BlizzCon 2023 kicks off on November 3 and that means fans of Blizzard Entertainment’s many properties are waiting with bated breath to see what’s coming next for Diablo 4, World of Warcraft, and everything else. Because of that, rumors about upcoming announcements have been flying fast. A few days ago, a new leak may have revealed the first expansion for Diablo 4, while today has brought a new leak for World of Warcraft‘s next expansion. At first glance, the leak does look mostly legitimate, but there are a few reasons to think this is a well-made hoax. Let’s take a look at what’s leaked and why it might not be real.
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World of Warcraft Avaloren Expansion Leak
The leak was first posted to Reddit and immediately started to generate hype on the World of Warcraft subreddit. Initially, the leak was a collage of four screenshots showing off a new continent called Avaloren. From there, a screenshot of a laptop came out that appears to be a new page on World of Warcraft‘s official website that shows further info about the new continent, including some of the races that call the land home.
What’s intriguing about this second image is that it talks about Khaz Algar, which fans might remember was also mentioned in an earlier leak of unused achievements in WoW‘s backend. Of course, that doesn’t mean the leak is legitimate, but if it’s someone who created a hoax, they at least did their homework. And, to be clear, this is the most convincing thing fans have seen so far, but there are a few reasons to be skeptical of it being real.
Is the World of Warcraft Leaked Expansion Legitimate?
The first thing to note is the text on the original image. It looks almost exactly like the text that Blizzard used in the Shadowlands’ trailer. Considering Blizzard changed things up when it launched Dragonflight, it would be strange to see them go back to the well. The team at Wowhead also noticed a few other things, including that the text used on the laptop screenshot looks a bit too much like the Dragonflight expansion. Of course, both of these could be explained away as Blizzard simply re-using assets to make a new trailer, but the other issues are more note-worthy.
Potentially the most glaring issue is that Wowhead noticed that the birds seen in the first slide are birds that were datamined in the 10.1 Patch. Again, Blizzard might be re-purposing assets, but it’d be strange for them to do so in the first things players see in a new expansion. It’s certainly possible that this is a legitimate leak, but you would be smart to take all of this with a hefty grain of salt until Blizzard announces its new World of Warcraft expansion next week at BlizzCon 2023.
World of Warcraft is available now on PC. BlizzCon 2023 kicks off on November 3 and runs through the following weekend.
