Next Expansion Leak?

[MoanaLisa]

I thought that a moderator would know better.
in fact mop was leaked in 2011 on this forum, yes on mmo-champion i can't find the topic because it was deleted most likely but here's the proof
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3341758764 posted on: 10/13/2011

Except that practically everything in that post is wrong. So I don't know if it qualifies as a leak or not. Hilarious thread though in retrospect.

[Deleted]

Obligatory wish for Blizzard, when they go to trademark the next expansion, to trademark half a dozen names both possible and ridiculous to troll everyone. Would go far to make up for the <satire> lacklustre slap-in-the-face </satire> effort on the first of April this year. Go ahead. Trademark "Emerald Dream", "Gators of Un'Goro" and other things. Will be fun to watch.

They won't do anything of the sort. Trademarking a name is no joke, it's serious legal business, there are certain rules connected to it. It also isn't cheap to trademark a name, I'd rather they put their income of subscriptions in developing the game itself instead of trolling their subscribers.

[HardCoder]

It also isn't cheap to trademark a name,

Sure it is. The filing costs are negligible unless you're a poor college student. What's not cheap is all the research associated with filing a trademark application to ensure it won't be successfully challenged, doesn't spell something obscene in a foreign language, et cetera. In addition there is a difference between "trademark" and "registered trademark" but I'll let Google and Wikipedia fill you in on that.

[Abysal]

http://tess2.uspto.gov

Word and/or Design Mark Search (Structured)
Search term:

("BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT")[ON]

There doesn't appear to be anything new yet.

Also just to add some facts to this thread:

Mists of Pandaria trademark:
Filing Date July 28, 2011
Announcement date October 21, 2011
Release date September 25, 2012

Cataclysm trademark:
Filing Date June 26, 2009
Annoucement date August 21, 2009
Release date December 7, 2010

Wrath of the Lich King trademark:
Filing Date July 28, 2007
Announcement date August 3, 2007
Release date November 13, 2008

The Burning Crusade trademark:
Filing Date May 3, 2005
Announcement date Oct 28th, 2005
Release date January 16, 2007

Trademark filings have been anywhere from 5 months before Annoucement/Blizzcon to 5 days for the previous expansions.

The timetable this time around is a bit strange. If they announce at Blizzcon like always and spend a whole year from announcement to release, that will mean over 25 months of MoP and probably over a year of 5.4/Siege of Orgrimmar given their current patch release rate. That's not going to happen unless their goal is to kill off many subscriptions once and for all. So what alternatives does that leave us with? Either they announce before Blizzcon (unlikely) or they announce at Blizzcon and almost immediately begin their internal Alpha testing (compared to 4 months after announcing MoP). Which would push the release date to late Spring to mid Summer 2014.

[Zakkimatsu]

im sure mmo champ will pick up on it before anyone else does since they have "people" who know stuff

[Xilurm]

If they follow their usual pattern, were not gonna see the next expansion until late 2014. MoP really isn't that old.

You mean late 2013? Cause MoP IS that old. Like every other expansion before it. Expansion gets released, then the next year we see the trailer for the new expansion.
MoP was released in 2012. We will see the new expansion this Blizzcon. They always have done that. Why would it change now?

[Yogg-Saron, God of Death]

You mean late 2013? Cause MoP IS that old. Like every other expansion before it. Expansion gets released, then the next year we see the trailer for the new expansion.
MoP was released in 2012. We will see the new expansion this Blizzcon. They always have done that. Why would it change now?

Plus they intend not to leave us hanging like in Cataclysm. The patch cycles are smaller and they want to bring out expansions faster. Whether they will succeed is another thing -- but they're already working on the next expansion as it is, so it might even be released sooner, as they intend to.