While the season of leaks continues to be in full swing, we explained to you a few weeks earlier why the first of them was a vast deception, news as interesting as it is catastrophic fell on the night of April 2 to 3 2022: World of Warcraft’s ninth expansion would focus on dragons. Source ? The official Blizzard site itself…
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight: What we know
It is in the public source code of the official Battle.net site that the information would have been discovered very recently: World of Warcraft’s ninth expansion would be called Dragonflight. Of course, we don’t know anything more at this stage except that the theme of the extension would be, surprise, surprise: the Dragonflights, understand here the dragons.
This same source code thus revealed that the pre-orders of “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight” would offer a Basic, Deluxe and Epic edition and that a new URL would be deployed in honor of this new extension: dragonflight.blizzard.com.
This news naturally echoes the few data for which many players were quickly enthusiastic not long ago and in which we discovered the code name of a supposed “Emerald Drake” mount dedicated to the collector’s edition of the upcoming expansion. Although at “the time” it was still very early to issue any definitive opinion and get excited, with this new supposed revelation the link between the two seems obvious. We have also checked ourselves: these data actually exist publicly even today.
A Wowhead user also revealed in the process, in the comments of the article dedicated to this subject, that URL certifications dedicated to the dragonflight.blizzard.com address were issued on March 29th. They are all findable here.
Finally, a curious image revealing what appears to be a promotional image dedicated to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight would have been unveiled at the same time. There is what appears to be a workstation and portraits of Alexstrasza the Lifebinder, the Aspect of the Red Dragonflight, next to which is what appears to be the logo for this supposed expansion.
Serious leak by Blizzard or yet another big joke?
If we think of dragons in World of Warcraft, we can’t help but think of the five main Aspects as well as their respective flight. Generally, one does not go without the other, but the supposed name of the extension seems to indicate a single Dragonflight since “Dragonflight” is in the singular. Why not mention “Dragonflights” if the theme is about these powerful “families”?
History will no doubt explain it to us if this name is proven with possibly a story concentrated mainly on one of the flights, the Green for example which is at the last news in the grip of serious troubles, although we know that the Red is also critically endangered, among others.
The recent elements from Patch 9.2.5, the few that we have, however, seem to point to a resurgence of the Scourge in the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms. We know by definition that the Dragon Isles, the absolute sanctuary of all dragonflights, would lastly be located off the coasts west of Quel’Thalas and north of Tirisfal Glades, precisely the regions affected by changes in Patch 9.2.5.
If we stick to what little we know at the moment, it would not be very surprising if we find ourselves asking for the help of the dragons to overcome the last elements of the Scourge in the region. … Or that they themselves intervene to help us before claiming our help because of a threat that has sprung up on their legendary island. Anyway, that’s what seems most plausible at the moment with what little we have, and it’s pretty slim outside of a handful of dedicated Blood Elf and Dark Iron Dwarf quests, and an alleged overhaul of Tirisfal Glades…
On the other hand, the period in which this supposed leak takes place seems very doubtful, let’s not hide it. We are two days after April 1, the official day of more or less funny jokes, and while Blizzard offered its Patch Notes of the fake Patch 9.4: Beyond the End of Infinity, the arrival of a supposed “real leak” less than two days later seems very suspicious. More so, the expansion is supposed to be announced in about two weeks… Could this be a voluntary fake leak discovered late that we were supposed to take for a joke?
So suspicious, by the way, that we can’t help but remember that the Shadowlands expansion had been “leaked” as crudely as “Dragonflight”, the name of the supposed next expansion, a few days before its official announcement three days before BlizzCon 2019. Could Blizzard make the same big mistake twice? Probably not, although human error cannot be ruled out. But we are mainly leaning towards an intentional pseudo-error aimed at increasing the hype among players. The hypothesis of a partially false track aimed at increasing the hype to finally reveal a similar theme but not exactly focused exclusively on dragons cannot be ruled out either. Once it goes, twice it starts to be big all the same!
Some will retort that “That’s a lot of clues though” and that we have to face the facts. But let’s not forget that all of this is absolutely nothing official at the moment and must be taken with immense tweezers as long as the official announcement planned for the Tuesday, April 19, 2022 will not have taken place.
Our advice: Assume that Dragonflight is not the next expansion. If it is, you’ll be happy to hear it. If it isn’t, then you’ll be happy to find out who this new expansion is, and you won’t have to deal with the disappointment of potentially not having to meet a whole bunch of dragons in the next few months!
A supposed “Emerald Drake” type mount has been discovered in the Patch 9.2: Eternity’s End files for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. So, clue for Patch 10.0 and the next extension of WoW or just a creature? We take stock!