Death's Vanguard are the forces of death and are comprised of Elune, Helya, and others, who 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 transports the souls of its victims to the Shadowlands.
• Bwonsamdi is working or Hakkar, the Soulflayer, who seeks power for himself, also by consuming souls.
• The Void exploited the death 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 and consume more souls.
• Sylvanas propagated the war to usher souls toward Helya instead of Ny'alotha.
• Darkfront (see map above) is the starting point in the Shadowlands. There are three minor factions: Night Elves, Death Knights, and Helya/Sylvanas.
• Helya is kinder and prettier now.
• The main goal is to prevent Ny'alotha from consuming the souls of the fallen. Huge rivers of souls run through each zone.
• In Morbara, there will be all Blood Trolls that we killed in Nazmir. We help Bwonsamdi to overthrow Hakkar and reclaim his title as the Loa of Death.
• Alnir Riftlands is a crucible for the primordial energies that comprise the fabric of all realities, with portals to each one. It's the source of void incursions on Dragon Isles and the Emerald Dreams.
• Xiros is a semi-peaceful zone, where spirits go to rest according to lore. Main city is a sanctuary; there's a heavy presence of Ethereals.
• The plan is to deliver nine dungeons at launch, 5 in Shadowlands, and four on Dragon Isles.

Previously, Blizzard confirmed that Sylvanas would not end like Garrosh and this leak pretty much provides some back info about her actions. Strangely, the level squish would be postponed, though.

Here is Zack discussing Pyromancer's latest video about the Shadowlands leak.

4Chan Dev AMA Leak

The second leak also came from 4chan and was posted MMO-Champion. Apparently, a person from the Art team conducted an AMA, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Most of the stuff posted below is common sense.

Main Highlights

• Azshara survives in 8.2 (was posted on July 5th).
• Worgen Heritage Armor will be knight-like in Human form, and it will have nightmarish features in Worgen form.
• Goblin Heritage Armor is going to have a gold theme to it.
• Vulpera and Mechagnomes will be added in Patch 8.3.
• Patch 8.3 ends with the assault on Ny'alotha. Sylvanas makes herself the scapegoat to unite Horde and Alliance against the Old Gods. She absorbs the essence of N'Zoth and is killed and sent to the Shadowlands.
• Azeroth, the Titan, appears at the end of the final raid to save us from crumbling Ny'alotha.
• Ny'alotha is within the planet. A Titanic plain, where the Old Gods attempt to corrupt the Titan.
• The leak mentions an untitled Black Empire expansion; all zones are supposed to be updated for 2020, some will be merged. Updated Quel'thalas looks fantastic.
• The team is much bigger than during Cataclysm, so updating the world should not take as long and progress is reportedly "very far."
• Housing, new achievements, mounts, and social features are coming to guilds. Guild Halls will be customizable.
• Horde and Alliance are merging into one faction, no more crossroads.
• Many Allied Races are becoming customization options for existing races, and more customization options are being added.
  • Vulpera and Nightborne will be the only races not to become customization options.
• All Old Gods will be revived.
• 9.0 will have plenty of beta invites, and they need more people for testing, the beta will be available sooner as well.
• One of the patches is going to rely on undeath; something will be going on in Northrend.
• Titanforging is gone, but Warforging remains. There's no new Artifact Power grind system.
• The new expansion is going to have more dungeons available at the start.
• Gilneas and Silverpine Forest will be merged into one zone.
• Expect to go to K'aresh in the next expansion.
• Sylvanas supposedly dies, but we'll meet her in the Shadowlands.
• Night Elves will be making Dire Maul and Feralas their new home.
• Desolate Council returns to lead the Forsaken. The race is going to have more customization options, including no bones protruding through armor.
• The plan is to add the Tinker as the next Hero class available to Gnomes and Goblins. 
• Classes will be less pruned in 9.0.
• The leveling system in 9.0 will be more rewarding with a new talent system and unique class quests.
• Expansion servers for Classic may be coming after Blizzard sees how popular Classic really is.
• Bolvar was behind the stuff with Vol'jin.
• There are plans to bring Azshara back as an ally.
• They hope to learn from Classic about things to bring over to retail.
• Pandaren Death Knights are under consideration, but no other combinations.
• There are no plans to stop developing expansions so long as people buy them.
• Subscriptions are here to stay.
• There are no plans for Warcraft IV or a new movie right now.

World of Warcraft: Age of Darkness Leak

This leak's from 4chan, but the thread was deleted and reposted on Reddit. It's most likely fake, but it's worth noting that it has certain things in common with the Shadowlands, like the Tinker, a new Essence-like system. We also get some information about the ending of Battle for Azeroth. The following leak mentions Sylvanas ending up in chains, so it looks genuinely fake, but let's look at its highlights regardless.

Main Highlights

• Level cap squished to 50. New level cap is 60 (Vanilla 1-20, TBC / WoTLK / Cataclysm 20-30, MoP / WoD 30-40, Legion / BfA 40-50).
• New Class: Tinker - Ranged DPS (Explosives) / Combat Medic (healing specializations).
  • Tinkers will be limited to Gnomes, Mechagnomes, Draenei, Goblins, Gilgoblins, and Forsaken.
• Mechagnomes and Gilgoblins are supposedly coming in 8.3 or 8.3.5.
• N'Zoth unleashes darkness over Azeroth as foreshadowed in the Nighthold encounter with Star Augur Etraeus. The starting point is the attack on the Thunder Bluff raid, where N'Zoth interrupts both factions in the final battle.
• Kalimdor is his first goal as he strives to revive C'Thun in Silithus. To do this, he wants to destroy the Bronze Dragonflight and turn Nozdormu into Murozond, to alter the timeline where C'Thun doesn't get defeated in Ahn'Qiraj.
• The Bronze and Infinite Dragonflight will play a significant role in the expansion.
• Xal'atath is going to be the main antagonist of the Old Gods (chaotic neutral). She commands us to imprison Sylvanas instead of killing her.
• A partial old world revamp is planned, which only unlocks after you finish the new expansion's questline.
• Un'Goro, Feralas, Desolance, and Mulgore will be new high-level zones, Silithus will be an endgame zone akin to Suramar.
• Easter Kingdoms will be revamped at a later point with something special planned for Gilneas, Tirisfal and the Plaguelands.
• New features include an Essence-like system which unlocks at 50. Every class will get new skills and traits from 50-60, similar to the Glyph system we once had (5 sockets, 2 for passive traits, 2 for active skills, and 1 ultimate ability).
• Talent system will be reworked to incorporate offensive and defensive talents per bracket at level 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50, allowing you to pick one offensive and defensive talent per bracket.
• Conquest points will be account-wide, unlocked at level 60. You can spend them on different bonuses like more damage, higher movement speed.
• Release date is planned for Q4 2020, but it may be delayed.

Battle for Azeroth Ending

• Patch 8.2.5 will introduce new Heritage Armor and models.
• It will deal with the aftermath of the events from The Eternal Palace.
• The final 8.3 patch is set in Mulgore. It will be turned into a new max-level zone, similar to Mechagon with ongoing progress and weekly unlocks, culminating in the opening of the Thunder Bluff raid.
• Sylvanas is the final boss of the raid, Nathanos aids her and gets killed. Sylvanas will be wounded and imprisoned by her sisters.
• The plan is to release 8.3 this year, but it might not happen.
• Mechagnomes and Gilgoblins will be the final pair of Allied Races coming in 8.3(.5).
• Factions won't merge or get removed, there will be some neutrality, and inter-factional group play with communication enabled between both factions.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The season of leaks has started, and here are three interesting 9.0 concepts.

[blackstar128 30]

first two were saying the same thing basically, third one was a little different but all of them made sense. a lot of it was common sense but some stuff (like fate of sylvanas) were interesting.

[Durly 1]

A great deal of this sounds very encouraging, and some of it sounds almost too good to be true. Blizzard has announced a lot of things at Blizzcon before, cashed in on pre-sales, only to later slowly change the entire scope of an expansion over time.

Where I hope they are most cautious is the game systems. If they've taken note of the absence of an azerite system and lack of ability pruning points, they just need a solid rework of various class specs and talent systems so the game is that much more fun to play again. They don't necessarily have to try to reinvent the wheel again with talents, but if that is what it takes to finally address the current issues with talent systems, so be it. Mass ability pruning, then regurgitating many of them into the talent system was not necessarily the answer.

Something in the way of raid specific sets or interesting benefits there will be nice. None of these posts have said anything definitive yet about what direction they plan on taking Mythic + which is an important decision to what role it plays to raiding. Hopefully Blizzard has learned how to have things in the game w/o doing them in a way that might risk alienating people from naturally progressing into wanting to raid as an unfortunate product of item level inflation and huge gaps that they feel need to exist to support so many difficulty levels in M+ / raiding in the first place. There are ways to have a healthy existence of varying skills levels in the game while still encouraging players to literally enjoy and want to constantly feel they can improve at whatever specs they're playing.

Many of these story plot points, maps, concepts, and added character flavors etc. sound amazing. Worgen heritage armor all day. Old gods are bad *filtered*. Dragonflight always makes stuff interesting. I was ready to Beta test this expansion like 3 years ago. Some iteration of cross faction also sounds good in PvE, while keeping faction identity for the some PvP purposes and Warfronts etc. still makes some sense. Will be interesting to see where they go with that idea. A new class is appealing, but I hope they take the healing model in a different direction than they have for Legion/BfA. It does make sense that Sylvanas be a major plot point in BfA, and I hope they do that more of a justice than they did Gul'dan encounter.

If most of all this is done well, it already sounds like it will be worth the wait until 2020. BfA has some good overall content and story, but its had its shortfalls leftover from Legion in design flaws. Its encouraging to think Blizzard may have genuinely learned a lot from that, and are ready to breathe fresh energy into the game again after a couple of rough expansions in those categories. This already looks like it has a lot of potential to grow the game's playerbase.

[HugeMurloc 43]

I'm so over reading everywhere that Sylvanas is gonna die or she gonna get imprisoned. Just back off. She is the best Warchief the Horde ever had. A redemption story like the Kerigane quest line is more possible to happen

[Badadada 184]

I'm pretty sure there is a fake news team at Blizzard who come up with this nonsense, just to test the audience's common sense.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, K1ngMrglMrgl said:

I'm so over reading everywhere that Sylvanas is gonna die or she gonna get imprisoned. Just back off. She is the best Warchief the Horde ever had. A redemption story like the Kerigane quest line is more possible to happen

LOL

[Hellbender 1]

3 hours ago, K1ngMrglMrgl said:

I'm so over reading everywhere that Sylvanas is gonna die or she gonna get imprisoned. Just back off. She is the best Warchief the Horde ever had. A redemption story like the Kerigane quest line is more possible to happen

No thanks. I've been through more than enough of these with Blizzard as it is.

[Tupi 30]

The journalism is steadily going downhill on this website. The punctuation issues and typos are just terrible in that article.

[sckhar 14]

Thefirst one is the only one that actually makes some sense to me, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a true leak. 

[Borgoff33 101]

" The plan is to add the Tinker as the next Hero class available to Gnomes and Goblins " *filtered* you blizz

"All Old Gods will be revived" old gods CAN NOT be dead unless blizz is rewriting the lore/chronicles

" Vulpera and Mechagnomes will be added in Patch 8.3. " Vulpera better be real

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by Borgoff33

[Bobbis 208]

Titanforging is gone, but Warforging remains. There's no new Artifact Power grind system

TF I kinda like, since I don't always do cutting edge, it's nice to get it at times, also makes doing old world quests for gear a surprise.

However

No new AP grind, don't do that, don't give me hope...

 

11 hours ago, Tupi said:

The journalism is steadily going downhill on this website. The punctuation issues and typos are just terrible in that article.

Whilst you're correct, best to give examples to help them out. May be a non native writer, that wasn't checked correctly. Or just forgot spell check...

 

23 hours ago, Badadada said:

I'm pretty sure there is a fake news team at Blizzard who come up with this nonsense, just to test the audience's common sense.

OR a fake leak to test the water on things?

Edited July 26, 2019 by Bobbis
update

[Mcdermott 3]

Down with vulpera, up with gilben

[FabledNikita 0]

Totaly a Fake, with Ghostbuster gimmics?  This is the same as the first Fake leak. Not buying it.

[Lac 4]

On 7/25/2019 at 11:55 PM, K1ngMrglMrgl said:

I'm so over reading everywhere that Sylvanas is gonna die or she gonna get imprisoned. Just back off. She is the best Warchief the Horde ever had. A redemption story like the Kerigane quest line is more possible to happen

*filtered* no! Sylvanas is a lunatic *filtered*, not a warchief. She is way worse than garrosh...

[HugeMurloc 43]

6 hours ago, Lac said:

*filtered* no! Sylvanas is a lunatic *filtered*, not a warchief. She is way worse than garrosh...

Still a better leader than the Disney Princess of the Alliance

[Yolo 40]

29 minutes ago, K1ngMrglMrgl said:

Still a better leader than the Disney Princess of the Alliance

She is definitely not a Disney Princess. I mean she never bursted out singing ridicoloudly catchy songs in middle of her desperate times... Oh wait... 

[Scrooloose 0]

Shadowlands is the name of an Expansion for the 2001 MMO Anarchy online so they will be unable to use this name for copyright reasons. just shows how fake this is.

[Yridaa 490]

On 7/26/2019 at 8:01 PM, Borgoff33 said:

"All Old Gods will be revived" old gods CAN NOT be dead unless blizz is rewriting the lore/chronicles

 

This. Unless it got retconned since last I read the lore about this; The titans - during their war against the old gods - concluded that killing the old gods on Azeroth entirely would mean the extinction of Azeroth itself. The old gods themselves were - even at that time - too connected to Azeroth according to the Titans so they didn't want to take the risk.

 

This is the #1 reason all the old gods (on Azeroth, there are more elsewhere) were imprisoned and why you see all the titanic constructs everywhere across Azeroth with their safeguards and corruption countermeasures. For those curious, about most of it in-game is described by Algalon the Observer in Ulduar. There are other hints all over the game world too, both from said titanic constructs, Artifact weapons, and one of the more recent clues in specific: star augur Etraeus in Nighthold.

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, Yridaa said:

This. Unless it got retconned since last I read the lore about this; The titans - during their war against the old gods - concluded that killing the old gods on Azeroth entirely would mean the extinction of Azeroth itself. The old gods themselves were - even at that time - too connected to Azeroth according to the Titans so they didn't want to take the risk.

As for now, all Old Gods are considered dead, except for N'zoth (but there could be more sent to different planets). C'Thun has been dead by the time WoW comic was released, and there Cho'Gall tried to reanimate his husk (but he ended heavily mutated instead). They can die, but their "echo" can remain active, like with Y'shaarj's heart and Sha as a byproduct. Aman'Thul killed Y'shaarj, but his attack was so powerful that he damaged the land, so Titans decided to leave it to Titanforged, to imprison and guard other Old Gods. Titans feated that they themselves could do too much damage to planet with their own powers. At least that's how it is for now. Besides, Old Gods being that powerful is a remnant of old lore, as now they are established as mere creations and servants of Void Lords, so always a new Old God can be made, making them disposable.

There is also an inconsistency, as other source stated that Y'rshaarj has been killed by Mogu, rather than Aman'Thul.

As for those leaks, they look fake and mostly like a compilation of wish lists from forums.

[ToddiusZho 0]

If only ONE THING from these leaks can be true, PLEASE let it be the death of that disrespectful cur, Nathanos!

[gurupak 21]

Can WoW go into future? Introduce an alien race. Something new out of this Gods stuff. 

Please remove all those grinding and WQ from WoW.