* UPDATE:

A fair warning; there is a ridiculously long wall of text incoming.

Although.. you really shouldn't be surprised by now. You know how much I love investigating things, ripping apart things, and trying to find small trends or patterns wherever I can. :)

So - don't bother reading this if you're looking for new information or leaks.

It's a fun piece, I'm bored, and I happened across a wonderful discovery that I thought I would share with the blog veterans here. It's sort of a "sticky" post as a reminder of the site's history, while also being a short story that reveals something very fascinating.. maybe even shocking.

Okay, so back to the original post.

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As you know, for a while now, I've been searching for older posts or mentions of this blog before it was originally shutdown in March. Like you, I really want to know what was in those deleted posts.

(For example, when I found that old blog comment regarding Second Life and Facebook and how it connected to that 4chan leak.. that was a very interesting find.)

I've been looking for anything or anyone who might have remembered (or cached) the old pages, the Titan information, images, or any other details.

I have just recently reached the end of one of my investigations, and I have discovered something quite interesting. :)

I found an old redditor who had been following the site for a really long time, and it appears that he knew some of the stuff that was posted in March before it went down. Apparently, he felt that the "sudden shutdown" was suspect though, and he thought that the last posts were faked as a result. It's actually old news now, but with the help of some readers here who alerted me to some old posts, I discovered something that I hadn't even considered possible.

The investigation actually led back to the old August email from TOD that was posted on imgur. If you weren't aware, Fabien (Boub) was really angry about the whole thing and jumped onto it really quick. It always struck me as really strange.. I knew it was true, other regulars here did too, and the only reason more people found out was because it was leaked. He was so obsessed with trying to disprove it though. It just didn't sit well with me, and I didn't know the reasoning for his personal and insistent involvement.. until now.

I found evidence of July 2011 Reddit posts (referencing the original March blog posts), that were partially used in the August email that TOD had sent me. It also appears that a certain someone was already aware of this July information, and was well aware of the August puzzle for possibly months leading up to Blizzcon. It might have also been the reason why he tried to convince people "Nothing to see here. It's all fake, move along." Of course, what you're about to see could all be pure coincidence.. but the sheer odds of this happening are highly unlikely.

I'll start at the beginning:

On August 3, 2011, the site was transferred ownership and changed from Private to Public, revealing all of the old posts TOD had put up.

The March post ("Huge News") contained old information by then, but it also contained some NEW details and information that had not been mentioned anywhere else. Remember, this was all 3 months before Blizzcon.

Here's what was written in March (and August when it went live again):

• The expansion pack was in fact called "Mists of Pandaria" without a doubt. Many gamers did not believe it, and they said that Blizzard would "never" bring in the Pandaren so they cried "fake", "red herring", "it's a comic book or novel", etc. Even Tom Chilton denied the rumor that the next expansion pack was called "Mists of Pandaria" which further convinced more players.
• There would be a non-hero class. (Everyone else was expecting a Hero class or no class at all.)
• The only playable class would be a "Pandaren Monk" with 100% certainty.
• The same Pandaren race would be playable by BOTH factions. This was something unheard of in WoW, and was not expected by anyone.
• Blizzcon would focus on all 3 franchises this year, with major announcements from each.
• There would be playable demos of MoP, HOTS, and D3 at Blizzcon. (Once again, not expected.)
• TOD made it clear that there would be NO Titan announcements. "Expert analysts" and everyone else said there would be though.
• TOD also said that the planned D3 release date would be announced at Blizzcon, that they expect to have it out before Christmas (a special surprise announcement due to it's close proximity of Christmas), and that they have a mid-Jan backup date. No one knew or believed this because during the Q4 2010 quarterly conference, Blizzard stated that there would be no games released in 2011. But, in late September, Blizzard admitted that they WERE planning on releasing it before Christmas, confirming what TOD had written. They also made a public news release about it, which was unheard of.

In August 2011, the Pandaren information was picked up by a few other sites (3 months before Blizzcon):



So, all of this was revealed months before Blizzcon, but it was still viewed as complete bullshit and fake.

One thing to keep in mind too is that there are a lot of fake "leaks" out there, and occasionally someone will get it right just by guessing. But, it's always a small piece of information and when you have 100 different people all giving different possibilities, of course 1 of them will eventually get it right.

This isn't just some random site with one random leak though. This was a site dedicated to Blizzard/WoW info and has released many accurate and confirmed leaks and discoveries in the past. And this wasn't just 1 piece of information, this was a whole collection of completely unbelievable (and unheard of) facts. They were all correct, this was all 3 months before Blizzcon, and no one else predicted this or even came close to this level of accuracy.

And now for the best part..

The only argument out there about the legitimacy of the leak came from Fabien: "That's bullshit, like most of daeity's posts." (He also contradicted himself; first it "was all bullshit" and then suddenly he changed it to "he might have decent info.")

Going by the track record of the site, and all of the older posts made by TOD, it's obviously bullshit to call it bullshit.

So, he comes up with some bullshit reasoning that it's "suspicious" because I type out posts that are very long and I provide frequent updates. Ummmm.. have you read everything any of the posts here? That's normal.

Then he keeps insisting that the picture was modified (not just on his own website, mind you.. he wants to make sure everyone knows this). After all, his legion will believe anything he says.

What he failed to mention (on purpose), however:

• is that the suspicious "2 blue rectangles" were Gmail attachments. You can reproduce it yourself to see that it's not faked. (In Gmail, you can just drag-and-drop image files onto an email page.)
• that a special imgur "Registered Account" is needed to edit images.
• that "image editing" is a brand new feature, and no one even knew about until he revealed this new implementation after his "investigation".
• that even with a registered account, there's still no privacy in imgur.com. When you upload an image, it's automatically made public for everyone on the internet to see. (That's why I used imgur, so that it's public.)
• he didn't tell anyone that the site was taken over by another person and that there are 2 "Daeitys". (This was for good reason. If he said 2 people were involved, then it becomes a conspiracy. But he wanted people to trust him, so he avoided that verbiage.)
• was that it was public here for 3 days, and existed as a hidden puzzle for 3 months. Others only found out late because it was leaked to Reddit.
• how simple this new editing tool truly is. I registered an account, tried it out like he said, and I discovered that he purposely left out very important facts about the tool.. like how it's really simple.. and I mean REALLY simple. You can cut or rotate an image, but that's about it's only good use. He didn't tell anyone that the "text tool" is incredibly basic. You can't change fonts, font sizes, change colors, create Powerpoint bullet points, or import images. He also failed to tell everyone that you can't customize indents or level/line-up anything. I spent hours trying to resize the font and it keeps rotating making it impossible to straighten.
• what he described would take hundreds of hours of work within a very short timespan (less than 30 minutes). It would take an inhuman hand and godlike graphical skill.. which you can all tell I'm an expert at by all of my MSPAINT work. Sheesh.

He also didn't tell anyone (or his legion) about the other posts, pages, blog entries, and forum posts about the leak. He didn't even share the MMO-Champion post that confirmed the leak. He didn't mention the puzzle (even though it was made obvious at this point), didn't mention the YouTube, TinyPaste, Pastehtml, or Pastebin links that also confirmed the leak.

But all of this gets even better..

Why was Fabs so upset about the whole thing in the first place? Why did he get so personally involved and so quickly?

To answer this, I need to give a quick background first:

• Boub made a joke about Pandas on April Fools Day. The same joke told by many others over the years.
• He has confirmed that he has been monitoring this blog for a long time.
• Pandas were already mentioned by March 23 on this blog. Now, it could have been a complete coincidence that he also happened to mention Panadas only 1 WEEK LATER.. or maybe he really WAS joking.
• Boub has been credited many times for the "Cataclysm leak", but many people don't know that MMO-Champion was the SECOND site to leak the information. :)
• He has stated that he would never leak information unless someone else did it first. He also said that he would never leak anything 48H before Blizzcon and poop all over them. (So, he doesn't like to ruin things by leaking them a few days before Blizzcon.)

He very rarely visits or posts on Reddit. Often, there are several months of breaks, a 1 month break, a 2 month quiet period, and then suddenly about 3-4 months before Blizzcon he posted this:

WHOA. What are the incredible odds of this happening?

For months and months, he makes no mention of Pandas or the next expansion pack. But, then SUDDENLY after this August post he starts telling people that "he knows" what the next expansion pack is, but that he's not going to reveal anything, and he's being deliberately sketchy about the details.

"Yeah, I might have a small knowledge of how Blizzard works internally at this point. Also, the fact that I know what the next expansion is helps."

"Titan has been confirmed a couple of times to be a new IP, Pandaria and Pandarens are far from new."

"Btw, heard about the next expansion they're probably going to announce at Blizzcon in 2 days? It sounds pretty nice, new stuff everywhere, I'm sure you'll even get a free trial... You know, just a few days, no strings attached."

"That's a pretty poopy "leak" based on wild guesses from the "Mists of Pandaria" name. A lot of that is bs, but obviously if the expansion is "Mists of Pandaria" and I'm not confirming or denying anything, some of that will be right.
I mean, Mists of Pandaria would probably have pandas."

What are the chances that out of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of posts in /r/wow, and the fact that he only checks in on and posts on Reddit once every couple months, that he just HAPPENS to be posting in the exact article that connects to very detailed information on this blog? And this happened like 3-4 months before Blizzcon!

We're talking about some incredible impossible odds here. Just coincidence?

If he had seen this post in August, a quick Google search for "Digital Castration Pandaren Monk" would have brought him directly to THIS page, alerting him to the puzzle, and then directing him right to the imgur puzzle leak. He was already well aware of the site accuracy, after all.

(Even if he had searched any time between Aug and Oct, he would have seen it. And we all know how much he loves investigating through Google. It's actually his RL job, and he gets paid for it.)

So now he "suddenly knows" what the expansion is all about, but doesn't want to share with anyone.. and we also know he waits until someone else leaks the information first. :) So, he only shared his angry thoughts and feelings with everyone after more people found out about it on Oct 21st. (Probably because he wasn't paying attention to the blog when it was leaked 3 days prior to Blizzcon and he missed reposting it.)

No wonder he was so obsessed and suspiciously informed about the leaked link. He must have already known that the site leaked the info back in August. >:(

Although there's a LOT written here, it really just came down to one simple thing. Fabs being in the exact same place at the exact same time of the leak several months before Blizzcon 2011. The odds of this happening are astronomical. This small connection explains so much now.

Joystiq has described Fabs as "one of the friendliest, most genuine voices in the WoWosphere." I'm just not feeling it. After everything I've been investigating, I've come to realize that he probably knew the actual truth for himself.. that makes it even more none-too-friendly and none-too-genuine. None of this matters though, people will believe anything he says.. he never lies after all. It actually reminds me of the "blue koolaid" effect.

I'm just glad I finally know the reason WHY. I obsess over little things so that they make sense and can be logically reasoned. :)