The all-new classic Sonic compilation comes out June 23, 2022

A few days ago, we had some speculation that we would soon be hearing more about the upcoming compilation of classic sonic the hedgehog titles. Our prediction that news and a release date would be coming soon, turned out to be true. Sega announced through a new trailer, their website, and on their official accounts, that the game would be coming on June 23rd. In addition to the release date, more interesting details have been confirmed for the collection.

The Developers

As previously announced, the versions of; Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in the collection have been re-made from the ground up to support widescreen. As speculated by fans, all four games are running on the Retro / Star Engine, the same one used for Sonic Mania. Origin’s versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD will be the same as the fan-favourite mobile versions of those games, now on console and PC. In addition, Sonic 3 and Knuckles has been remade for the first time in the Star Engine. The work for this remake was done by Co-Lead Developer for Sonic Mania and the Sonic 1, and 2 remakes, Stealth, along with the rest of the team at his company, Headcannon.

Both fans and the developers seem excited by the prospect of the entire original trilogy, and CD, all at last being available in widescreen, with the best performance and additional features. Whilst the remaking of Sonic 3 & Knuckles has been handled externally by Headcannon, the compilation itself is being built internally at Sega. And there appear to be a number of surprise extra features to be found.

Headcannon is proud to announce that we have been working with @Sega to re-create Sonic 3 & Knuckles for their upcoming #SonicOrigins collection!

This completes the official "Remastering" of the mainline classics and marks our fourth time out with #SonictheHedgehog!

— Headcannon (@Head_cannon) April 20, 2022

Extra Features

The collection boasts both classic modes, and ‘anniversary’ modes of each of the games in the collection, allowing players to choose whether they play the updated versions, or original emulations of the games. Whilst playing in anniversary mode, lives will become a thing of the past, and are to be replaced by ‘coins’. These special coins are said to unlock extra features outside of the main games in the bonus menus. Extras such as concept art, videos, missions that have you tackling certain challenges within the game, and even a mirror-mode where you can play the games flipped.

There is also said to be a ‘story mode’ where players will be sent through the four games in chronological order. From sonic 1, to CD, to 2, and then to 3 and Knuckles (seemingly ending debates over which came first between CD and 2). All new animated cutscenes will punctuate the start and end of each game as well. These animations have been written by the franchises longest running comics writer, and writer for the upcoming Sonic Frontiers game, Ian Flynn. Meanwhile, animation for the cutscenes have been handled by Tyson Hesse and his team. Hesse being one of the individuals responsible for the popular Sonic Mania Adventures shorts released onto Youtube, as well as the far more well received re-design for the Movie Sonic, after the studio scrapped the original nightmare.

Screenshots from the game show that the backgrounds to its menus are charming 3D recreations of the islands upon which the classic games take place. All the extra additions to the presentation of the games, seem to be going a long way to making Sonic Origins more than just a simple collection.

Coming June 23rd

Pre-orders for the compilation have gone live, to mixed reception from the fans. A strange collection of minor cosmetic features have been seemingly withheld from the base game release, only available to those who pre-order or who purchase the Digital Deluxe version. This information was presented to fans through a bafflingly clunky chart to top it off.

Despite this, the collection is still set to be the definitive way to play Sonic the Hedgehog’s most celebrated titles, and will provide an easy entry point for new fans who have come from the movies.

Sonic Origins comes out on June 23rd. In the meantime, the franchise’s last remaster Sonic Colours Ultimate came out last year, and its brand-new open world adventure, Sonic Frontiers is set for release later in 2022.

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The post Sonic Origins – Details and Release Date Announced first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The new multiplayer Wordle clone – Mordle – claims to feature up to 100 players per lobby

It’s been hard to miss the soaring success that Wordle has been. The popular world-based puzzle game took the internet by storm this year, growing to the point where it was purchased by the New York Times. The game has occupied a unique space between solitary experience, and shared social experience. Players will tend to work alone to work out the five-letter word of the day, then compare how quickly they arrived there with friends. However, players need not play alone anymore. Mordle directly pits players against each other, in a more competitive experience.

Mordle combines the same basic puzzle formula from Wordle, with multiplayer functionality. Players can face off against, up to 99 opponents in a single lobby. These lobbies can either be public ones, filled with random players, or password-protected private ones, for competing against friends. In either setting, the goal remains the same. Players will attempt to guess the five-letter word within six tries, receiving clues after each guess.

How it works

In Mordle, players will see a leaderboard which shows the progress of everyone else in your lobby. As other players correctly guess the word, or run out of attempts, those statistics will be shown on the screen. Successful players will also be notified to how many of their competitors they beat to the answer.

Whilst the classic mode simply adds more players and a time limit, there are additional modes in this clone too. Sprint for instance, lets players guess three different words against competitors. Meanwhile the planned Elevenses mode, gives players ten minutes to solve as many words as possible.

Whichever player gets the answer first, or the most answers right, will be the winner. However, the other players will be allowed to continue for as long as there is time on the clock.

Whilst Mordle is in the early stages, having run some tests with only about a dozen players, it presents some exciting opportunities for fans of the game. Whilst to many, the single word of the day is part of the charm of Wordle, some would be keen to tackle multiple words, or test themselves against friends. With Mordle, those players will get their wish. Avid puzzlers will be able to get together with strangers and friends, to indulge in as much wordle puzzle solving as they please.

Other options

Additionally, if more wordle sounds like your idea of a good time, but you’d rather not compete, fret not. There are countless clones of the popular puzzle game out there, many themed after popular franchises like Pokemon, and Fortnite. Check them out for a more themed challenge

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Blizzard unveils the next expansion for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, alongside announcing the long-awaited arrival of Classic: Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard Entertainment made two big announcements yesterday in their scheduled livestream. While they were set to unveil the future of their MMORPG, World of Warcraft, they also announced a return to the past. The fan favourite expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, which originally released back in 2008, will be coming to World of Warcraft Classic in 2022. Meanwhile the new expansion was confirmed to be Dragonflight.

Return of the King

The return of Wrath of the Lich King was expected by fans after the successful releases of Burning Crusade Classic last year, and the Classic ‘Season of Mastery’. The latter of which saw players able to join a new server with fresh characters to take on modified versions of the classic game’s challenges.

Wrath of the Lich King, by recorded subscription numbers, was the most popular of the game’s current nine iterations. Returning it to classic servers seems like a no-brainer, but Blizzard have already announced a single but important change to the game. The automatic ‘Dungeon Finder’ feature which was added to the game later on in Wrath of the Lich King’s life, won’t be appearing in the new ‘Classic’ version. Lead Producer of WoW Classic, Holly Longdale described the feature as being one that wasn’t a good fit for the Classic community. The WoW Classic experience is touted as one that returns to the more social and community focused experience of the earlier days.

As such, this may be the last expansion to hit Classic servers, as many members of the community view Wrath of the Lich King as the last expansion made to the original vision for the game. Considering it’s successes however, it doesn’t seem like Blizzard will be abandoning the project any time soon, and we could be looking at more ‘seasons of mastery’ in the future, potentially for Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King.

Soaring to new horizons

Looking to the future, the new name of the game is Dragonflight. As speculated by many fans, in the MMORPG’s ninth expansion the dragons will be taking centre stage. Set in their long abandoned former homeland, the Dragon Isles, the expansion will see explorers from the Horde and Alliance, travelling by ship to the newly revealed islands alongside their draconic allies. Lead narrative designer, Steve Danuser describes the isles as a place that has lain dormant for 10,000 years, hidden by ancient magic. But now as the elements and life begins to return to the land, the titanic watchers have re-activated the beacon, and recalled the dragons back to their home.

Described as an adventure of exploration and discovery, rather than warfare or grand cosmic stakes, your character will venture to the new lands alongside other explorers and researchers, rather than soldiers. Players will traverse rocky shores, long sprawling plains, icy mountains, and ancient ruins, all while the land comes alive around them with devastating elemental forces. During the new experience, players will be able to ride on a customizable dragon mount. This ‘dragon riding’ feature promises to update the experience of flying in the game, making it more dynamic with momentum, speed, and gravity being important factors.

But players who would rather be a dragon, than ride one, are not out of luck. The livestream also announced the new playable race, The Dracthyr. These draconic and humanoid hybrids will be able to pick either faction to play on, but have access to only one class. The Evoker. The Evoker is a new class, exclusive to the Dracthyr, which will give players the ability to make use of their draconic wings and breath weapons, along with colour based magics, to both damage enemies and heal allies.

Other changes and updates are set to come alongside the expansion as well. These include a return to the more classic style of ‘talent trees’, where players will earn points to customize their character every level. Professions will also be seeing an update. Gathering and crafting is said to have been greatly expanded, with the ability to specialize into more niche areas, and to complete work orders for other players. Additionally, updates to the UI to make the HUD more modern and customizable will be coming as well.

More to come

More news is expected to come out over the next few months, in the build up to these releases. No window for a release date was given for Dragonflight, but alpha and beta testing is expected to start later this year. Wrath of the Lich King Classic is slated for release in 2022. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for future updates. In other news, in May the studio will offer a preview of Warcraft’s first game built from the ground up for mobile, which is scheduled for release later this year.

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Updates on the new compilation of classic Sonic the Hedgehog games could be coming soon

The run down

The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is set to have quite a busy year in 2022. Following the impressive opening weekend for it’s live action theatrical film sequel, two more video game projects and a new TV series are still on the horizon. Back in May of 2021, Sega hosted an online ‘Sonic Central’ event, announcing and teasing many upcoming products. Among the revelations was the now released, Sonic Colours Ultimate, and teased a next-gen Sonic game, which would later become known as Sonic Frontiers, after last year’s game awards.

However, also unveiled was the Sonic Origins compilation. A collection of 5 iconic classic sonic games from the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis), including: Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the hedgehog 2, Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Not much has been heard about this upcoming collection since the initial announcement, leading some fans to speculate about what could be going on behind the scenes. Alas, it looks like the waiting may be coming to an end shortly, after some curious leaks.  As reported by VGC, the Game Rating and Administration Committee of South Korea has granted the PC version of Sonic Origins an All Ages rating.

Mere days later, what seems like Key Art for the game was leaked to twitter after having been allegedly uploaded onto Playstation Network’s CDN servers. In the art, fans can see the main trio of heroes, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, with Metal Sonic, Amy, and Eggman behind them. The logo for Sonic Origins is shown on the left side of the image, next to the characters.

All this new information at once can only suggest that an announcement may be coming sooner rather than later. But aside from a release date, what more is there to learn?

Sonic Origins cover image leaked via PSN #SonicOrigins #SonicTheHedgehoghttps://t.co/TgqX18MHEN pic.twitter.com/U59s0PS4tI

— GBAtemp (@GBAtemp) April 18, 2022

Further details

Though details are still scarce, a few pieces of interesting information on the compilation have been shared. As confirmed by the head of Sonic Team, and the brand’s social media manager, all five games will be remade from the ground up to be presented in widescreen, and will not be simple emulation jobs. This opens the door for additional content and features, or extended options being made available for these classic games. This will also mark the first time that Sonic 3 and Knuckles has ever been officially playable in widescreen.

Due to the footage used in the initial trailer, some fans speculated the games could be running in the ‘Retro’ (now ‘Star’) Engine, created by the lead developer of critically acclaimed Sonic Mania, Christian Whitehead. Whitehead led the development of the mobile ports for Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic CD, which were rebuilt from the ground up in his engine. These ports received praise from the fanbase due to their higher resolution, smooth performance, and additional features. However, only the port of Sonic CD ever made it to consoles, leaving the fan-favourite versions of the first two games, confined to mobile.

The long wait to play these classics on modern consoles in widescreen definition may be soon coming to an end. But, whether or not they will boast the same modern features, or even additional features to the ones enjoyed by mobile gamers, remains to be seen. Christian Whitehead, and many other Sonic Mania alumni, appear to be hard at work on the first project for their new studio, Evening Star.

Now that the Sonic 2 Movie has released, we should expect to hear more news on Sonic Origins, Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Prime, in the near future.

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Official Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulators for the Nintendo Switch appear to have leaked online

Last year there were rumours that Nintendo was planning to bring Game Boy games to its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service to join the existing libraries of NES and SNES titles, plus the Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis catalogues available as part of the Expansion pack subscription tier.

Now, a leak seems to provide evidence that Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, and Game Boy Advance games might be coming to the service soon.

According to Twitter user: @trashbandatcoot files have been leaked onto 4chan which include a Nintendo-developed GBA emulator codenamed “Sloop” and a Game Boy emulator called “Hiyoko”. This lines up with what was previously rumoured. In early 2019, dataminer OatmealDome discovered that the NES Switch Online app contained references to four emulators – Kachikachi, Canoe, Hiyoko and Count, suggesting that two or three new consoles could be coming to Nintendo Switch Online

So Nintendo's official Game Boy Advance emulator for the Nintendo Switch just leaked. Now it's just a matter of waiting for NSO to add GBA. pic.twitter.com/mEJcKrRtzL

— Trash_Bandatcoot (@trashbandatcoot) April 18, 2022

Developed by NERD

Both of the new leaked emulators appear to be created by Nintendo of Europe’s NERD (Nintendo European Research & Development) team. The Paris-based subsidiary has been responsible for much of the company’s emulation efforts in recent years. The team led the development for the Gamecube emulation technology, which was used in the creation of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. The team has also found success in developing other technologies and features for Nintendo products. This includes a heart rate detection system that uses the Joy-Con’s IR Motion Camera, made for Ring Fit Adventure. Additionally, they have been working on deep learning technologies for Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training.

Games and Features

The leak lists 40 Game Boy Advance games included in the app, including: Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Pokemon Pinball, and many more. As for the Game Boy Color though, @Mondo_Mega has also shared that they’ve only discovered a few titles so far including Super Mario Land, Link’s Awakening DX, Tetris, and Qix.

However, this doesn’t confirm that these games will be released on Switch Online. They could likely be titles that NERD are using to test the emulator’s capabilities, and not every tested title will end up on the service for certain. Ultimately which ones will make the cut will be determined by Nintendo.

According to known dataminer OatmealDome, the emulator also appears to include netplay support for link cables. If true each Switch could emulate two Game Boys at the same time and simulate a Link Cable between them.

Earlier, there was video proof of the said Game Boy (Advance) emulator supposedly running on the console. However, the account that posted it was quickly deleted.

The library of GBA games they've tested for this thing is massive. Tested is the key word; doesn't mean they'll all actually launch on the service. Yellow = in the rom folder at some point but not in the leaked build.

There's one other game with evidence of being tested though- https://t.co/QQDBDcdAZp pic.twitter.com/lGSB4Mg7Gt

— MondoMega (@Mondo_Mega) April 18, 2022

Whatever the case, It seems likely that we could be hearing official word on the addition of Game Boy and GBA games to the Nintendo Online Subscription Expansion Pack, in the near future.

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Launching April 20 on the Epic Game Store, a new co-op RPG blending old-school cartoon visuals with modern dungeon-crawling action.

Described by developer Beamdog as a first person swords and sorcery adventure, Mythicforce is a roguelike dungeon-crawling experience set within the world of an 80s fantasy cartoon. The game seeks to capture the look, sound, and ambience from a number of 80s cartoon favourites in the genre. It’s easy to see a lot of inspiration taken from the Dungeons & Dragons’ animated outing, as well as the arcade cult-classic Dragon’s Lair. The game seems to be doing an admirable job bringing together it’s inspirations in a colourful and high energy action game, rendered fully in 3D.

Mythforce

In Mythforce, you play as the titular crew of hunters, mages and rogues who team up to face down an evil force that’s taken over the land. The experience will see up to four players, cooperatively adventuring first-person in the role of either: Victoria the valiant Knight, Rico the charming Rogue, Maggie the wise Mage, and Hawkins the deadly Hunter. Their objective, to storm a colourful cartoon castle packed with “treasure, traps, and terrors”.

The game’s four characters each have their own distinctive class, featuring the vast array of spells and abilities fans of fantasy RPG’s have come to expect. All packaged within frantic first-person Co-op action, reminicent of games like like Warhammer: Vermintide, or Left 4 Dead. Mythforce’s rogue-lite structure means adventurers will be forced back to the start on death, with the castle reconfiguring itself on every attempt. All won’t be lost, however, as players are able to use a “meta-progression system” to level up between runs.

Beamdog is opting to go the early access route with Mythforce, the initial release including the afformentioned four playable heroes and its first episode, Bastion of the Beastlord. But the devloper promises new weapons and enemies are to be added as development continues. The game is expected to remain in early access for around a year, with major content patches introducing the likes of new episodes and other “heftier” features, arriving “every few months”.

Beamdog’s aquisition

Behind the scenes, the games developer Beamdog have recently been aquired by publisher Aspyr Media. Aspyr is best known for its Star Wars remasters and will take on the task of publishing Mythforce. The publisher claimed Beamdog will operate as an “independent studio” within Aspyr. In an interview, Aspyr CEO Ted Staloch said that “we look forward to seeing them realize their ambition with Mythforce while maximizing the long-term potential of an incredible archive of classic games.”. This news might suggest down the road, Beamdog could be tasked with more legacy projects as well. Beamdog has the experience, having made modern enhanced editions of two Baldur’s Gate games, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights and more. Their experience with these titles, was further bolstered by the fact that BioWare co-founder Trent Oster was also a co-founder of Beamdog. Not the first major name from the company to seek new horizons.

For more news and updates on Mythforce, be sure to check out it’s page on the Epic Games store, where it will release exclusively for PC on April 20. However, there are plans in the future for a release on consoles as well.

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The wordle craze continues with a web-based clone for the massively popular battle royale game

It is impossible to deny the rapid success of Wordle. The word game has taken the internet by storm, as players fight to keep their streaks alive by carefully guessing the Wordle word of the day. The game even became popular enough to be purchased by The New York Times. With such success, comes imitations. With everything under the sun getting some sort of Wordle clone, why not Fortnite? That’s what the folks at Fortniteskins.com figured, and they have now created their own Fortnite-themed version of Wordle called Fortle that you can now place once per day.

Unlike some other Wordle clones, the rules here are identical, it’s just that the word list is Fortnite themed instead of using all 2,000+ viable words from the New York Times version of the game. The colours have also received changes, to match the theme of Fortnite. Gold (like the legendary items) means you have the right letter in the right spot, purple (like epic items) means you have the right letter in the wrong spot. Grey is wrong letter, wrong spot.

Fortnite has managed to build up an impressive amount of content and story over the course of it’s first two chapters, and the three seasons of the current third chapter. As such, there’s a surprisingly high number of five letter words that fit within the game’s theming. BUILD, STONE, FORTS, SPIES, TREES, STORM, KNOCK, FIGHT, SPAWN, SCOPE, PHASE, CRANK etc. But if you’re having trouble, it also helps that the same website that Fortle is on houses the entire library of the Fortnite content that can easily be used as a mini cheat sheet if needed. Not that we encourage the very serious business that is cheating at Wordle.

Fortnite News

As for Fortnite itself, the current Doctor Strange led season has been making a few waves by shaking up it’s core gameplay, by disabling it’s signature building mechanics. Chapter 3, season 2 involves warfare between factions on the ground, and we are starting to see IO blimps crash to the surface as a result of the fighting. Fortnite recently donated all proceeds from the first two weeks of the season to Ukraine relief (thanks to the war theme being very ill-timed), which raised an astonishing $144 million in just two weeks.

For more on Wordle, the popular puzzle game has already been fully recreated within Minecraft by dedicated fans.

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D&D Beyond just leveled up in a big way

D&D Beyond, the company behind the official digital toolset for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, have long worked as partners of Wizards of the Coast, the publisher for the popular tabletop RPG. However, D&D Beyond have now been acquired by Wizards of the Coast, announced earlier today on both companies twitter pages.

What exactly this will mean for fans of the Tabletop RPG, and the 10 million registered users of D&D Beyond isn’t apparent just yet. However, the staff at D&D Beyond were quick to reassure their users that Wizards of the Coast has no plans to stop supporting D&D Beyond. They go on to confirm that the purchases their customers have made, along with the data for their characters and campaigns they’ve built won’t be going anywhere. The team in general expressed excitement about getting to work with Wizards of the Coast, in improving their support for the game.

This will be welcome news for many players. D&D Beyond has been praised for it’s quick and easy to use features since it launched in 2017. These features include a character builder and digital character sheet, monster and spell listings that can be sorted and filtered, an encounter builder, and an interactive overlay Twitch Extension. D&D Beyond also provides official D&D content available to purchase, as well as the ability to create and add custom homebrew content.

What could this mean?

Now that the service is set to become an official product of Wizards of the Coast, many fans are hopeful that the service could provide free digital versions of books, for those who own a physical copy. In addition, some fans speculate that this could see the return of playtest ‘beta’ content to D&D Beyond. Wizards of the Coast usually releases playtest content in PDF’s under the name ‘Unearthed Arcana’ to gather feedback from players before it’s adapted into upcoming rule and settings books. D&D Beyond has not supported this content for some time, but with this closer partnership, could do so again. However, whether or not these wishes will become a reality, is yet to be determined.

Wizards of the Coast, during D&D Celebration 2021, announced that an updated version of the fifth edition rulebooks will be released in 2024, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D. A calculated move that seeks to appease the already incredibly large player base of the 5th edition to the RPG which launched in 2014. They assured their customers that the new updated rules would be compatible with the current version of the game, whilst cleaning up some of the inconsistencies born from the gradually shifting design philosophies behind the scenes over the last few years. Given the timing of this acquisition, it seems probable that D&D Beyond will play a big part in delivering this new updated content to the players when it releases.

Whether this acquisition will lead to positive changes remains to be seen. Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast and their partners are no strangers to hearing and responding to fan feedback. And we will be excited to see what the team at D&D Beyond can acomplish, with an even closer working relationship with the publisher.

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Blizzard has confirmed additional details about its plans to reveal the next World of Warcraft expansion.

The studio said last month that it would announce a new World of Warcraft expansion during an online event on April 19, and it has now confirmed exactly when and where fans can tune in.

Players will be able to watch the reveal stream on YouTube and Twitch from 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST / 6pm CEST.

World of Warcraft has received a new expansion roughly every two years since its 2004 launch, recieving it’s 8th expansion in November 2020 in the form of Shadowlands. With the 9th set to be announced during this livestream. Though historically World of Warcraft expansions have usually been announced at the studio’s own convention Blizzcon. The event has been suspended due to the global pandemic. This makes the upcoming expansion the first to be announced to a solely online audience.

“With the story in the Shadowlands coming to a conclusion, the time is at hand to get a sneak peek at what’s next for the heroes of Azeroth,” Blizzard said on Tuesday. However, keen-eyed fans may have already unearthed some hints about what could be in store for the game.

Dragonflight Rumours

Reported by Wowhead earlier this month, the expansion’s name may be ‘Dragonflight’. Unearthed from within the code of the official website, an update has been found which is thought to have leaked the name. the website’s public source code shows strings for the Dragonflight Base, Heroic and Epic Expansion pre-purchases. Similarly, the code points to a new, though currently inaccessible URL, which would be expected for a new expansion launch: dragonflight.blizzard.com.

This theory is corroborated by a second apparent leak which occoured on the same day. The leak reveals apparent key artwork for the expansion, along with a logo containing the same Name.The key art itself features Alexstrasza, the Dragonqueen of the Red Flight, in a new outfit never seen before, with her draconic form behind her. Though an imperfect view, the art is incredibly well-made, and appears to be in the form of posters similar to those found at BlizzCon and other events.

This seems to have all but confirmed to many, the prevailing theory that a dragon themed expansion was around the corner for the long running MMORPG. At the end of last year, Blizzard offered a Dragon Pack cash shop bundle, pairing several draconic mounts and minions together in a theming tactic used in the past to hint at future releases. Furthermore at the start of the year Wowhead uncovered new encrypted content going to live servers, which included textures and particle effects for a mount, a pet, and some additional items.The mount’s file name, 9fx_drakemountemerald_buff_4219045, suggested it to be a green dragon, known by fans to be the guardians of the druidic, Emerald Dream.

This led fans to speculate that the next expansion may take place on either the Dragon Isles, or Emerald Dream. Though the latter’s corrupted side, the Emerald Nightmare served as the setting for the opening raid of the Legion expansion, neither location has ever made it into the game as a fully explorable location. This is despite initial plans to include both from the very beginning, before the game’s 2004 launch.

All together, the leaks suggest that the Dragon Isles are the more likely of the two locations to become the setting of the next expansion. This lines up with what was suggested in an interview with game director Ion Hazzikostas, who implied that the team planned to follow up the more cosmic and high-concept setting of the Shadowlands, with something more terrestial and traditional for the games fantasy setting.

Whatever the expansion reveal ends up containing, we won’t know for sure until the livestream next week, on April 19

In other news, in May the studio will offer a preview of Warcraft’s first game built from the ground up for mobile, which is scheduled for release later this year.

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