One Last Speculation Post Before Blizzcon

Well, supposedly the "Eye of Azshara" trademark was filed by some person not affiliated with Blizzard, so... it's looking like something of a fake.

And if Eye of Azshara is fake, then I'm going to go ahead and call it that we will not be seeing a WoW expansion announcement tomorrow. There are many missing pieces, (the most damning I think being the lack of a "What's Next" panel for WoW,) and while these don't rule it out completely, I think that the safest bet would be to say no on an expansion announcement.

Every expansion since at least Cataclysm (I didn't have my ear to the ground so much during BC,) people have been able to discover a trademark before Blizzcon. After months of speculation about "The Dark Below" last year, a trademark for "Warlords of Draenor" was discovered about a week before it was announced.

So if Eye of Azshara is truly a fake, and it's now starting to look like it is, then I think the likelihood of a real expansion announcement has just plummeted.

If that's the case, though, what will that mean for Blizzard's goal of annual expansions? Well, if they do intend to keep to that schedule, they will have to announce expansion six before next year's Blizzcon, and in fact well before it. At the latest, it would have to come some time in the spring in order for them to get the Beta up and running in the summer for a fall release.

What then should we expect tomorrow? Well, aside from big news for Starcraft and Diablo, I'd expect to see some real footage from the Warcraft movie and probably some news on what to expect from Warlords' patch cycle (we know about the arrival of the Alliance and Horde forces in 5.1 before the launch of Mists of Pandaria, but for the future of Warlords, we know only that Tanaan Jungle is going to open up and we're going to fight Grom Hellscream in a raid that has lots of demons in it.)

It might be disappointing that we won't have things like Azshara and playable Demon Hunters confirmed, but with an expansion literally about to be released, perhaps we shouldn't feel too let down.