I fully support the NDA’s that developers use to protect their unfinished products. There are many times where I am critical about the use of NDA’s, especially close to a launch, due to how they keep the future player/consumer in the dark, but I still support them nonetheless. Even if you live under a rock you’ve seen the leaks or at least the news that there has been leaks of World of Warcraft’s next expansion. I don’t know if this was an intentional leak or if it was someone taking the client that is protected by a NDA and going to town. Bummer if it was a total disregard of Blizzard’s wishes, but when it comes to a situation like this there’s more to look at that the act itself.
What are the results of this leak — or rather this information explosion? It’s been an overwhelming positive! The hundreds of screenshots and videos out there are helping the game and hyping the expansion more than Blizzard has done for themselves. Twitter is fulll of “Guess I’m returning to WoW” and ” —- has returned to WoW (and eating some hotwingzorz!)”.   People are excited, they want to play the expansion, and they’re already resubscribing to get the ball rolling.
Personally, I’m even more excited now too. It’s no surprise that I enjoy the subtle things in WoW. Seeing the screenshots of Goblin stuff and how the world is changing gets my all hyped up and excited to play the expansion. I even had to tear myself away from them after only looking at a couple dozen because I didn’t want to spoil too much. I’ve seen enough to know that 1) Blizzard is pulling out all the stops and 2) It’s going to be amazing. Sold.
So before you jump out there and start denouncing these terrible leaks or thinking that there’s a high horse waiting to be mounted for you to shout your position on this wrong doing, think about how situations like this benefit the company and the player. Blizzard definitely sells more copies of WoW because of this leak.  It’s certainly something we must evaluate on a game by game basis, but when it comes to WoW this kind of stuff only helps.
It’s also worth noting that if this was a true breach (which I am currently not sure about) then it’s worth noting that it’s a fairly publicized one. Usually the NDA violations are frowned upon by the mainstream media. When I was associated with IGN, we were told to delete the stuff and ban people for it. Now their board admins are pasting links to it. The leaks were publicized on Massively, WoW.com, and pretty much every other site out there. It wasn’t more than two years ago when all the betaleak sites were taboo and you were made to feel dirty by going there. Why the change of heart? They’re hungry for the traffic, that’s why — but it’s also indicative of what I already mentioned: This only helps WoW.
Perhaps other game developers should take note. Why does an alpha leak help WoW and get people excited, but other games panic?
This “leak” material certainly is pretty nice. All fun’n’games. Real true hype stuff and i do not believe it’s an accident that we see almost non of the real stuff we all want to see. The things that make or break the game: Mechanics.
Pictures of great atmosphere do make people interested but that wasnt the reason why so many people had issues with the game. Both Wotlk and BC did have visually nice, and time to time, stunning sceneries. Reason for to stop playing the game was entirely different. Atleast for me it was and for couple of my friends.
Wating for more information, but thus far its mostly good.
It’s pretty obvious, isn’t? Leaks help WoW because WoW is proven. The game has been out for years, we have characters in it and we can start imagining what we’ll be doing.
Other games are to incredible scrutiny and all it takes it one bug or unfinished graphics to turn off huge swathes of potential players. We fear the unknown, and will be wary for any signs of a poor deal.
Nothing to really be surprised about. This has happened directly before every WoW expansion, and at great detail.
Blizzard is well aware of this and this is why they take a great deal of time polishing things before they even release the friends and family alpha.
A good bit of the leaks comes from the fact Blizzard put the Cataclysm client on a publicly accessible website, allowing people not bound by an NDA to datamine it.
It’s probably safe to say that Blizzard’s marketing department knows what it’s doing.
The reason it works so well for Blizzard is because once their games hit Alpha, they are practically ready to go and in a better state than most other live MMOs 🙂
Blizzard marketing at it’s best!
I’m just glad they’re revamping the skills system. Hopefully we turn back to the good old days where each class had an independent role!!
“Even if you live under a rock you’ve seen the leaks or at least the news that there has been leaks of World of Warcraft’s next expansion”
Are you talking about Cataclysm or the xpac thats comming out after? honestly i dont play WoW and i havent heard of any “leaks”…about anything…from anyone, we all know Cata is coming out so there is nothing to leak. Only the people that play WoW care about it..no one else does, thats a fact.
Looking foward to the WAR xpac and trying out the AoC xpac rise of the godslayer.
@JT if that was true sites like MMORPG.com woulden’t be filled with literally HUNDREDS of active posters whos prime goal in life is to put down WoW, its community and anything/everything to do with Blizzard.
You might not care but believe me your a minority among MMO gamers.
In other news I looked at the western plaguelands stuff and was blown away with how they are revamping that area.
“It’s no surprise that I enjoy the subtle things in WoW.”
This xpack is far from subtle. Actually if anything they will be removing all the subtle things from WoW. WoW from TBC onwards has been completely linear. It is a sad state from the ‘turn the wrong way and you find something new’ design that was the original WoW (which was made as a full world and based on adventuring philosophies).
“Seeing the screenshots of Goblin stuff and how the world is changing gets my all hyped up and excited to play the expansion.”
The world will change. Once. It will happen in one whole big lot. My point? There is no player interaction in WoW. Seems kind of pointless that players can do nothing to affect anything in the game. Blizzard isn’t doing anything amazing here, they are upgrading an old world based on good ideas and from a different and better team to their new philosophies which include ‘how can we get less work but more money?’.
“I even had to tear myself away from them after only looking at a couple dozen because I didn’t want to spoil too much. I’ve seen enough to know that 1) Blizzard is pulling out all the stops and 2) It’s going to be amazing. Sold.”
1) REALLY?! Because they didn’t pull out all their stops for WOTLK. I hit 80 and there was nothing to do. Old redone and easy raid instance and mario kart mechanics that filled the game (SORRY! but I thought I was playing a game where my character progression mattered! Stupid tanks based on bad mechanics don’t make use of that!). Or what about the CGI when Warcraft’s greatest villain died… Oh… Wait…
2) Again, that was what WOTLK was meant to be. Their last product was shockingly bad. I brought it and got ripped. That isn’t going to be happening again.
So. Instead of designing more newer areas, they are using that work to cover cut/pasting older areas?
80% of the images I saw were areas that were unchanged. MMORPG had whole sections of areas that should no real difference. Any difference they would have had was probably created for flying mounts (in itself a horrible design discussion).
Maybe it will be amazing, and great. But the likelihood from the past expansion is extremely low.
Blizzard don’t fool me twice.
I don’t think it’s the leaks that have people so keen to come back as the actual official comments and screenshots. Most of the information people are most excited about has already been mentioned by blue posters.
But I agree I have no idea why they think it’s a good idea to put a NDA-bound client on a publically available website.
I don’t think the leaks have really changed my opinion on Cataclysm. WoW is just an old stand by at this point, a stable place where I can go game with some people in a genre dominated by crap. There has been nary an MMO worth of note since WoW and EVE after the dust has settled, and while I hold out hope for something good Cataclysm at least represents a game I know I’ll be able to play if I’m in the mood for collecting some shiny.
“Why does an alpha leak help WoW and get people excited, but other games panic?”
Because apparently its a good game, ahead of schedule and fully functional. Whereas others are an absolute mess, and heavily depend on developer hype to garner interest.
Leaks are only helpful if the product is good. 😉
That’s exactly right. Leaks are only helpful if the product is good. That reinforces the exact reasoning behind why so many people think NDA’s on MMO’s in production should not exist. The good ones don’t have them for long, and they’re a non-factor for the great ones.
Yeah, I’m very skeptical of games that keep their NDA up almost until release. I believe Age of Conan did that, I did not buy that game. I was in the beta, however.
There is a legitimate reason to have an NDA, though. And that is if you are working on a project that has some kind of innovative game feature (LOL, I KNOW – JOKE, RIGHT?) as it’s main selling point and you don’t want competitors to narf your idea and patch it into their game before you can release yours.
I think a half a year is reasonable for most NDAs to be lifted. It should be lifted during closed/open beta IMO. Just as might as well, since you really can’t control the leaks once it goes semi-public anyway.
> Why does an alpha leak help WoW and get people excited, but other games panic?
Because people are forgiving of missing stuff in an alpha to an expansion because the company has proven they have rectified that in earlier products.
For a new game, especially from a new developer, people view missing stuff in alpha/beta leaks with pessimism – “There’s no way that will be fixed for release” etc.
I recall there being a lot more pessimism around WoW’s original beta than with any of their expansion, though with Blizzard’s “when it’s ready” reputation it was a lot less that most other MMO betas.
None of the leaks were perpetrated by Blizzard in some manner to the point of conspiracy.
These leaks are genuine, all of them always have been, always will be. I was there the night it leaked, it was from Nihilum’s IRC. Then it spread like wildfire to mmowned’s and mmo-champion’s IRC.
I’m actually surprised anyone even gave one thought that Blizzard would leak this deliberately. They show very adamantly, especially the developers, for no one to see it as such a scale it is right now until it’s in beta.
This year it was very hard for us to get a leak, Blizzard did a smart move by binding it to battle.net accounts rather than making it open on beta.worldofwarcraft.com. So it took a while longer to get the correct hash for the magnet link to torrent directly from blizzard own tracker.
@Holgranth
do me a favor and sub to any other MMO and see if thats what people are talking about in game. but ill save you the $15 and assure you that they are not.
the ignorance of some WoW addicted players is astounding..
“the ignorance of some WoW addicted players is astounding”
Says the person that misinterpreted what he said.
@JT: People are always talking about WoW in chat in other MMO’s, actually it gets very annoying…
What is NDA?
@Frosunda
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=NDA
@Anne
“REALLY?! Because they didn’t pull out all their stops for WOTLK. I hit 80 and there was nothing to do. Old redone and easy raid instance and mario kart mechanics that filled the game (SORRY! but I thought I was playing a game where my character progression mattered! Stupid tanks based on bad mechanics don’t make use of that!). Or what about the CGI when Warcraft’s greatest villain died… Oh… Wait…”
1) First off TBC destroyed Vanilla, Vanilla definitely laid the ground work, but making 40 mans into 25 mans, making tier drop as tokens instead of individually, and things of that nature really refined the experience and perfection. I hate Wotlk but i still play, the core of the game is still enjoyable but yes wrath still sucks. The reason for this is unlike BC which launched with 2 25 man raids, 1 10 man, and a couple shorter encounters (Gruul/Mag). Wrath shipped with 1 25 and 2 short encounters, pretty much setting itself up for disaster, since we destroyed the constant within a month and were bored, and everytime they’ve delivered a new content, its been nerfed virtually immediately, and if the content was that hard to begin with we wouldn’t care in the first place, or get bored that fast either.
“So. Instead of designing more newer areas, they are using that work to cover cut/pasting older areas?
80% of the images I saw were areas that were unchanged. MMORPG had whole sections of areas that should no real difference. Any difference they would have had was probably created for flying mounts (in itself a horrible design discussion).”
2) First off you’re retarded, 80% hell no, they’ve re done ALOT if not most of the old world, which is an amazing thing, new areas like northrend have been horrible, i love outland but wtf, especially since they’re making Ironforge/stormwind and the horde equivalents the Main cities again (YES i want this, Dalaran is AWFUL!). Secondly they are absolutely revamping the old places they aren’t just putting a cherry on top and calling it a day, why wouldn’t you want to see places that are virtually barren wastelands, be revamped and be utilized, rather than add another area you level for 10 levels? It’ll make leveling alts more exciting, and leveling 80-85 far more intriguing. And Lastly there was a disclaimer posted after all those pictures that they PURPOSELY posted unchanged areas so people would stop asking where they were. (No this does not mean these places will be unchanged at release, most if not all areas will be re done, its still in alpha so more changes ahead).
Blizzard understands how quickly they will be datamined when they make the data available, even in limited releases. Thats why we aren’t seeing this alpha this time last year, when there was already work being done.
Their marketing team is obviously savvy to the fact and uses it to get people excited. Instead of just getting stuff out to make people happy (A hunger that could never be saited no matter HOW fast they release) they focus on the quality of it and are willing to release it truly “when it’s ready”. And it pays dividends. When it’s alpha looks better than most MMO releases they couldn’t care less about leaks.
It is amazing how easy some people are amused, it is still the same WoW and no I won’t ever be re-subscribing to it
@gankatron Not in WAR
@JT in five months of on again off again experience with WAR I saw LOTS of general chat spam bashing WoW ESPECIALLY in the “new player” chat.
@JT
Are you on a private server? I have never played a new mmorpg and was able to keep General Chat open without the common “this is so much better than WoW,” or “God this sucks, im going back to WoW.”
I mean honestly, EVERY MMORPG has players doing this nonstop, its just the way it is. WAR still does it, and hell, games not even in the same category like Allods are doing it!
(not same category, i am referring to P2P vs. F2P)
I wish I could be excited for Cataclysm. I just cannot get re-energized for WoW. Am I the only one not impressed with the graphical overhaul? I’ve seen a few shots that do look good, but still very dated at the same time. I think it’s ingenious to refresh the map for the WoW faithful, and I’ve seen some pretty cool examples in that regard. But go back to WoW? I just can’t do it anymore.
I have a hunch that many of the returning players will be enamored for 30-60 days then lose interest.
Honestly, Cataclysm is more of a horizontal expansion and a gimmick at the same time. It’s there to tide players over for another ~18-24 months until the next xpack or Blizzard’s new MMO.
Don’t get me wrong, Blizz puts out a quality product, but there’s not much new or innovative here, and it’s definitely not getting me all that excited (and I bought 2 copies of all of their other releases…). In any case, these so-called “leaks” strike me as more of Blizzard’s marketing genius at work here, but I’m not convinced I’ll buy it.
I’m just content to wait for that next evolution, be it SW:TOR or the next Blizzard game. Not sure I can stomach more of the same gear-and-grind-dominated endgame.
@Nickb I guess you’d better stop playing themeparks for the next ten years because unless some game developer has a quatum singularity generator you are ALWAYS going to have some form of the “gear-and-grind-dominated endgame.”
Limited content is limited. WoW front end loads the player with soloable outdoor leveling content from 1-80 (85 soon)and 5 man instances.
Then at the cap you have a certian number of heroics and raids to do. There HAS TO be some reason to keep doing them, there is no more content for the player.
Don’t think SWTOR is somehow going to be a messiah that changes this. Bioware can ONLY make so much content and EVENTUALLY there is going to have to be repitition, and incentive to repeat.
“gear-and-grind” is like democracy, its the worst sort of endgame, except for all those other endgames.
As some others have said.. Yawn.. 🙁 Props to blizz to catering to the masses but after hitting level 63 I just couldn’t play anymore. A feeling of “This is it?” set in. Maybe PVE just cant hold my interest as PVP can but Wow is just…. boring, i guess. I wish more people would think the same thing.
Wow is stifling innovation in the MMO industry. Every company wants to copy wow and hope for their matched success, which does not help move the genre along. Everyone just iterates and iterates wows model and fails miserably again and again.
Would I come back to wow if they had real PVP, prolly. If they had actual city sieges like War and actual contested world PVP that meant something, prolly. But until they do that, I look on wow in apathy.
Keen! stop writing about Wow, you make alch a sad panda.
Yeah would have to agree with ya Alch…WoW makes me want to YAWNNNNNN 🙂 No way I could go back now, it would be torture actually.
The sad thing is Alch there really is not much going on in the MMO industry RIGHT now so there just is not that much to talk about *shrugs*
Well i last quit Wow Back 2 yrs ago; was in BC, maxed to 70, in a decent guild on server, not the top, not the last, doing well but enh, always get bored when it becomes run the same instance over & over trying to upgrade. that was back when you had to key and run all that crap over n over n over lol.
Anyway, after the I played AoC for a month but that is all.
So now, been on a long MMO break and I have some friends never played WoW and want to try Cat so I’ll come back with them and we’ll role on a new server and try it out.
I expect it to be fun, esp for them, but i’ll only play it about 4-6 mths. In that time I’ll max, we’ll run raids, they will see what its all about…then we’ll quit and hit up D3, or TOR.
just because its an MMO doesn’t mean you have to play forever. enjoy it, leave, play later if you wish. I don’t grind for gear, i’ll wait till an xp and come back and try out new stuff, or I won’t, i enjoy gaming and will leave for newer & greener pastures when i wish
peace
Off-topic a bit, but perhaps someone will see this and have pity on me.
I’m currently on Horde-side on Perenolde. WG is always owned by Alliance and everyone I used to play with has left the server or no longer plays.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a good PvE Horde server?
@blacknimbus If your casual or moderately hardcore Nordrassil has a pretty good horde community.
@Holgranth
thanks…I’ll check it out
What is kind of amusing is thinking that many devs think that NDAs even work. At best it limits the dissemination of information, since honest players will abide by it. But once data leaves the control of your corporate environment, kiss secrecy good-bye. You can keep a secret between three people if two of them are dead.
With that said, I think NDAs for games is no longer healthy. Large scale peer-review is a good thing. This is the idea behind “Open Source.” Now for the Intellectual Property (like the story, settings and similar material) there you should keep some secrets. And the best way there is just not to pre-release all those parts.