My Life As A Gamer: We Have a Leak For WOW Mk. 9.

It's that time again. Time for speculation on what's coming next for World of Warcraft. This is from Pyromancer, one of the long-timers and after Nobbel (sic) the Noble he's a lore expert- such as lore is in this franchise. Here he is talking about a suspected leak for Version 9 of the game. This leak comes from 4chan's /vg/, which has been the source of many fakes and as well as hits in the past. You can follow along here; pic is here

Normally this is all fun and games, a good timewaster, because we rarely get this sort of info for real until much closer to an announcement, but this is different. Today Pyromancer appeared on Asmongold's livestream and he claims inside info that makes the previous video's information far more likely to be true than not.

Pyro points out that a good reason for why Blizzard wouldn't hit him with a DMCA takedown request is because that would be taken as a soft-confirmation of the leak, and if the goal is to discredit a leak that's the dumb thing to do. (It's dumb for another reason; wild speculation keeps up engagement, and engagement is key to subscribing and playing the game.) I'd like to also point out that if this is legit, then it is from a work in progress and the final product will be different from what's mentioned here; it doesn't have to be 100% accurate to be a legit leak.

So, let's go with this being legit. What does it mean?

They're out of ideas.

The problem is simple: they are unwilling to just end the game. Understandable, but everything has a lifespan and MMORPGs are no different. They don't know when to stop, and this is not confined to the Warcraft IP; they had the same problem with the Starcraft and Diablo properties, and while it's sad to see them go it's better for the company as well as the industry and the culture that they do so.

They've been struggling since Wrath of the Lich King, when the momentum they had from the Warcraft RTS games finally cleaned up the last of the plot threads therein. That time--2010--should have been the time when Blizzard shut down the servers and moved on, but they got addicted to the cash coming in. Flying high on hubris, they launched Cataclysm, and watched one happen to their subscribers; this tailspin continued until Legion, wherein they got a respite due to finally getting off their ass and putting out another scenario that again cleaned up lingering old plot threads from deep in the game's lore.

Again, they should have ended the game then. Again they didn't; now riding the tiger, and with Activision in the driver's seat--and yes, they are; the corporate behavior is the best indicator--they displayed rationalization that EA would approve of and kept going with the present (and not good) expansion: Battle For Azeroth. Rushed out the door, not properly tested, and and it showed; for the third expansion in a row--at the least--the launch resulted in widespread player dissatisfaction that lead to a rise-and-fall of subscribers whose trajectory resembled the Coyote trying to bombard the Roadrunner.

As I expected, this current expansion wouldn't become acceptable--not ideal, not good, merely acceptable--until the present patch (v8.2) where things finally got into the shape they should have been at launch. Now we're looking at the next expansion already, and it's clear that the dev team is so future-obsessed that they regard their work as completely disposable so quality control is bare-bones at best due to the entire "fix it in post" mentality. This, coupled with the habit of using patch content as testbeds for future game mechanics, means that we can already see where and how the alleged leaks square with reality. (e.g. The Tinker class likely works the way Junkyard Tinkering does in Mechagon, which is a big middle finger to anyone doing Engineering.)

This leak presents the next expansion as the sort of make-it-up-as-you-go that I'd routinely do running D&D games. That's fine for individual tables. That's not good for a commericial MMORPG, and it shows in the gains--especially by Final Fantasy XIV--made by its competitors. Both the game's mechanics and its narratives are lacking, and it's increasing dependence on cynical retention gimmicks shows this to be true. I'm not the only one with one foot out the door already; the revelation, and the test period, has to return to old Blizzard "done when its done" levels of competence or I'm gone- and millions like me will follow. Blizzard has to know this; the question then becomes if they have the will to do it or not.