(Leak?) Redshirt guy finds release date, main villain and allied race with preorder

[Iain]

Nice to see a leak getting things right for once.

[Khaza-R]

Why? BfA's Allied races were revealed at Blizzcon, but it was not revealed that they would be part of the preorder bonus. Neither was the preorder date revealed.

Could be the information was old and that it was intended for a pre-order but later moved to just be a feature for 9.2.5 to try and get people to re-sub. The whole Nov release date seems either wrong or outdated so its possible other tidbits were off too.

[Stone Dude]

Nice to see a leak getting things right for once.

All of the info, that we know is right, was already known to people that were in the 10.0 speculation thread here because of Scaleface.

All of the additional info is not confirmed yet. We don't know the release date or the main villain, and Q1 for 2023 is rather unlikely since they don't even have a preorder ready yet, and therefore can't even give us a "will release on or before" date yet.

[Iain]

There's a difference between having a few hits amongst the misses and having no misses amongst the hits.

[Alanar]

Im expecting many, many allied races, all extremely diverse:

Red Elves
Blue Elves
Short Elves
Fat Elves
Poor Elves
Rich Elves
Left handed Elves
Elves named Bruce
Elves with regular ears but still totally Elves
Elves that love bananas
Elves that are not fond of Bananas
Elves that are indifferent to Bananas
.

You forgot Vegan elf and gender neutral elf

[Amnaught]

I saw that one too.

Around that time, the community had already guessed that the class would be Evoker and Scaleface had just posted his picture and some people were guessing draconic names for the race. They possibly had already called out Dracthyr in the thread when that guy made his post on 4chan.

He probably just read Evoker and Dracthyr in the MMO-Champion thread and thought, let's give it a shot and throw out more information.

The "leak" says Dragonflight Covenant. Was anything like this shown?

Confirmed, yes, the flights have a renown system. You level them separately, no player power attached, and you dont need to choose one and be locked out of the others.

[Rathwell]

Night Elves

Blood Elves

Nightborne

Void Elves

Drac'thyr Male Elves

Darkfallen

Please, no more Elves ffs

The worst part is that not only are they all elves but...

Blood Elves, Void Elves, Dracthyr male Elves, and Darkfallen are all the same damn base model four times.

They'll have given us the same model as a playable race FOUR TIMES.

I don't get it, why are they so in love with the Blood Elf base? It has a weird posture which makes armor not look too good on 'em. They'd be great if they'd just stand up straight so armor wouldn't look so odd

[Supertoster]

The worst part is that not only are they all elves but...

Blood Elves, Void Elves, Dracthyr male Elves, and Darkfallen are all the same damn base model four times.

They'll have given us the same model as a playable race FOUR TIMES.

I don't get it, why are they so in love with the Blood Elf base? It has a weird posture which makes armor not look too good on 'em. They'd be great if they'd just stand up straight so armor wouldn't look so odd

They reuse old models because WoW players have really low standards and are okay with recycled content. Blizz is small indie company, after all....

[Alanar]

They reuse old models because WoW players have really low standards and are okay with recycled content. Blizz is small indie company, after all....

But we are not, that's where the fun part starts:d

[LostSinclair]

There were 2 big leaks that had waaay to much accurate information to not have some sort of source.

One of them swore it would be released Nov 2022 and that LK classic would be Sep 2022, and that he would delete his account if he were wrong( it's 13 years old and he's predicted/leaked correct shit at least 3 times now since Legion)

The other (the one mentioned here) suggest a Q1 '23 release, sounds slightly more believable AND he mentions a preorder Allied Race(don't you think they would have at least hinted about something big like that for the PR?) but not one peep has been heard from Blizzard yet, so the jury is still out.

Person opinion, I'm hoping for Nov, it's still 7 months away which is a decent amount of time to get through Alpha and Beta and more believable than people think if you count the fact that Shadowlands had plenty of content and manpower cut from it to recreate Legion 2,0 revival. I think the reason Blizzard hasn't announced anything yet is because they know they have little to no goodwill left with the player base at the moment and if they make an 'official' announcement for the release and then have to delay it... Well they aren't saying shit until they know they can push it out the door when needed in working order.

If they Allied Race thing is true the Tuskar seem like a good bet, those new pixels are no joke and now they have female models and children. I don't know where the dark fallen thing came from(like literally don't know. I tried to look through that link but 4chan makes no sense to me. If someone could summarize it for me I'd appreciate it)

[Rathwell]

Q1 2023??

It's fucking April ffs

Q1 makes a lot of sense if we look at the past. Look at it like this:

TBCs final patch was 233 days.
Cataclysms final patch was 301 days.
Battle for Azeroth's final patch was 314 days.
Legion's final patch was 349 days
WotLK's final patch was 364 days.
WoD's final patch was 434 days
MoP's final patch was a whooping 460 days

Add all of 'em together and divided by seven (2445/7 = 349.285) we can see that the average final patch for an expansion is about 349 days long.


Shadowlands' final patch release February 22nd, 2022. Q1 2023 ends on March 31st, which would be 403 days from the release of Shadowlands' final patch. Meaning..

If Dragonflight launched on the absolute last day of Q1 2023, it'd still be a shorter wait than in both Warlords of Draenor and Mists of Pandaria.

If Dragonflight launched on the first day of Q1 2023, it'd be a 314 days final patch, meaning it'd be the third shortest wait in between expansions we've ever had (tied with BFA)



So tl;dr - Q1 2023 seems an entirely reasonable and expected launch date. It means the wait will be longer than in TBC and Cataclysm, but shorter than in WoD and MoP

[HansOlo]

Q1 makes a lot of sense if we look at the past. Look at it like this:

TBCs final patch was 233 days.
Cataclysms final patch was 301 days.
Battle for Azeroth's final patch was 314 days.
Legion's final patch was 349 days
WotLK's final patch was 364 days.
WoD's final patch was 434 days
MoP's final patch was a whooping 460 days

Add all of 'em together and divided by seven (2445/7 = 349.285) we can see that the average final patch for an expansion is about 349 days long.


Shadowlands' final patch release February 22nd, 2022. Q1 2023 ends on March 31st, which would be 403 days from the release of Shadowlands' final patch. Meaning..

If Dragonflight launched on the absolute last day of Q1 2023, it'd still be a shorter wait than in both Warlords of Draenor and Mists of Pandaria.

If Dragonflight launched on the first day of Q1 2023, it'd be a 314 days final patch, meaning it'd be the third shortest wait in between expansions we've ever had (tied with BFA)



So tl;dr - Q1 2023 seems an entirely reasonable and expected launch date. It means the wait will be longer than in TBC and Cataclysm, but shorter than in WoD and MoP

That is NOT how you do estimates. This is equivalent to how many days did you walk around since last time, before you went to bathroom.

We are still not in alpha. When we reach beta - 10/10 times you can add 6months on top to get a pretty good estimate of the release date.
Why does it work like that? Because you got templates on how long testing should last. And it's always 6(+/- 1month)of beta testing.

If we reach beta - latest august 2022 - we will still have a Q1 2023 release.

Given the alpha should take atleast 3 months - we need to enter alpha latest end of may 2022.
If not - we won't get a Q1 release(mostly because beta testing got delayed).

My guess is feb/march 2023, if we don't get hit by antoher pandemic and the testing flows.

[Compher]

Q1 makes a lot of sense if we look at the past. Look at it like this:

TBCs final patch was 233 days.
Cataclysms final patch was 301 days.
Battle for Azeroth's final patch was 314 days.
Legion's final patch was 349 days
WotLK's final patch was 364 days.
WoD's final patch was 434 days
MoP's final patch was a whooping 460 days

Add all of 'em together and divided by seven (2445/7 = 349.285) we can see that the average final patch for an expansion is about 349 days long.


Shadowlands' final patch release February 22nd, 2022. Q1 2023 ends on March 31st, which would be 403 days from the release of Shadowlands' final patch. Meaning..

If Dragonflight launched on the absolute last day of Q1 2023, it'd still be a shorter wait than in both Warlords of Draenor and Mists of Pandaria.

If Dragonflight launched on the first day of Q1 2023, it'd be a 314 days final patch, meaning it'd be the third shortest wait in between expansions we've ever had (tied with BFA)



So tl;dr - Q1 2023 seems an entirely reasonable and expected launch date. It means the wait will be longer than in TBC and Cataclysm, but shorter than in WoD and MoP

The final patch of SL isn't out yet. There will be a Season 4 that has already been announced with details, and just because it doesn't have anything new doesn't mean it won't be a full season and that will likely be the actual "final patch". Considering season 3 is only like a month and a half in, and the seasons have been around 5 months long, Season 4 to begin around October-ish, then that's when your estimated 350 days starts. I'm thinking Q3 or Q4 2023.

[HansOlo]

The final patch of SL isn't out yet. There will be a Season 4 that has already been announced with details, and just because it doesn't have anything new doesn't mean it won't be a full season and that will likely be the actual "final patch". Considering season 3 is only like a month and a half in, and the seasons have been around 5 months long, Season 4 to begin around October-ish, then that's when your estimated 350 days starts. I'm thinking Q3 or Q4 2023.

I will disagree(even thou you make sense).

Release day = 1st day of beta plus 6months. Question is - when do we enter beta.

[Aeula]

Darkfallen would be nice.

[Amnaught]

Why would Blizzard not announce a new Allied Race as part of their big reveal? Sounds unlikely.

Why else would they not announce a preorder? Darkfallen as part of the Prepatch event.

[wushootaki]

Im going to shoot myself if they blurt out Tuskarr before Sethrak.

Then again, while i don't give a rats ass, more people want those than Ogres and i can get behind them as a more unique thing. We will see if this isnt just another stupid hoax.

God...Ogres need to happen. Frick Blizzard.

[Prenderghast]

If they Allied Race thing is true the Tuskar seem like a good bet, those new pixels are no joke and now they have female models and children. I don't know where the dark fallen thing came from(like literally don't know. I tried to look through that link but 4chan makes no sense to me. If someone could summarize it for me I'd appreciate it)

Do you mean that you're not sure why people are speculating it could be Darkfallen? If so, here's what I know (spoiler alert):
-The recent Sylvanas book made a point of redefining the term "Darkfallen" to include both San'layn, all Dark Rangers, and essentially all undead elves with red eyes and no rot
-A Dark Ranger-related quest datamined that takes place in Tirisfal Glades (given by Death Hunter Moorgoth, and the text discusses Dark Ranger Velonara and a "newly-raised" Dark Ranger apprentice)
-An updated map of certain areas of Tirisfal Glades datamined
-Dark Ranger related items datamined alongside Scarlet Crusade propaganda such as a poster doodad that says "Dark Rangers, Dark Times"
-A new skin/texture was added to the files that seems to be an HD update for Dark Ranger Velonara (not confirmed it's her, but it resembles an HD version of her current armor and does not match Sylvanas in various ways)
-The hanging story thread of both Night Elf/Blood Elf dark rangers going to Calia for guidance
-The new blood elf Ghostlands quest chain involves a San'layn as the main baddie, showing there are still San'layn kicking around in EK

Sources for these: the 9.0/10.0 speculation thread (where most of the datamining also gets discussed), Redshirtguy's twitter, Wowpedia article for Darkfallen

The main view I've seen people express is that it seems like Blizzard is redefining and building up a "Darkfallen" allied race composed of undead elves with red eyes, with players who take a hunter/rogue class as representing the dark rangers and players who take a mage/warlock class as representing San'layn. Some even think the Darkfallen race would be neutral, with Alliance Darkfallen using the undead night elf model, and Horde Darkfallen using the undead blood elf model. Others think this may be building up to a dark ranger class skin for hunters. Whether it's one of those options or something else entirely, there's something going on with undead elves and Tirisfal Glades in the files.

[NED funded]

Im going to shoot myself if they blurt out Tuskarr before Sethrak.

Then again, while i don't give a rats ass, more people want those than Ogres and i can get behind them as a more unique thing. We will see if this isnt just another stupid hoax.

Fr fr

Arakkoa and Sethrak is all Blizzard needs to keep me subbed for life

[LostSinclair]

"-The recent Sylvanas book made a point of redefining the term "Darkfallen" to include both San'layn, all Dark Rangers, and essentially all undead elves with red eyes and no rot
-A Dark Ranger-related quest datamined that takes place in Tirisfal Glades (given by Death Hunter Moorgoth, and the text discusses Dark Ranger Velonara and a "newly-raised" Dark Ranger apprentice)
-An updated map of certain areas of Tirisfal Glades datamined
-Dark Ranger related items datamined alongside Scarlet Crusade propaganda such as a poster doodad that says "Dark Rangers, Dark Times"
-A new skin/texture was added to the files that seems to be an HD update for Dark Ranger Velonara (not confirmed it's her, but it resembles an HD version of her current armor and does not match Sylvanas in various ways)
-The hanging story thread of both Night Elf/Blood Elf dark rangers going to Calia for guidance
-The new blood elf Ghostlands quest chain involves a San'layn as the main baddie, showing there are still San'layn kicking around in EK"

That does make some sense for introducing an allied race, sounds like they would be Horde exclusive though unless there's some reconciliation thing going on with the dark wardens/elves who got rezzed at darkshore thing going on in the background. We'll probably get some real leaks into this in the next month or two but still, has me genuinely curious for what's to come. Thanks for the info!