Has there ever been an actual expansion leak that was correct?

[Soulwind]

Every single expansion without exception. Most only leaked shortly before the announcement, once all kinds of people outside of Blizzard were involved in setting up the stage and such.

WotLK and Cataclysm leaked in detail, they were featured in this very site. For Cataclysm, the whole alpha client leaked, so people datamined the shit out of it, too.

For MoP, the trademark appeared before anything else, which led to many fake leaks that got many things right, but I believe one with correct information appeared a week or so before Blizzcon.

WoD had its own thread with some outdated information a couple of weeks before the announcement. Probably from someone who was only involved early in development, before a bunch of stuff was cut or changed.

In Legion, a dude popped up in the expansion speculation megathread and in two posts gave a fairly small but accurate description the day before the announcement. People called him names and moved on without giving it much thought.

Something similar happened with Shadowlands, and it included a picture from the cinematic, Bolvar with blue eyes. That one got more attention, since people went back and forth trying to debunk or confirm the picture.

I don't exactly remember how BfA leaked, but I do remember watching the announcement and thinking "yep, just what I saw earlier".

Some links:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...K-Massive-leak
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...f-Draenor-LEAK
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...or-Leak-Inside
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...2#post35267612

[Stretchie]

Like we see them popping up at a mass rate atm. But has there ever been an expansion leak that was exactly how it turned out to be?
If so which expansion was that ?

Absolutely. I've seen leaks that exactly described every expac in advance since WoD. I did not believe many of them at the time and they got ridiculed but they were there.

"We'll spend an expac Time travelling to an alternate draenor? Worst fake leak ever!"

[ro9ue]

Most of the more concrete leaks happen a few days before the actual announcement as promo material is being more heavily dispersed. For Shadowlands a print of Bolvar leaked and the logo itself. To me at least, these were such high quality it 100% confirmed it that this was a leak. But on the other hand I remember a WoD one on this forum that was like 95% correct and looked just like all of these 10.0 leaks, and until it was officially announced there was no real way to discern it from a shitpost.

The thing is, most people have a fairly good idea about where the game is heading. I don't think it's out there to say the Dragon Isles will be the next set of zones and there will be a subplot of Light and Void. Anyone following the game could draw that conclusion. It's more of the specifics, new race or class. A new system with a specific name. I saw one 10.0 leak call the new system "Lairs" and one say it's about "World Shaping" and Azeroth is like the 5th element girl.

Getting more than one of those specifics right gives more credence to if it was a leak or not and really we can only look back at it in hindsight to know.

[Icecat]

I vividly remember WoD leaks being posted on this forum. Here's just one older thread if you want a blast from the past.

Even then people were saying that there was no way it was real lol. Nothing has changed. For the record, I believe the recent Dragon Isles leak. Time will tell.

[Khaza-R]

For historical leaks that ended up being real :

WoD - (Originally posted on SoL forums)
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...e-Leak-SOLgate

Legion : (Posted on Chinese fan site)
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-chinese-forum

BfA : (Posted on MMO-Champ - Original post deleted but quoted)
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post47813806

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Last cycle? No.

But just about every expansion has had a leak before that, including the famous Cataclysm mega-leak.

[MrLachyG]

None are ever 100% accurate as it’s mostly fake/guesswork. There was a WotLK leak that got necroed a few days ago that was pretty accurate but I don’t actually know if it was posted before or after the official announcement

[thunterman]

I remember a MoP leak months before official news, that was pretty much entirely correct, even to the point of naming each of the zones correctly. What small portion of his post was incorrect could easily have just been cut content.

[Wilian]

The Lich King expansion leak was most commonly discussed here.

It's what made this site big. It's probably responsible for why we are all still here.

This is the funny thing. MMO-Champ was the key site to visit for anything regarding WotLK because ton of info was leaked into it from alpha builds. That's what basically made this site. After that, when it became famous and more "official" in a sense with actual contact with Blizzard and Blizzard GMs making accounts here, that all changed. When Cata alpha stuff was posted, Blizzard roared and MMO-Champion deleted all traces of any potential leaks. What a show to watch.

[Blackmist]

The Cata one was pretty accurate, and everyone went "yeah right".

I'm sure half the time it's Blizzard pitching ideas to see which we hate the least.

[Relapses]

This is the funny thing. MMO-Champ was the key site to visit for anything regarding WotLK because ton of info was leaked into it from alpha builds. That's what basically made this site. After that, when it became famous and more "official" in a sense with actual contact with Blizzard and Blizzard GMs making accounts here, that all changed. When Cata alpha stuff was posted, Blizzard roared and MMO-Champion deleted all traces of any potential leaks. What a show to watch.

It's important to note that another draw of this website were the Class subforums. This was in the days before Discords so a lot of really good information was being discussed there; without the onus of the very toxic official forums or the absurd moderation of ElitistJerks. (Although there were a few power-trippy Class subforum mods back in the day.)

[arkanon]

Like we see them popping up at a mass rate atm. But has there ever been an expansion leak that was exactly how it turned out to be?
If so which expansion was that ?

Im not going to be able to find them, im sure others with more time will, but from memory:

- MoP (it was mocked and laughed at as a STUPID idea, because Blizzard would NEVER put furry pandas in their game)
- Legion
- SL
- WoD
- BFA

Basically ever expansion for a long, long time. HOWEVER, the forums are also FLOODED with throw away accounts spamming made up "leaks", and the correct leak is often lost in the ether. Additionally, a few of the "correct" leaks i have seen over the years contain errors and outdated information. I have absolutely zero doubt in my mind that we will see a correct leak on various sites / apps, but heres the kicker - we wont know its right until after its released, at which point most will have completely forgotten about the leak, where they read it, who posted it...

[Tziva]

I think we've had legitimate leaks every expansion, although often the threads get missed especially in a sea of fakes. IIRC the Warlords leak thread only got a few replies before it dropped off the first page and into oblivion. A lot of them -- I think Shadowlands was one example -- was also super last minute before the real announcement, the source of the leak probably being someone who saw promotional materials a bit early. We've had a number of them that predated the Blizzard reveal by a good amount of time though, but I do think it's been awhile since we had one of those.

I don't think you'd be able to find all the threads now, since I imagine we lost a lot of them in the GDPR compliance purge of old/untouched accounts who didn't confirm the terms.

[glowpipe]

Might be more legit leaks this time around, Considering all the drama that happened in Blizzard the past months. Probably many disgruntled employees

[Romanthony]

I think WOD leak, was true, and alot of shadowlands was leaked since the picture of Bolvar cinematic was shown months before hand

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The WoD leak on Scrolls of Lore (RIP). Everyone dismissed it as too absurd to be true. Then it turned out to be true, and opened Pandora's box because literally everything was now plausible as a legit WoW expansion.

[Amnaught]

I wish I could find the post, someone please link it.

There was a post by a new account on MMO Champion before WoD was released (even before the logo leaked) with a TLDR of the plot and name, with no features. Really short post. Everyone lol'd at how terrible that sounded. Then it was real. Crazy stuff.

[RobertMugabe]

AFAIK, no expansion has ever been actually leaked by a Blizzard employee or whatever.

Every time something happens it's because a trademark registration was discovered or Blizzard had intentionally or unintentionally pushed some asset into the live game.
And whenever things were legit leaked (such as wrath or art from bastion), this had always happened just days before their reveal, which is very likely been done by people outside of Blizzard.

- - - Updated - - -

It isn't every leak, but this spreadsheet collected close to 90 of ones for Shaowlands and none of them were correct.

So sad we didn't get Wrath of THE Bolvar

[Sayil]

First post here, but figured I remembered enough to contribute.

Now to start we have to establish where the real leaks came from. These would be either stuff from current patches that Blizzard slipped in, either by accident or intentionally, Trademark applications, real leaks via online, and lastly, stuff that pops up right before a real reveal from the various cons. Early on, the first two were a lot more common then we see now. Blizzard has gotten more careful about leaving stuff int he patches, and they now register trademarks in more obscure places, like Lesotho, instead of the more obvious ones.

BC: This was actually obvious because the original version of Outland as well as stuff as Kara and CoT were in the game, yet not properly accessible. At first this was going to be patched in content, but Blizzard decided to develop it further into an expansion. First leak was a trademark request This was followed right before Blizzcon by a magazine article that came out a few days earlier. Also interesting, the reveal of the Draenei was a huge shock, and only learned about during E3 much later. I remember when people saw the Velen art and though it could have been Khadgar after being mutated by fel energies from being stuck in Outland.

WotLK: First leak here was via some new bushes in the Sunwell patch labeled as being Howling Fjord (object). I think a Trademark request was noticed too. The bigger leak before the con happened here too, with more info, including about playable DK's.

Cataclysm: The first hints of content for this were the accidental inclusion of the icons for Hallows Eve masks for Goblins and Worgen in the Icecrown ptr. This was quickly followed up by a ton of false masks for Naga, Ogres and other races to try to cover this mistake. We got the now expected Trademark registration and the early Blizzcon leak. Cataclysm also had a major leak via the Alpha client getting all put up, which showed off a lot of the changes to the old world. We did know about Cataclysm being the expansion when this happened, of course, but not how extensive the changes were going to be.

MoP: Trademark registration here, found in June. The actual expansion was not fully revealed until Blizzcon, with the now customary pre-con leak. Because we had the name, it was a pretty easy guess it would have Brewmasters and Pandaren in it before we got more info. This was the last expansion that it was easy to find the trademark registration for, Blizzard got a lot sneakier about where they registered them after this one.

WoD: We had Iron Horde textures in the last MoP patch, so we knew it was a thing, but no specifics. As we got closer to Blizzcon we did some more in depth leaks, but the idea sounded so bizarre that it did not seem like it was real. Oops. We got the pre-con leak of course.

Legion: There was a strong hint it was going to involve the Legion based on story beats and the fact Hellfire Citadel had a ton of reworked demon models. That being said, there was that Chinese leak which was spot on, plus another one that was very brief but was very accurate.

BfA: By this time there were a ton of false leaks, so it was hard to pinpoint what was accurate. A number involved Azshara and/or N'zoth, but that may be just because they were some the last old big plotlines left. There were a few accurate leaks here and there.

Shadowlands: Pretty much everyone guessed the name just going by stuff from BfA. This one had some fakes with a lot of effort put into them. We got the really big proper leak right before Blizzcon, which was via one of Blizzard's third party merchants, plus the stuff from info taken from the con floor before Blizzcon opened. That was the first place we heard about Bastion and Kyrian, iirc.

10.0: Not trusting anything I see right now, and leaks may be harder to get, as any reveal will likely be presented online. The pre-con leaks always occurred from people not connected to Blizzard directly. Dragon Isles are a safe bet atm, just cause of stuff mentioned in game.

[Luxeley]

As far new features go - no, but as far as overall theme, art style and story - yes. Both WOTLK and Shadowlands were leaked, among other leaks at the time, bubbled to the surface and hit the mark.