My biggest problem (if that's what happened) would be that he blew his alpha access to post crap from the earliest build rather than waiting for more stuff to be added. That would be pretty moronic and short-sighted.
Really, I wouldn't care that he boned himself, but... okay. I will say this - I know a lot more about the inner workings of Blizzard that the vast majority of people out there.
And from what I know, the only possible way for him to be in the alpha as he had claimed is if a GM in Austin had invited him. Which means he got some poor schmuck fired because Blizzard can and will track down the person who gave him the invite. They have an entire department dedicated to loss-prevention stuff like that.
The reason it has to be an Austin GM is simple - his posts about the state of Alpha and his leaked info all directly correlate to when that information had been passed to GMs in general, since they're low on the totem pole and they hear about stuff way after the people in Irvine do.
For the record, my sources are: At my current job, we have several employees who used to do GM work for Blizzard before they closed the center out here. I get to hear all sorts of awesome stories.
Remember he's leaked info before though, albeit not nearly as early as this. From his (rare) posts on the SA forums around Blizzcon he said he has several connections with Blizzard employees, which was confirmed by another regular poster and previous Blizzard employee (who had the same info for at least a week or two prior to blizzcon, but unlike Boubouille he wouldn't risk posting more than a vague hint or two that only made sense in hindsight, since he still works in the game industry and would risk his reputation if he leaked stuff).
If he doesn't have access but only secondhand info or use of someone else's alpha account it would be much harder to track down as well. I also think it was confirmed he's french in which case he probably gets his stuff from WoW-Europe employees.
I picture Boubouille riding around with a posse of GMs, like some sort of geeky, unholy French pimp.
...hell, my active sources are better than his. Maybe I should betray their trust and set up a gaming website to funnel money into my pocket. 8-) 8-)
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
Serpico on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
*googles*
Poutine looks disgusting. It's like a heart attack that someone vomited on.
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
He's already given out enough information to pinpoint his leak - that's the awesome part. I mean, his pre-Alpha leak, since he insists/hints that he's in the Alpha right now.
Boubouille is going about this whole thing wrong, though.
Like I've said before, the healer role in 5-mans has been optional for quite a while now.
I can count on one hand the amount of random heroics I've been on where I could afford to just sit there and DPS and never heal.
If you're sitting there doing randoms with all ridiculously overgeared guidlies, sure, but for the majority of the people you get saddled with in entirely pugged runs? Not a chance.
I didn't mean to imply that groups never need any heals. Rather, I'm saying that groups haven't required a dedicated healer (who does almost nothing but heal/support) in a long time.
To most people this is probably a good thing, since it makes groups easier to create. But to me, this is very disappointing, because the reason I play a healer is to support my group. To be the most important role in the group, by virtue of amplifying everyone else and mitigating their mistakes. To be able to prop up the rest of the party so that they can accomplish more.
WotLK's 5-man instances severely marginalized that role, probably because there are not a lot of people who enjoy it. Again, I'd guess that most people were in favor of that change, so overall it was a good thing.
It was there at the start. If you actually ran WOTLK heroics at the gear level they were made for, healing was not a cakewalk.
But now we all so blatantly outgear them that you only need a healer for bosses or for huge pulls or for the occasional HoT to keep the tank from dropping below 70%.
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
He's already given out enough information to pinpoint his leak - that's the awesome part. I mean, his pre-Alpha leak, since he insists/hints that he's in the Alpha right now.
Boubouille is going about this whole thing wrong, though.
I'd think so too but he seems entirely unconcerned about any concequences to the leak (and even if he is a heartless bastard who doesn't care about his sources he'd still lose his well of information if they get caught), which is pretty strange.
Serpico on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
He's already given out enough information to pinpoint his leak - that's the awesome part. I mean, his pre-Alpha leak, since he insists/hints that he's in the Alpha right now.
Boubouille is going about this whole thing wrong, though.
I'd think so too but he seems entirely unconcerned about any concequences to the leak (and even if he is a heartless bastard who doesn't care about his sources he'd still lose his well of information if they get caught), which is pretty strange.
It's not outside of the realms of possibility that someone from Blizzard approached him and went all "Oh I'm just gonna leave this Cata alpha here, it would be terrible if someone from a popular Internet site picked it up and leaked stuff onto the Internet to generate some free buzz because we're still months and months away from actually releasing the fucking thing, oh and maybe you want to go grab some lunch, I'm buying."
Not the most likely situation, exactly, but these companies always do weird things for publicity.
I mean, having the attention of just about anyone who's every played WoW, current subscriber or not, can't be a bad thing, right?
How many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands are considering resubscribing to WoW right now...?
With most NDA's, the restrictions are so tight, because companies are afraid of ideas being leaked and stolen by their competition. Contrast this with WoW, who's had companies trying to rip them off for five years, with no success.
I imagine things would be completely different if we were talking about, say Starcraft Online, or their other, totally unannounced next MMO, but c'mon, this is WoW.
[Conspiracy]
Blizzard contacted him about this since he runs a very popular WoW news website. They always feed him info man, like, all of it.
*puff puff*
If you look at the back of a $20 bill you can see Blizzard employees and Boubuille shaking hands with George Washington.
[/conspiracy]
I'd think if it was a controlled leak he wouldn't have gone hogwild and posted pictures from every zone and definitely wouldn't have posted the talents. It just smells of "put all this shit out now because once I put anything out at all it'll become way harder to get stuff in the future."
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
He's already given out enough information to pinpoint his leak - that's the awesome part. I mean, his pre-Alpha leak, since he insists/hints that he's in the Alpha right now.
Boubouille is going about this whole thing wrong, though.
I'd think so too but he seems entirely unconcerned about any concequences to the leak (and even if he is a heartless bastard who doesn't care about his sources he'd still lose his well of information if they get caught), which is pretty strange.
It's not outside of the realms of possibility that someone from Blizzard approached him and went all "Oh I'm just gonna leave this Cata alpha here, it would be terrible if someone from a popular Internet site picked it up and leaked stuff onto the Internet to generate some free buzz because we're still months and months away from actually releasing the fucking thing, oh and maybe you want to go grab some lunch, I'm buying."
Not the most likely situation, exactly, but these companies always do weird things for publicity.
The info he's given is consistent with the sort of stuff distributed to GMs and very low-level employees.
I mean, what you say is possible, but it's significantly more likely that someone in Austin sent him info and a F&F invite.
It's interesting that Bouboulilelelelellllllle hasn't posted some of the reaaaaallly exclusive shit. The fact that he hasn't even mentioned it, with his willingness to leak info like a diarrhea-stricken asshole, is part of why I'm certain his leak is low-level.
For example: Even though it's not WoW-related, the last class for Diablo 3 to be revealed, which hasn't been even hinted at publicly, and hasn't been given out to GMs, but is well-known internally among some of the higher-level employees.
Well, it seemed to me that his post was implying that a lot of the stuff he posted was already out there (probably at just some less visible/popular sites) and that he was simply putting it to the forefront.
Like I've said before, the healer role in 5-mans has been optional for quite a while now.
I can count on one hand the amount of random heroics I've been on where I could afford to just sit there and DPS and never heal.
If you're sitting there doing randoms with all ridiculously overgeared guidlies, sure, but for the majority of the people you get saddled with in entirely pugged runs? Not a chance.
I didn't mean to imply that groups never need any heals. Rather, I'm saying that groups haven't required a dedicated healer (who does almost nothing but heal/support) in a long time.
To most people this is probably a good thing, since it makes groups easier to create. But to me, this is very disappointing, because the reason I play a healer is to support my group. To be the most important role in the group, by virtue of amplifying everyone else and mitigating their mistakes. To be able to prop up the rest of the party so that they can accomplish more.
WotLK's 5-man instances severely marginalized that role, probably because there are not a lot of people who enjoy it. Again, I'd guess that most people were in favor of that change, so overall it was a good thing.
It was there at the start. If you actually ran WOTLK heroics at the gear level they were made for, healing was not a cakewalk.
But now we all so blatantly outgear them that you only need a healer for bosses or for huge pulls or for the occasional HoT to keep the tank from dropping below 70%.
Admittedly, I was not around at WotLK's release. By the time I reached 80, the typical gear level was around 200.
But I don't think this is just a matter of gear inflation trivializing content. Look at the Icecrown 5-mans; they were nearly trivial as soon as they were released, and they were designed for people in 219 gear, right? I think it's a design decision throughout WotLK to place less importance on the healer in these instances. It looks like Cataclysm might be granting more emphasis to the role, though.
I mean, having the attention of just about anyone who's every played WoW, current subscriber or not, can't be a bad thing, right?
How many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands are considering resubscribing to WoW right now...?
With most NDA's, the restrictions are so tight, because companies are afraid of ideas being leaked and stolen by their competition. Contrast this with WoW, who's had companies trying to rip them off for five years, with no success.
I imagine things would be completely different if we were talking about, say Starcraft Online, or their other, totally unannounced next MMO, but c'mon, this is WoW.
Blizzard absolutely cares. They hate when information is released in an uncontrolled fashion. It causes no amount of early and unwarranted bitching - anyone remember WotLK Alpha, or even the Beta? Blizz would change numbers to be really high for testing purposes and it'd get leaked and people would whinge that class blahblah is broken now or whatever and it was just entirely unproductive.
Caedere on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
EDIT: To clarify, someone certainly did - it would have to have been a GM-type, though. No one on the dev team or in management would have done it. However, Blizzard as a company did not formally extend it.
It'd be like the difference between my employer (T-mobile) gifting a phone to a celebrity like Catherine Zeta Jones, and the difference between me using my personal employee account to hook a friend up with a deal.
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
I didn't say that Blizzard itself extended the invite, he has clearly got some friends working either as GMs or techs or similar where he'd have got a FFA invite from. But something happened pretty quickly and he decided to just go to town anyway.
Assuming there's an NDA, it'd be a bit silly to give access to press at this point, if they take their own NDA seriously at all.
Edit: Of course, I think they're just not giving their employees enough chocolate milk. With WoW of recent, particularly Cataclysm, they seem to have a lot of difficulty here. Probably too many people involved, I guess.
Edit2: Holy shit, Starcraft II was announced over two years ago, and we only finally have a release date....of over 3 years after announcement. I guess that's nothing compared to Warcraft III's journey though.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
EDIT: To clarify, someone certainly did - it would have to have been a GM-type, though. No one on the dev team or in management would have done it. However, Blizzard as a company did not formally extend it.
It'd be like the difference between my employer (T-mobile) gifting a phone to a celebrity like Catherine Zeta Jones, and the difference between me using my personal employee account to hook a friend up with a deal.
I think nailing the position of his sources is hard because he wasn't the very first to leak this stuff - he simply confirmed that alpha was getting leaked to the public, then started releasing things from the alpha client. The fact that he hasn't released anything that can't be found in the client could just as easily be attributed to the fact that such info hasn't been leaked anywhere else. I have no idea how well-informed his sources are, but I know the previous Blizz employee on SA implied they have many of the same sources ( he's obviously not the source himself since he's not working there anymore), and he was a CM or at least worked in the community department. Don't know what info they have access to there, or how close they work with the more knowledgeable people in the company however.
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
EDIT: To clarify, someone certainly did - it would have to have been a GM-type, though. No one on the dev team or in management would have done it. However, Blizzard as a company did not formally extend it.
It'd be like the difference between my employer (T-mobile) gifting a phone to a celebrity like Catherine Zeta Jones, and the difference between me using my personal employee account to hook a friend up with a deal.
I think nailing the position of his sources is hard because he wasn't the very first to leak this stuff - he simply confirmed that alpha was getting leaked to the public, then started releasing things from the alpha client. The fact that he hasn't released anything that can't be found in the client could just as easily be attributed to the fact that such info hasn't been leaked anywhere else. I have no idea how well-informed his sources are, but I know the previous Blizz employee on SA implied they have many of the same sources ( he's obviously not the source himself since he's not working there anymore), and he was a CM or at least worked in the community department. Don't know what info they have access to there, or how close they work with the more knowledgeable people in the company however.
It's not the current batch of info - the screenshots and talent trees - that pinpoint his leak. It's the posts he made beforehand about the status of the Alpha. When he was discussing that it was going to be in April, for example.
I know from my co-workers who worked at Blizzard that different office sites get different information at different times - they hold meetings to discuss all of the new stuff. When Blizz was contracting out here in Albuquerque, the site here would get info after Austin, but the info would be slightly different.
It's a way to help control and pinpoint leaks - if info gets out, all they have to do is determine which info would have been specific to which site and go from there. As I said earlier, Blizzard is very good at tracking this sort of stuff down. Their loss-prevention/internal investigation department is frightening.
It's all datamined stuff he grabbed from the Alpha client that was leaked, the same way the SC2 client was leaked and could be patched to play offline. That's why all of his zone pictures are empty and he doesn't have any/much info on bosses/raids/etc, he just has what was mined.
Like I've said before, the healer role in 5-mans has been optional for quite a while now.
I can count on one hand the amount of random heroics I've been on where I could afford to just sit there and DPS and never heal.
If you're sitting there doing randoms with all ridiculously overgeared guidlies, sure, but for the majority of the people you get saddled with in entirely pugged runs? Not a chance.
I didn't mean to imply that groups never need any heals. Rather, I'm saying that groups haven't required a dedicated healer (who does almost nothing but heal/support) in a long time.
To most people this is probably a good thing, since it makes groups easier to create. But to me, this is very disappointing, because the reason I play a healer is to support my group. To be the most important role in the group, by virtue of amplifying everyone else and mitigating their mistakes. To be able to prop up the rest of the party so that they can accomplish more.
WotLK's 5-man instances severely marginalized that role, probably because there are not a lot of people who enjoy it. Again, I'd guess that most people were in favor of that change, so overall it was a good thing.
It was there at the start. If you actually ran WOTLK heroics at the gear level they were made for, healing was not a cakewalk.
But now we all so blatantly outgear them that you only need a healer for bosses or for huge pulls or for the occasional HoT to keep the tank from dropping below 70%.
Admittedly, I was not around at WotLK's release. By the time I reached 80, the typical gear level was around 200.
But I don't think this is just a matter of gear inflation trivializing content. Look at the Icecrown 5-mans; they were nearly trivial as soon as they were released, and they were designed for people in 219 gear, right? I think it's a design decision throughout WotLK to place less importance on the healer in these instances. It looks like Cataclysm might be granting more emphasis to the role, though.
You be crazy son. The ICC dungeons were NOT trivial at release in 219 gear.
They weren't TBC "stamp on your nuts" stupid hard, but they were in no way trivial.
I have no idea what you guys are on about, the Sandbox of the Alpha client has been publicly available since Wednesday morning. It was first released by some Russian source.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
EDIT: To clarify, someone certainly did - it would have to have been a GM-type, though. No one on the dev team or in management would have done it. However, Blizzard as a company did not formally extend it.
It'd be like the difference between my employer (T-mobile) gifting a phone to a celebrity like Catherine Zeta Jones, and the difference between me using my personal employee account to hook a friend up with a deal.
I think nailing the position of his sources is hard because he wasn't the very first to leak this stuff - he simply confirmed that alpha was getting leaked to the public, then started releasing things from the alpha client. The fact that he hasn't released anything that can't be found in the client could just as easily be attributed to the fact that such info hasn't been leaked anywhere else. I have no idea how well-informed his sources are, but I know the previous Blizz employee on SA implied they have many of the same sources ( he's obviously not the source himself since he's not working there anymore), and he was a CM or at least worked in the community department. Don't know what info they have access to there, or how close they work with the more knowledgeable people in the company however.
It's not the current batch of info - the screenshots and talent trees - that pinpoint his leak. It's the posts he made beforehand about the status of the Alpha. When he was discussing that it was going to be in April, for example.
I know from my co-workers who worked at Blizzard that different office sites get different information at different times - they hold meetings to discuss all of the new stuff. When Blizz was contracting out here in Albuquerque, the site here would get info after Austin, but the info would be slightly different.
It's a way to help control and pinpoint leaks - if info gets out, all they have to do is determine which info would have been specific to which site and go from there. As I said earlier, Blizzard is very good at tracking this sort of stuff down. Their loss-prevention/internal investigation department is frightening.
That makes more sense, and helps narrow things in. Looking at his posts, apparently his source told him it was unclear if F&F would be happening and there was a chance the beta would be released early instead (in which case he would have been off by a week or so), while anyone with inside knowledge of development must have seen that as impossible if the lack of updated game mechanics (focus, new talents/skills/etc)and some incomplete zones in the F&F alpha is any indication. Also in the post where he apologized for being wrong about april release he posted "...at the time [of the post] it was pretty clear that the alpha would start in april, but apparently...it was postponed a couple of times" which doesn't make any sense since he posted the beta, not alpha, would start then.
Well, my hopes of female worgen not being furry fodder are dashed.
Wouldn't they have been no matter what?
I was hoping the reason we only saw male worgen was because both sexes look the same in their wolf state, and they only would look different in their human form. It makes sense in my head. But, alas, lookit dem tit-tays.
jackal on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Well, my hopes of female worgen not being furry fodder are dashed.
Wouldn't they have been no matter what?
I was hoping the reason we only saw male worgen was because both sexes look the same in their wolf state, and they only would look different in their human form. It makes sense in my head. But, alas, lookit dem tit-tays.
Yeah, I'm sure they were going to do that.
Besides, we already saw the female Worgen on a leaked Halloween mask way back when.
Posts
SW:Tor - Tao - Kryatt Dragon Server
Well presumably EU employees doesn't get info as fast as US, and that's assuming he has access to anything more than the alpha client (I remember he had a couple of things wrong for the Cataclysm reveal, and certainly didn't post the info as early as it was available - whether it was to minimize risk or because he didn't have it that early I don't know).
Plus, leaking stuff as early as possible would be a pretty bad idea if you want to avoid having your sources found, since it would narrow down the potential leaks a lot. Likely either he or his sources wait to post stuff.
Poutine looks disgusting. It's like a heart attack that someone vomited on.
He lives in Paris, last I heard.
He's already given out enough information to pinpoint his leak - that's the awesome part. I mean, his pre-Alpha leak, since he insists/hints that he's in the Alpha right now.
Boubouille is going about this whole thing wrong, though.
It was there at the start. If you actually ran WOTLK heroics at the gear level they were made for, healing was not a cakewalk.
But now we all so blatantly outgear them that you only need a healer for bosses or for huge pulls or for the occasional HoT to keep the tank from dropping below 70%.
I'd think so too but he seems entirely unconcerned about any concequences to the leak (and even if he is a heartless bastard who doesn't care about his sources he'd still lose his well of information if they get caught), which is pretty strange.
It's not outside of the realms of possibility that someone from Blizzard approached him and went all "Oh I'm just gonna leave this Cata alpha here, it would be terrible if someone from a popular Internet site picked it up and leaked stuff onto the Internet to generate some free buzz because we're still months and months away from actually releasing the fucking thing, oh and maybe you want to go grab some lunch, I'm buying."
Not the most likely situation, exactly, but these companies always do weird things for publicity.
I mean, having the attention of just about anyone who's every played WoW, current subscriber or not, can't be a bad thing, right?
How many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands are considering resubscribing to WoW right now...?
With most NDA's, the restrictions are so tight, because companies are afraid of ideas being leaked and stolen by their competition. Contrast this with WoW, who's had companies trying to rip them off for five years, with no success.
I imagine things would be completely different if we were talking about, say Starcraft Online, or their other, totally unannounced next MMO, but c'mon, this is WoW.
Blizzard contacted him about this since he runs a very popular WoW news website. They always feed him info man, like, all of it.
*puff puff*
If you look at the back of a $20 bill you can see Blizzard employees and Boubuille shaking hands with George Washington.
[/conspiracy]
I mean, what you say is possible, but it's significantly more likely that someone in Austin sent him info and a F&F invite.
It's interesting that Bouboulilelelelellllllle hasn't posted some of the reaaaaallly exclusive shit. The fact that he hasn't even mentioned it, with his willingness to leak info like a diarrhea-stricken asshole, is part of why I'm certain his leak is low-level.
For example: Even though it's not WoW-related, the last class for Diablo 3 to be revealed, which hasn't been even hinted at publicly, and hasn't been given out to GMs, but is well-known internally among some of the higher-level employees.
I just want my Barbarian, Boxey, to continue his slaughterfest in the third installment.
Admittedly, I was not around at WotLK's release. By the time I reached 80, the typical gear level was around 200.
But I don't think this is just a matter of gear inflation trivializing content. Look at the Icecrown 5-mans; they were nearly trivial as soon as they were released, and they were designed for people in 219 gear, right? I think it's a design decision throughout WotLK to place less importance on the healer in these instances. It looks like Cataclysm might be granting more emphasis to the role, though.
Blizzard absolutely cares. They hate when information is released in an uncontrolled fashion. It causes no amount of early and unwarranted bitching - anyone remember WotLK Alpha, or even the Beta? Blizz would change numbers to be really high for testing purposes and it'd get leaked and people would whinge that class blahblah is broken now or whatever and it was just entirely unproductive.
Diablo3.com, man.
Boub certainly wasn't the first to get this stuff but he was the first to post it so openly, as has always been his style
Well, what set me off originally was Boub talking/hinting about being in the Alpha - it sounds like he's posting datamined content, but that violates the NDA - if he's in the Alpha as stated, he's boned himself and whoever got him in. Which was really the whole point of my original post.
Ah right, yeah I suspect that he was extended an invite but abused it and that got taken away. Blizzard won't do anything more about it I guess since his site is big publicity but I don't think he'll get the usual information leaks he used to for a while now.
Blizzard doesn't extend invites to gaming press as part of F&F Alphas. That goes later, during Closed Beta, when the NDA is lifted.
EDIT: To clarify, someone certainly did - it would have to have been a GM-type, though. No one on the dev team or in management would have done it. However, Blizzard as a company did not formally extend it.
It'd be like the difference between my employer (T-mobile) gifting a phone to a celebrity like Catherine Zeta Jones, and the difference between me using my personal employee account to hook a friend up with a deal.
I didn't say that Blizzard itself extended the invite, he has clearly got some friends working either as GMs or techs or similar where he'd have got a FFA invite from. But something happened pretty quickly and he decided to just go to town anyway.
Edit: Of course, I think they're just not giving their employees enough chocolate milk. With WoW of recent, particularly Cataclysm, they seem to have a lot of difficulty here. Probably too many people involved, I guess.
Edit2: Holy shit, Starcraft II was announced over two years ago, and we only finally have a release date....of over 3 years after announcement. I guess that's nothing compared to Warcraft III's journey though.
I think nailing the position of his sources is hard because he wasn't the very first to leak this stuff - he simply confirmed that alpha was getting leaked to the public, then started releasing things from the alpha client. The fact that he hasn't released anything that can't be found in the client could just as easily be attributed to the fact that such info hasn't been leaked anywhere else. I have no idea how well-informed his sources are, but I know the previous Blizz employee on SA implied they have many of the same sources ( he's obviously not the source himself since he's not working there anymore), and he was a CM or at least worked in the community department. Don't know what info they have access to there, or how close they work with the more knowledgeable people in the company however.
As it is, anyone motivated enough can find the Alpha client and the way to get these screenshots. He's just letting everyone in on it, ultimately.
It's not the current batch of info - the screenshots and talent trees - that pinpoint his leak. It's the posts he made beforehand about the status of the Alpha. When he was discussing that it was going to be in April, for example.
I know from my co-workers who worked at Blizzard that different office sites get different information at different times - they hold meetings to discuss all of the new stuff. When Blizz was contracting out here in Albuquerque, the site here would get info after Austin, but the info would be slightly different.
It's a way to help control and pinpoint leaks - if info gets out, all they have to do is determine which info would have been specific to which site and go from there. As I said earlier, Blizzard is very good at tracking this sort of stuff down. Their loss-prevention/internal investigation department is frightening.
Ah, cool. I haven't been there, or heard anything about it, since they revealed the 3rd class. BOXEY RETURNS!
last one has gotta be the female draenei pose.
2h special atk gif:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v618/Asshi/Alpha/WorgenFemale2hSpecial.gif
edit:Added one with druid t8
added priest t5 and warrior t6
added gif greatness
You be crazy son. The ICC dungeons were NOT trivial at release in 219 gear.
They weren't TBC "stamp on your nuts" stupid hard, but they were in no way trivial.
Wouldn't they have been no matter what?
That makes more sense, and helps narrow things in. Looking at his posts, apparently his source told him it was unclear if F&F would be happening and there was a chance the beta would be released early instead (in which case he would have been off by a week or so), while anyone with inside knowledge of development must have seen that as impossible if the lack of updated game mechanics (focus, new talents/skills/etc)and some incomplete zones in the F&F alpha is any indication. Also in the post where he apologized for being wrong about april release he posted "...at the time [of the post] it was pretty clear that the alpha would start in april, but apparently...it was postponed a couple of times" which doesn't make any sense since he posted the beta, not alpha, would start then.
:winky: Almost time for a sig/avatar change, methinks.
I was hoping the reason we only saw male worgen was because both sexes look the same in their wolf state, and they only would look different in their human form. It makes sense in my head. But, alas, lookit dem tit-tays.
Yeah, I'm sure they were going to do that.
Besides, we already saw the female Worgen on a leaked Halloween mask way back when.
Why are people butthurt that some screenshots got leaked?
P.S. Whats the estimated time on full client download and patching? 4-5 hours? My laptop died and I just got my new one in, at 8% install now...