Warcraft Mega-Leak Analysis — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] franchise leak being shared sometime around last week. And if you did, you probably had the same reaction most of us did. It's probably a fake. Come on, we're in the era of AI slop, right? People can make fake leaks all the time.

[00:15] it looks too much like a wish list. I mean, there's an Arthas action RPG, there's a live-action show. That seems like [ __ ] right? But it turns out, in thinking that we may have jumped the gun. And that's

[00:28] because of this bit here, Camelot. This may be the evidence we need to prove the entire leak is real. And while it might be real, there is a dark, X-shaped [music] cloud hanging over all of this. Because, of course, World of Warcraft is

[00:44] an Xbox game. But first, I've got to thank the UK government because they have made writing today's Nord VPN sponsor really, really easy. The timing's almost too in the nose. If you're in the UK and you're a grown

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[02:29] guarantee. That's nordvpn.com/bellularwarcraft. nordvpn.com/bellularwarcraft. Link below. It's the linchpin of all of this and here's how things went down. Wowhead's

[02:43] data miner Stiven recently found that name attached to some heroic and epic edition game licenses. He then later confirmed that it was connected to a confirmed that it was connected to a development build on patch 1.6.0.

[02:56] Not 1.6, which was of course Blackwing Lair, but 1.6.0. That's something completely new and almost certainly it's classic plus. You can actually see the build yourself right now by going to waggo.tools and you'll see it's labeled

[03:09] classic alpha. Now, Stiven mentions things like new races and something called the Shendralar, which would, if we're going to translate our Elvish, come out to roughly hidden children. Now, to me that sounds like a new tribe

[03:23] of elves, possibly connected to perhaps the exiled Shendralar mages in Dire Maul. He also connects this to the skyborn data mining that we talked about together, it does paint a picture. New sky elves [music] for the alliance and

[03:38] then these exiled mage elves for the horde. Those are new factions that would actually be vanilla lore friendly. And of course, the existence of classic plus everyone expects that it [music] will come at BlizzCon this year. And better

[03:53] believed, it'll actually launch very shortly after that BlizzCon. Okay, so we've talked about Camelot, the thing that independently leaked out, and then that independently leaked out, and then in this new leak, we see Camelot. Now,

[04:06] you're probably thinking the obvious, you could fake that fairly easily. Yeah, you could. But, you know what people can't do? They can't time travel. And to pull off this fake, they would actually need to have done that.

[04:22] meant people started sleuthing for a source. And as it turns out, it all starts with Reddit user Fifth Yo. Well, once Reddit user, because the account and every post the account made is currently gone. Or they should be,

[04:37] from the internet. The Wayback Machine has a copy of this exact image from August 2025. That's well before midnight and well before anyone knew what a Camelot was, at least in relation to WoW. Now, digging through the post

[04:50] history and ignoring some of the not-safe-for-work stuff, we find his supposed source. An ex-girlfriend laid off from the social team who was accidentally given access to this document. Of course, we know about the

[05:03] social team layoffs, those did actually happen. It's also true that with that just tie your fake leak to it. But again, Camelot being there and then appearing in the present day in data

[05:15] mining does seem to be extremely suspicious. Though, going back to the post, it gets more interesting because he even hints at a motive. He mentions Blizzard directors making cracks in meetings at the expense of, quote,

[05:28] "disparaged people." Petty revenge and disgruntled employees do go hand-in-hand, after all, especially if the employee is uh his ex. Okay, so so far, we've got a source, we've got a motive, and knowing Camelot

[05:43] a year before anyone else did publicly certainly is suspicious. It is starting to look pretty convincing if you ask me. And there is more to this. >> The leaked slate also got Midnight's release date correct, being Q1 2026.

[05:57] honestly, I think it was the obvious release window for that game. That's are planning 18-month expansions. Except [music] that this image isn't actually all of the leaks. Fifth Yacht posted more than

[06:10] just that image. In a comment made last August, they confirmed a theory. The theory was that Khaz'goroth was never the plan and that it was redone from the plan and that it was redone from scratch to extend the World Soul Saga.

[06:24] The leaker said that the next expansion, Midnight, will actually return to the black blood and the world soul. Now again, this could just be a good guess. But it's actually panned out that way exactly. We haven't seen the literal

[06:39] black blood, but we did go to Harondir, which was data mined as the rootlands back during War Within. And in Harondir, we did find the same enemy types as from the black blood. Then what's said about the world court does comport with some

[06:53] assets that Blizzard, well, allowed to slip into a patch 12.1 PTR build that does suggest that patch 12.2, let's just say, is in line with what our leaker has been saying. And that means that so far, our leaker has

[07:07] been spot on. But here's the thing, it keeps going. And this comment told us things that we have not seen yet. Okay, potential spoilers ahead for the end of the World Soul Saga, right? So,

[07:21] that's your warning. Apparently then, we are going into the World Soul. Now Xal'atath used the Sunwell to reach it through the ley lines. That's why she pretty much went shloop downwards, you know, like the Darkwell, as if it was

[07:35] the floor. She kept on going through the floor and World Soul. And if we're to end up in the world soul, it's probably cuz we're going to chase her down there. Now, the recent 12.1 PTR gave us a little bit of

[07:49] proof. Someone left a 12.2 icon in the build, and [music] it's one that calls build, and [music] it's one that calls our 12.2 renown radiant core. That is quite the whoopsie on Blizzard's part. And it's also another point to our

[08:02] leaker. Who knows? Maybe he's batting three for three on successes, but I'm actually starting to think he does know what he's talking about. Then it gets bigger. He claims Azeroth herself wakes up at the end of midnight to cleanse the

[08:15] planet, us included, and even becomes the final boss of the last Titan. And look, be it void corruption or the Titans turning her, whatever is there doesn't really matter much without actually having the plot details. But

[08:29] the word that does matter is the word he uses next, and that's WoW 2.0. And WoW 2.0 sounds like a sequel, but it's not a new game. His own slide lists it's not a new game. His own slide lists 14.0 and 15.0, both 18 months apart, so

[08:44] same as ever for a modern WoW expansion. WoW is going nowhere. But what he means is a story reset. And that's really no surprise to me. The Last Titan is built to close out all of those big threads like the Titans, old gods, Azeroth

[08:58] herself, and to retire perhaps legacy faces like Thrall. And they're already next. There's the whole mad Arathi emperor who's off in the other side of the [music] world. There is more and more draenei living off-world. There are

[09:12] Legion remnants all over the place. So, the story can get a clean slate. The A itself has plenty of narrative [music] threads that could be picked up, and the game that you're actually going to be playing won't be getting a clean slate

[09:27] or a reset. It still will be WoW. But it won't be the only Warcraft game, allegedly. Right, let's talk about Warcraft, the whole franchise. So, World of Warcraft and everything around it. Below Camelot,

[09:41] >> [music] >> A Warcraft Chronicles real-time strategy game with an anime series alongside it game with an anime series alongside it in 2028, and an Arthas ARPG with a

[09:53] live-action series just 1 year later. leak at this point, I don't blame you at all cuz this does just look like pure wish list stuff. But, stay in dreamland with me for a second because I think it

[10:08] does make serious sense. First, Jez Corden, a journalist who's fairly close to a lot of Microsoft sources, has already said something Netflixy was happening. You see, back in April last year, he said a franchise was getting

[10:21] the Netflix treatment on his podcast, and then he hinted at there being a Now, aside from rumors and leaks, it does make almost perfect sense. Take, say, the Aleria short. It's now got 8 million views, and it really proved that

[10:36] It's sounded to midnight equivalent are fantastic. And then we see the brutal history of Warcraft translating to animation really damn well. And Blizzard's decision-makers using animation to grow an IP is no longer a

[10:51] crazy risk. Now, as much as the Netflix Devil May Cry series has its flaws, it did drive Devil May Cry 5 to record-high sales this year. And it's not just the East doing that. Take Cyberpunk 2077.

[11:05] Its creators credit Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which is their tie-in, with basically saving the game's reputation. So, animated series have actually become a way to revitalize and grow IP massively, and Blizzard already have the

[11:19] skills and relationship to make that sort of thing happen. And honestly, when I think about the content slop that is then I think about the Aleria short or the Liadrin one that were done in that

[11:32] animated style. I mean, those would stand out and I think they drive serious numbers. And then for the Arthas ARPG and tie-in live-action series, it's a similar thing. Live-action is basically the same

[11:45] playbook. The Witcher saw explosive sales growth even without a new game and And that's even with the Netflix show having an iffy start and pretty much only getting worse from there on. And hey, we'd all love to see Henry Cavill

[11:58] Warhammer stuff. And there's tons of proof that it would be a massive shot in the arm for Warcraft. Sadly though, there's a part here that puts brakes in all [music] the fun and copium. And that's the actual games part. Who's

[12:13] Well, let's start with a real-time strategy game. According to Jason Schreier, Blizzard have shot down any attempt to make an RTS happen for [music] years. And looking at the rest of the industry, you can see why. Plenty

[12:25] of people have tried, a lot of them ex-Blizzard devs, and almost all of them have failed. Maybe the IP is the key here, but the big point is that Blizzard kind of has no RTS team to even try to put this together. And if they were

[12:38] putting a team together, I think we would have at least heard whispers. shooter in the works and we've known that, well, on and off for years actually. We've got it from a ton of sources and Blizzard didn't even try to

[12:51] hide it. You see, job listings are often a bit of a window into Blizzard and right now there isn't a whole lot to see except for openings for Unreal Engine and open world shooter experience. Those are obviously for the Starcraft shooter.

[13:05] Now, if the RTS game was due in say 2 years, well, it would have been a year or two into development by now. We would have expected to hear perhaps about people from Frost Giant Games returning to Blizzard or maybe some of the Age of

[13:18] Empires people from Xbox moving over to this project. And thus far, there hasn't been evidence of either. Now, I'm not saying I suddenly think all of the leak is fake. But this is the part that's hardest to believe.

[13:30] I think the easiest way to square the circle though is that this, if it is real, is a document. It is a document from a point in time. And as anyone who's worked in a big company knows, plans very often do chop and change.

[13:43] Now, the Arthas ARPG is a very different story. And there's one very possible path to this thing being real. Game head counts swing fairly hard, right? And to explain that, we need to understand how games are made. So, the

[13:56] head count on a video game team actually swings really hard. The way it works, and the best way it should be, is to start with a tiny a small core of people in pre-production. Basically just leads and directors. Ask tier people for maybe

[14:11] a year or two. Then, whenever production ramps up, you hire hundreds of artists and programmers, you burn a lot of money fast, and basically that gets the game industry, the moment the game ships, most of those people aren't needed. So,

[14:26] Well, in the worst case, you lay them off. In the best case, you've got another project ready to catch them. And here's the thing on that front. In 2023, Blizzard finished and released Diablo IV. Immediately, they'd have cut the

[14:40] team down to only what they need for the expansions. That frees up a lot of manpower and a lot of executive decision making. So, there is a faint possibility that an Arthas game is there deep in the belly of Blizzard being worked on, maybe

[14:53] by Diablo devs. And the plan's 2029 release date would add up perfectly. Six Blizzard to make Diablo IV's current version. And it would even help explain Chris Metzen's return. You know, brought back

[15:07] to steer all of Warcraft. So, wow, the Chronicles RTS and Arthas's story. >> So, there is a very clear path to the Arthas game being real. But it would realities. Like Blizzard being nearly unable to complete new projects. Project

[15:23] Odyssey says hello from beyond the grave. There's the originally planned Overwatch 2 PvE lying beside it in another grave. And really Blizzard's last 20 years has been defined by releasing a fraction of what they wanted

[15:35] to. But hey, Overwatch is finally recovering and the Starcraft shooter is changed. And if we take a hopeful, but I'd say not unrealistic view, this leak does seem real and it doesn't

[15:48] even seem that far-fetched. Especially when you remember it's just Blizzard's plans from well over a year ago. And that's actually the key to this.

[16:01] Xbox because of course Activision Blizzard is now an Xbox studio. Now whatever is on this release slate leak is at least 15 months old. And if we're to think about Xbox and Blizzard as organizations, well, there have been

[16:13] struggles, right? Uh Microsoft have been cutting gaming hard and fast. Over on the Value News Channel we've covered loads of that stuff. As an example, we have The Game Industry Is Done With Employees, which is covering a lot of

[16:26] moves to outsourcing and contracting. Then there's the Xbox bloodbath has begun. And that's because, well, Asher Sharma is leading a hell of a lot of change over at Xbox. Basically, a lot of studios are reportedly begging for their

[16:41] lives behind closed doors. Ninja Theory included, even though it was only days after Ninja Theory announced Senua at the Xbox showcase. Meaning that even a reveal doesn't protect you anymore. But actually, this does mean something for

[16:56] her team have been very communicative about what their strategy is. They've clearly foreshadowed substantial cuts. But they have said that they want to But they have said that they want to invest way more money into big, proven

[17:10] IP. And Warcraft is exactly that. Basically, it's an Xbox who's rotating a lot of resources from bets that didn't necessarily pay off or don't really look sure fire and then putting that money,

[17:23] those resources into things that do look a lot more sure fire. Like, as an example, Warcraft related stuff. So, really being owned by Xbox does actually make an artist game seem like a plausible thing to me. Of course, Xbox

[17:38] are the people who will decide whatever that game becomes and will swing the axe at anything that's not already printing money. Wow will, of course, be safe. It prints money. But, the real question is the wild stuff further down the slate

[17:50] may not all survive the next round of Microsoft's maths. So, none of this is a promise, not even the parts that BlizzCon confirms. But, classic plus is the one bet I think you can place with real confidence. The Camelot build is

[18:05] waggo.tools right now. It comes from Blizzard servers and BlizzCon is close. So, in my opinion, this does appear to be a real document. It is, however, just

[18:17] a document. Maybe there's another document with another slightly different slate on it. There's things like that that we just cannot say for sure. But, I think that Camelot link really does confirm that this stuff's kind of real

[18:31] and personally, I would expect them to put a shitload of money into the Warcraft brand over the next decade because basically, Microsoft is struggling in gaming. We know Warcraft's a money printer and Xbox's leadership

[18:43] have overtly said that they want to put more resources into the things that are big, huge IPs and franchises that they know work just like Warcraft. So then, if you want the full picture on why Xbox is doing all of this to itself, then

[18:57] News that you can check out. But, if you'd maybe rather something a bit more hopeful, well, patch 12.1 is quietly fixing a lot of what Midnight got wrong and you can see that video right here next.