You know, when you cannot investigate and research something directly you can just sit back and try to filter what you hear and read from other sources. If you are dedicated enough to something you could even develop some competence that will help you to categorize properly what you hear, even in the case there’s nothing else than a few unconfirmed rumors. Maybe, at some point, you are able to see the hint of a “pattern”, something that “smells” interesting.

A month or so ago there was a rumor about a possible expansion for World of Warcraft set in the northern portion of the world and that would have enabled a new faction. It was an hoax and I didn’t fall for it. With the E3 approaching I was sure that Blizzard wouldn’t be able to announce an expansion and it was rather obvious that they were stacking everything on the Battlegrounds.

Now there’s this new rumor that matches rather well with previous leaked informations that I received from more attendible sources. And when completely different sources start to agree it could mean that there’s some truth somewhere.

I’m posting this because I’m “betting” on it.

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The rumor comes from FoH boards as it often happens with the hoaxes. It mentions a few new zones, as the policy of mmorpg-expansion dictates, and one new race for each faction. Pandaren for Alliance and Blood Elf for Horde.

Some more leaked infos:

Blood Elf city is reached through a portal and they exist on “floating” islands. Another dimensional portal of sorts is also opened, to a high level area. I’m not sure if this is outworld or not, I didn’t ask. I was just told it’d be a hub of sorts with a few high level instances close by.

It’s not showing at E3 due to it’s incompleteness, it’s planned for a christmas launch (that was obvious) but from the sounds of it, it’s nowhere near ready.

My hoax-sense isn’t tingling much, so I actually believe these rumors and, in general, I’ve been lucky. On this site I often hosted selected rumors and I developed a decent discerning ability to part between hoaxes and leaked “scoops”. The two races make sense and do not go against some infos released by Blizzard along these last months. The blood elf race could also be seen as a band aid to give the horde a “graphically attractive” race .The other few details about the content also fit with Blizzard’s overall approach.

The fact that these races do not seem appropriate for their faction isn’t a direct reason to ditch the possibility. Often something that “doesn’t make sense” is the meat of a story to discover. The content of the new expansion could as well pivot around the reasons that brought to these “conversions”. In addition, the incomplete state of the development could also bring to some changes to the details we have.

The guy who leaked those informations also add some meat to a previous rumor:

I’m hearing from some good sources that theres been another exodus from blizzard? I guess a group of them got together and pitched a fantasy MMO to NCSoft Guildwars style. 12’ish of them have quit to pursue this in recent weeks, I’ve also heard of some warnings from lawyers being passed down to the new company against hiring more blizzard staff onto the new project.

Grimwell’s news didn’t specify the role of the “fleeing devs”. We know from previous reports that NCSoft already planned one or two other unannounced fantasy mmorpgs. So this rumor continues to make sense and is coherent with what we knew till now.

P.S.
It’s a somewhat old news but Shild was able to get a confirmation directly from NCSoft:

Yes, NCsoft has opened up an office in the Orange County area. Yes, some of the staff in that office came from Blizzard. However, that group is not involved with the development of Tabula Rasa, as has been rumored.

Plus a semi-related comment Lum wrote that I want to save:

It’s a cutthroat business where the person who works at the competition could work in your next door office next week, so it’s a good idea to burn as few bridges as possible.

EDIT – Last minute rumors:

Alan Dunkin:
I’m fairly certain that the “fleeing devs” from Blizzard were not a result of them not wanting to be stuck with a huge money-making game for five years. A sizeable number of people were being let go or decided they didn’t like the direction of the game (technically or otherwise). Suffice it to say a number of companies have been snapping up the ex-employees like bears in a salmon run.

McBain:
As I hear things, a large number of devs left because they weren’t getting any royalties past 100,000 units sold.

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As I understand it, when Vivendi bought out Blizzard, part of the buyout had a clause regarding the WoW royalties.

Again, this could be complete bullshit, but the person giving me this info is 1) pretty trustworthy, and 2) had no reason to pull this shit out of his ass. I tend to believe it, particularly given the absolutely awful patch support post-retail.