At WoW.com, we're not interested in digging through alpha files. But when content shows up on the web and we have good reason to think it's legitimate we'll point you in the right direction. Those avoiding spoilers may wish to turn back now.
So with that, we present a few links to an image of Deathwing spawned at the entrance to Stormwind possibly via a private server. You can view the image here:
The image at the top of the article is not the leaked image, it's from
the official site.
Tags: alpha-screenshot, breaking, cat-beta, cata-beta, cataclysm-alpha, cataclysm-alpha-screenshot, cataclysm-beta, cataclysm-deathwing, cataclysm-game, cataclysm-guide, cataclysm-leak, cataclysm-news, cataclysm-screenshot, deathwing, expansion, expansion-three, facebookfeed, next-xpac, screenshot, third-expansion, world-of-warcraft-beta, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-beta, wow-4.0, wow-4.0.2, wow-beta, wow-cataclysm, wow-cataclysm-beta, wow-deathwing, wow-expansion, wow-expansion-beta, wow-guide, wow-third-expansion
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
May 4th 2010 at 12:10PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
Awesome McAwesome May 4th 2010 12:18PM
Holy crap.
Elmouth May 4th 2010 1:20PM
A bit disapointed.
First off i was expecting him to at least not be built upon the regular dragon's model, the artwork makes him look different from this.
Second off he is smaller than pictured on the rest of blizz's medias.
kozom May 4th 2010 1:30PM
I don't think you all fully realize just how big those statues are...
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NplNkOIgPTE/SXH1AmDZpJI/AAAAAAAABRg/dSLjJZPItWw/s320/Danath_Trollbane.jpg
Ikarus May 4th 2010 1:45PM
On the last link you listed it shows a larger version of the picture (which I would magnify in Firefox). Above DW there's some very small blue writing. Can anyone tell what it says???
Nreece May 4th 2010 1:54PM
Dethwing looks cool but he needs to be 10x bigger. The way they made him sound like was a moving mountain basically. And plus it dosent feel like he can make a scar across the land being that size, he wont be able to crush mountains. Ahhh! JUST MAKE HIM BIGGER!
MazokuRanma May 4th 2010 1:57PM
It's only a leaked alpha file. I wouldn't worry about it yet, that may just be a placeholder graphic they haven't fine-tuned at this point.
Tim May 4th 2010 1:58PM
@Ikarus
Deathwing Jenkins
Elleyna May 4th 2010 2:07PM
I'd say he needs to be about 3-4 times bigger to match the scale he is in the released artwork. This is more than likely someone who replaced their character model with Deathwing's (thus the blue name text) and possibly had to scale him down to make him fit in the camera view. Very nice model though. I was hoping for something that wasn't a re-hashed dragon model, but they still went a long way towards giving him a respectable look.
Also, he doesn't have a nose horn in any artwork, what's with it in the model?
CrimsonEyedDeath May 4th 2010 2:14PM
.....I'm going to someday tank that?
I'm going to need a bigger......everything.
Marathal May 4th 2010 2:21PM
He/she? hasn't enraged yet. Now I just have to figure out where a safe place on the walls is to Mind Flay him/her?
Salty May 4th 2010 2:24PM
Let me just put the naysayers to rest:
- The 3d model can be scaled effortlessly. See Malygos in Coldarra vs. Malygos in EoE.
- Deathwing is the same species of dragon as the other aspects. There’s no lore reason he should have a different skeletal structure (and thus, animation/stance) than Malygos or Alexstrasza.
- This is indeed a 3d model produced by Blizzard. To appear in game, it must be present in the MPQ archives as an MDX file, which is Blizzard’s custom file format based on .3ds. This is difficult to forge from another dragon model at this quality – someone would have had to extrude many faces to create the unique head design, which means modifying the UVW map of the texture file. In other words, this is no simple photoshop of a texture file, or a few cheap transformations to various parts of the model.
- The water is the kind shown in the latest cataclysm screenshots and others have pointed out different architecture in the background.
- It is not ‘hidden in the game files’ of present-day WoW. MMOC and every other fan site would have discovered it by now, as they literally create digests of changes to the file contents of the MPQs with every single PTR build and patch. If you want to browse them yourself, you can with WoW Model Viewer.
Utakata May 4th 2010 2:41PM
That's the problem, kozom...I wanted to see if Blizz made any changes to Stormwind, but that Deathwing is standing the way. :(
Jorges May 4th 2010 3:24PM
The model is awesome. Is not the same dragon model that someone said. The jaws, skin and feeling of the dragon is amazing.
BUT
It needs to be bigger if Blizzard wants to convince people that It made a scar on the face of Azeroth and made the Cataclysm possible.
Or else , it will look like this (1:40) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouSp1j21aNo
Tokkar May 4th 2010 4:31PM
Except...
"It is not ‘hidden in the game files’ of present-day WoW."
"If you want to browse them yourself, you can with WoW Model Viewer."
No, you can't use the model viewer. WMV uses the game files to extract the images and models, so if it's not there, it's not in the model viewer either.
The only way you would be able to see this with the model viewer is if you physically had the beta release.
Janaa May 4th 2010 6:29PM
I should note here - that is a player spawning using the Deathwing model. This means the sizing convention for the model will be scaled to that of the player. Thus, human player models load at default size - that is, a 1:1 model scale:in game ratio. The Deathwing model will spawn at the same ratio if loaded as a player model. The actual size in encounters may be 2:1, 3:1 or, like Ony's model - around 5:1. IE, it will be a lot bigger than it looks there, and even there, that's actually frigging huge. The angle just makes it look smaller because you don't have a lot of perspective. Those statues are quite large.
Also, it's not the default dragon model. There are a lot of differences in the structure. However it's true the skeletal shape is the same, presumably so it doesn't have to be re-rigged and animated fresh for standard dragon movements.
RobertHMayfire May 4th 2010 6:35PM
@Ikarus
Too soon... You have leaked me too soon!!!
Edge May 4th 2010 6:46PM
The statues in front of SW may be huge but in the official image at the top of the article he's standing on and smashing some castle (Tol barad or something?). Sorry but Elmouth is right, don't know why he was downvoted, way too small, it's gotta be bigger than that.
I believe it was one of the WoW.com writers that mentioned something that would be cool (and more indicative of a creature that caused such a cataclysm) is to make the final raid against Deathwing where the dungeon is actually his body and we are attempting to get to his head (or some other vulnerability). In the meantime he's flying around trying to knock us off or something and trash mobs are regular sized dragons and whelps flying in and attacking us. Now that's the Deathwing I've always imagined; too big to tank face to face by any mortal, so we're going the Shadow of the Colossus route.
Special K May 4th 2010 7:11PM
I almost pee'd my pants.
And we're going to have to kill that thing in Cata??!??!?
Banic Rhys May 5th 2010 12:50AM
@ Edge
I would love it if the fight starts out as a normal normal dragon fight at first, except we've received a buff that increases our HP, damage etc by 500% so we can survive/heal through Deathwing's abnormally large hits and dps through his abnormally large health pool.
Once we get him to say 60% he flies away and a group of dragons (along with the three remaining aspects) show up and tell us that they'll help us keep up with him, we mount up (Occulus style) and we go through a phase where we try to catch up with him while dealing with black dragons that are trying to stop us.
When we reach Deathwing we jump onto his rear, the aspects say they will keep Deathwing distracted while we destroy the metal plates that are holding his body together (which is roughly the length of the entrance of ICC to Marrowgar) while fighting the black drakes that attack us. The three aspects can be seen fighting Deathwing as we move up his body.
After we blow off his armour he crash lands on a mountain top, gets up and we dps him down before the lava that's pouring out of his wounds consumes the entire battlefield and we all die (like in PP)
I'd love it if the air phase took place over the Arathi area.
Edge May 5th 2010 1:22AM
@Banic Rhys I forgot about the metal armor. Hehe, make some gnome/goblin item that magnetizes our boots which allow us to walk around freely while Deathwing fights the aspects, similar to how raiders wear the jetpacks in the airship battle.
I have a feeling people will downvote because of vehicle mechanics though, but I like the idea.