[SPECULATION] 9.0 information

[Xaihn]

Scary if real

[Aeula]

No Blurry pictures taken on your phone? No ‘leaked’ website? No Script? No login screen?

Come on man, you need to do better than that!

[Jibjub]

I've always wondered what compelled people to draft up these fantasies. I guess we'll never know!

[Asphyx22]

I've always wondered what compelled people to draft up these fantasies. I guess we'll never know!

I think they do it because it can be fun to come up with expansion ideas. It also fuels the hype for upcoming expansions.

[Jibjub]

I think they do it because it can be fun to come up with expansion ideas. It also fuels the hype for upcoming expansions.

I'm all for a "fan-fic" expansion, but label it as such. Always thought it was weird to claim "leak" ... oh well! When this turns out to be true, I'll come back and eat my shoe.

[voidillusion]

https://www.ownedcore.com/forums/wor...wakenings.html

Coincidences...

[Razzako]

LMFAO. Nice bait

Although I almost believe blizzard would try to show up to the battle royal game 2 years too late. They did it with HOTS and they can do it again

Pretty sure it's still a good time considering APEX just launched and it was a hit.

[Hitei]

Real expansion leaks have pretty much always been story based with minor info on features, not feature based with minor info on story. There's also a wide variety of problems here:

•"8.3 won't be about old gods or the shadowlands" just immediately makes this entire post doubtful. You clearly forgot that N'zoth was the tease for what comes after 8.2 at Blizzcon, so 8.3 will 100% be about Old Gods. Why would they even bring up old gods and then not use them to destroy the world?
•Why would Org and Stormwind be the ones that are bombed? They are the two cities that already underwent extreme revamping. You have Darnassus and UC already poised to be rebuilt if this expansion timeskips, and if you were going to focus on cities in a "revamp azeroth" expansion based on putting the other expansions in CoT to create a logical story progression, then very, very obviously the two you'd see revamped are Exodar and SMC, because you have to revamp those starting areas or they make zero sense (Are all blood elf and Draenei characters now going to come from the Caverns of Time? The fact that you didn't address these regions at all is an immediate red flag.
•Awakenings is a generic subtitle. From a purely business perspective Blizzard does not use these. Expansions are either named after a wow specific major events or zones. (Burning (Legion's) Crusade, Lich King, (the) Cataclysm, Pandaria, Draenor, (Burning) Legion, Azeroth). Which is to say, expansions are never named abstract, meaningless terms, they always refer to a concrete part of the game.
•How is a vertical landmass composed of floating rocks "maze-like"?
•Why would they level squish to 70 as a new cap rather than 60? Also they've already commented on how 5 level expansions don't feel great, why would they not make it 60-70?
•If the expansion is about rebuilding and new beginnings, why is the max level questing experience "deep in the past", also why would you not know and say what this is?
•Battle Royale is just not viable on a technical level. The core factor of a battle royal is that there is a fairly level playing field on drop in. Specs in the game completely lack any balance in a 1v1 PvP environment. Rogues, druids and hunters would have a massive, massive advantage by virtue of being able to just sit in stealth early on and let 80%+ of the competition kill each other off. Healers would also cause massive issues, because they'd completely drag out the game time (can you imagine the last five people alive all being healing specs?) You can't progressively limit healing either, because then you completely gimp all those specs while everyone else is able to fight normally.

[Zyrinx]

I’m usually skeptic about all these leaks but I really think heilrooms are cancer and should be removed or at last replaced in some other way that doesn’t affect gearing. They were needed in wrath since leveling sucked back then but why need them today if leveling feels good and fast? (If we’ll ever get a leveling revamp since the current one sucks too)

What an... odd.... take?

[Brocksley]

Looks like as dumb of an idea as BFA was, so I'll give it an 80% chance of being true.

[Voidism]

Heh, heilroom removal. I did nazi that coming.

Anyways, I like this "leak". Hope it's true!

[Frolk]

wall of trash

This garbage has to stop

Im guessing this is a leak, but from an orifice.

[Azalar]

I'd buy this tbh

[Knaar]

right, new content designed around *flying* yeah sure, 100% true no doubts about that!

Nie try tho.

[THEORACLE64]

terrible fan fic.

[Jujudrood]

I liked it up until you said hierlooms are being deleted, there is no way they'd let people sink SO much gold into them just to delete the system entirely. Especially considering if we are to believe that expacs are developed years in advance, that it would make zero sense to add a 110-120 upgrade this patch if the plan was to remove the system.

To be fair, they used to cycle justice/valor with each patch and convert to gold.
I could potentially see them returning gold at a slight discounted rate, maybe at a 50% discount of original cost, given that you can use timewarped badges and other such currencies to get the upgrade tokens for them as well as gold.
The benefit is that, if you've upped your to 120, is that you get to use them today; that's the cost of gold.
Then, come 9.0, you get a prorated refund.


But anywho, more to topic, a lot of this sounds fairly plausible, vague as it is, but it really seems more like a collection of things that have been said everywhere else (much like every leak ever).
Will any of it happen? Meh, who knows.

But, to entertain the notion that any of this is actually in scope:
- Not facing N'Zoth *could* be pulled off, if that turns out to be Sylvanas' "hero play" to save the world and sacrifice herself or whatever other kind of weird nonsense they go with.
I have a feeling the "super evil" Sylvanas will have ulterior motives that are supposed to change our opinions of her, so this could be one.
She handles the "real" threat while the rest of us destroy each other under his influence, resulting in us stopping once she makes the ultimate sacrifice and us realizing "war is bad, m'kay".

- 5 years forward gives them breathing room to write a story that makes sense in the transition of time. Jumping from "brothers in arms" with our class halls, fighting demons, then immediately like "ooh, shiny earth blood, kill all!" was a bit.... much. In 5 years, they bridge things, have the world more organically change, tie up loose ends, give us new faces, you name it.

- Tinker has been on this forum for like, what, 10 years? I mean, what's a "leak" without it?

- Edge of Time has also been a thing about past xpacs that's paired with the level squish idea that's been floating around since WoD pushed us to 100. A level squish makes perfect sense, Ion has mentioned the team is considering avenues, so perfectly plausible, then just shove the old xpacs into a portal room of sorts and let them just be.

- Battle Royale ... well, sounds much more like free-for-all PVP, I guess? Meh, don't really care to even try to think about this one really. BR has been done to death elsewhere.

[Laqweeta]

...... you actually believe a leak from a one post account? really?

- - - Updated - - -



I have brought this up in the site feedback section before but yeah they didn't reply favourably

Why would anyone NOT USE a throwaway account to post a leak that's likely under a NDA? I'd use a throwaway too, much like people do on reddit.

[matrix123mko]

Blizzard is willing to take some risks this time

After all PR disasters we had since last Blizzcon, I think Blizzard will be even more careful. They may do something big, but it must not be controversial this time.

- - - Updated - - -

Stopped reading at 5 years
Never will Blizzard do a timeskip

I even like that. Anduin grows up with me.

[Monster Hunter]

This is a leak, feel free not to believe what I say but I have some confirmed details from a couple of sources regarding the end of Bfa and the expansion after that. I will delete this post if it gets too much attention.

First things first, 8.3 won't be about old gods or the shadowlands. I will be all about what will be know as the great "battle for azeroth", a big conflict between both factions resulting in a completely ruined Azeroth. Both Orgrimmar and Stormwind will be heavily bombarded, few quite important characters will die and so on.

The next expansion will take place 5 years after Bfa and will be about healing and building a new, peaceful Azeroth. The expansion will be called "World of Warcraft: Awakenings" (If Legion and bfa names weren't stupid enough) and it will be like a second Cataclysm but better. It is now the perfect opportunity for the story to introduce new characters and potential new villains. As for gameplay, Blizzard is willing to take some risks this time with a level squish and a very ambitious world reborn. As for other key features, there will be a new, and expected mail wearing class: "tinker" with 3 specs (tank, dps and a melee healer?) available for humans, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, belfs, orcs and a few allied races if I remember correctly.There will be some signficant class changes.

Only two new zones will be added this expansion and both are being designed around flying: "Dragon Isles" (old god and dragon themed landmass) and a new and huge version of Caverns of time called "Edge of time" ( a huge, quite vertical and maze-like landmass composed of some rocks floating in space, something really different ). The rest of the work will be on the old world with mostly new or revamped questlines. The goal for this revamp is to make Azeroth fell relevant to both new and capped characters. This will be done in many ways ranging from Interesting treasures, world quests to AI encounters, new faction system and all sorts of events. They are also looking in making character progression relevant. Many of the past expansions assets will also help a lot in rebuilding the world. The first raid tier will be about the infinite dragonflight.

Now, the level squish. All current characters levels will be squished to 60, with 70 being the definitive level cap. Heilrooms are being removed. From 1-70 you can level in the new Azeroth. At level 30,you will be sent to Edge of time if you decide to level in past expansions (At 30: tbc,wrath 40:cata, mop 50:wod, legion or bfa) and at level 65 you will chose to level in one of the 2 new zones. There will also be a Suramar-like experience somewhere deep in the past. Starter edition cap will be increased to 40 and Blizzard will advertise this as Wow becoming free to play, kinda.

Another crazy feature that is being worked on is a Battle Royale experience, available at a very low level with its own progression system and it will be non-canon, meaning that it is open for all sorts of crazy stuff and ideas. It will use the full potential of island expedition tech combined with other popular battle royale game features.

This is all i know, Blizzard is willing to go crazy next expansion but the most important thing is that Classic wow will come out and they will have that if something goes wrong and the release date for it will be announced in a couple of weeks. 9.0 will be announced at Blizzcon as usual.

Not gonna comment much on its validity but this is plausible.

We know the leveling experience is fucked.
We know classes need a post legion redesign thanks to arty loss
We know we have a huge hole in mail class and ranged dps
We know its about time for a big revamp
We know they have tested whole zone phasing
We know they have been talking about a level squish

I like all of this concept. It fixes Alot of issues and is essentially a wow relaunch that's imo much needed.

[AngerFork]

Ah. Another leak, another time for some analysis. As always, I don't believe a word of this leak will actually come true (they rarely ever do), but it's far more fun for me to debate the leaks as though they are true and point out issues where I see them.

First things first, 8.3 won't be about old gods or the shadowlands. I will be all about what will be know as the great "battle for azeroth", a big conflict between both factions resulting in a completely ruined Azeroth. Both Orgrimmar and Stormwind will be heavily bombarded, few quite important characters will die and so on.

This actually sounds weirdly plausible and doesn't disqualify N'Zoth from being the end boss. We've already seen with BoDA that Blizz is not afraid to give different experiences to the Alliance and the Horde. If the first part of the raid is ransacking the capital cities, then we go to fight N'Zoth after we find that this war ends pointlessly, that would tie up the War and the N'Zoth plotlines. That also ties in with Sylvanas' wishes in BTS. I do feel like the cinematics team would be working overtime to make all the cinematics needed for both sides in this case.

The next expansion will take place 5 years after Bfa and will be about healing and building a new, peaceful Azeroth. The expansion will be called "World of Warcraft: Awakenings" (If Legion and bfa names weren't stupid enough) and it will be like a second Cataclysm but better. It is now the perfect opportunity for the story to introduce new characters and potential new villains. As for gameplay, Blizzard is willing to take some risks this time with a level squish and a very ambitious world reborn. As for other key features, there will be a new, and expected mail wearing class: "tinker" with 3 specs (tank, dps and a melee healer?) available for humans, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, belfs, orcs and a few allied races if I remember correctly.There will be some signficant class changes.

First, that title is hideous and needs to be reworked. Tinkers I've been more and more expecting to be the new class, this setup would absolutely fit. That being said, Blizz has seen the issues with Cataclysm and how much work it was to rework every zone, so that seems an odd direction. As for new characters/villains, Blizz is already doing that with each expansion. A five year story gap also feels like a weird choice, but if they are trying to make it a "second Cataclysm", it almost seems like a necessity unless the Old Gods win.

Only two new zones will be added this expansion and both are being designed around flying: "Dragon Isles" (old god and dragon themed landmass) and a new and huge version of Caverns of time called "Edge of time" ( a huge, quite vertical and maze-like landmass composed of some rocks floating in space, something really different ). The rest of the work will be on the old world with mostly new or revamped questlines. The goal for this revamp is to make Azeroth fell relevant to both new and capped characters. This will be done in many ways ranging from Interesting treasures, world quests to AI encounters, new faction system and all sorts of events. They are also looking in making character progression relevant. Many of the past expansions assets will also help a lot in rebuilding the world. The first raid tier will be about the infinite dragonflight.

While I try to look at each of these leaks as plausible, I feel this paragraph is the one that makes it the least plausible of all. Blizz has built up a gating system for flight that while not flawless seems to be working thus far. They also don't have the weird reasons early flight was necessary that they did in Cata (same area zones), so building the new areas specifically for flight seems unlikely. The zones however do make sense otherwise. "New faction system" could be interesting, particularly pending how it comes out of the 5 year gap.

Now, the level squish. All current characters levels will be squished to 60, with 70 being the definitive level cap. Heilrooms are being removed. From 1-70 you can level in the new Azeroth. At level 30,you will be sent to Edge of time if you decide to level in past expansions (At 30: tbc,wrath 40:cata, mop 50:wod, legion or bfa) and at level 65 you will chose to level in one of the 2 new zones. There will also be a Suramar-like experience somewhere deep in the past. Starter edition cap will be increased to 40 and Blizzard will advertise this as Wow becoming free to play, kinda.

Removing heirlooms seems weird. Perhaps their XP addition could be removed if leveling is adjusted right, but given how much money people have put in their upgrades, Blizz will have a lot of unhappy players if they are just "removed." It's also weird that Blizz would lower everyone's level to 60, but start the new zones for leveling at 65. That would put us doing 5 levels of old world content until we get to the "new zones." Doesn't seem plausible.

Another crazy feature that is being worked on is a Battle Royale experience, available at a very low level with its own progression system and it will be non-canon, meaning that it is open for all sorts of crazy stuff and ideas. It will use the full potential of island expedition tech combined with other popular battle royale game features.

Battle Royale might make for an interesting direction to take Islands as a next expansion feature, especially if that new faction system adds in a third non-player AI-based faction. Could make for some fun BGs, which the Battle Royale could be the first introduction to.