Posts with tag leaked

Don't count the WotLK Wiki out yet -- after going down late last week due to a suspected cease-and-desist order from Blizzard's lawyers (now confirmed), they have returned with a completely different host and all the information from the leaked Alpha they were originally hosting. They say that their original wiki hosts, Wikidot, were extremely supportive on both the traffic and legal fronts, as they upgraded their servers just to keep the site up, and originally did help with legal troubles. When Vivendi Universal took legal action against their ISP, however, Wikidot had to fold, and the wiki has now moved hosts to wotlkwiki.info.

Last week, there was also mention that the C&D didn't ask them to remove all information, only "over-the-line" info, such as screenshots or video. But apparently that clause doesn't apply to the new host -- there are still screenshots all over the site, and though Vivendi has pulled video from YouTube before, it's still there as well.

Of course, any C&D sent to the old site would still apply to the new one -- it's just a question now of whether the wiki's new host will comply with Vivendi's demands (the wiki's creators sound very sure that they won't). And after that, it'll be up to Vivendi to determine how far they want to take this -- if they really feel that having this leaked information on that site has hurt them in a justifable way, there is a possibility that an actual lawsuit could be issued, and if this escalates even further, the two parties could eventually end up in court. As always, we'll be watching to see what happenes.

This might be the closest thing we've heard to news about the next expansion yet-- an anonymous tipster sent us a note that the Video Games Live orchestra, scheduled to play in the final concert at BlizzCon, has received their sheet music for the show, and hidden within the pages is three pieces called "Northrend 1, 2, and 3."

That track doesn't appear in the Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, or Burning Crusade soundtrack lists at all. Warcraft 2's soundtrack was released as mp3 tracks by Blizzard, and Northrend doesn't appear there, either. So unless this is an old midi track from Warcraft or Warcraft II, odds are that we're looking at a brand new piece of music, and that players will be headed to Northrend very soon.

Now, of course when you think Northrend, you have to think Arthas. Blizzard has said in the past that a full raid of level 80 players would be needed to beat him (at least), so if we are going to Northrend in the next expansion, we may be looking at yet another 10 level cap raise. Then again, just because Northrend opens doesn't mean the cap is going up yet. And of course, even if we do go to Northrend, there's no guarantee that it will be the only new land in the expansion, so you Emerald Dream dreamers can still hold out hope.

But I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that at some point during BlizzCon (my guess is still during the opening ceremony), we're going to hear more about the big continent to the north.

Blizzard has, inexplicably, been keeping the schedule for BlizzCon under wraps. We at WoW Insider have been frantically planning coverage here, and yet we haven't heard a peep from Blizzard about what to expect during the show. But now WorldofWar has posted what seems to be a leaked schedule for the event (no word on how they obtained it), and we'll finally have some idea of how the days are laid out. Here's what to expect if you're headed to BlizzCon:

• World of Warcraft and Starcraft II open gaming
• WoW, Warcraft III, and Starcraft tournaments
• An opening ceremony (where they'll announce a new game or expansion?)
• Panels on WoW classes, dungeons and raids, professions and items, and PvP
• A Starcraft II gameplay demo
• More panels on Warcraft Art, Blizzard Sound/Music, Careers in Gaming, Cinematics, Starcraft II Lore and Art, WoW UI mods, the TCG, and the Expanded Universe (likely the Warcraft novels)

And the convention will wrap up with a big concert from L70ETC and Video Games Live hosted by Jay Mohr.

Sounds like a full few days! Of course there will also be an exhibit hall open the whole time, but we haven't heard much of what will be in there (don't forget that Xfire will be there, as well as Upper Deck and all the TCG folks, and of course the WoW Insider party will be before the convention starts on Thursday night). Stay tuned for more details as we get them. Under a week left!

If you're in the mood for more Burning Crusade spoilers, Elüna sent along a page that links to leaked voice files of the Draenei and Blood Elf male and female characters from the upcoming expansion, including their /charge, /silly, and /flirt emotes, and a few others.

Personally, I'm not real impressed with the ones I listened to (I have to save a little bit of the new content for the game, right?), but maybe that's because I'd rather hear them in context rather than from leaked .wav files. But a few of them are pretty good, and go a long way towards fleshing out the cultures and personalities of the two new races. True RPers probably won't be real happy about the pop culture references that show up (one of the funnier Blood Elf female /flirts actually makes a pretty good meta-game joke), but these leave little doubt that the same quirky Blizzard charm we're used to is coming with the expansion.

And there's one more thing I noticed about one of the voices. This one's really a spoiler, so I'll put it after the jump...

[ Thanks, Elüna! ]