Apparently, several Blizzcon live stream listeners overhead a private conversation between Kat Hunter and Geoff Keighley. They weren't aware that their mics were still on, and they were discussing what now is considered a Warcraft IV leak.
This just comes one day after they were talking about how they were surprised there were no leaks. :) It looks like the audio has been cut out (so it wasn't just a rehearsal of something they were going to say) from the stream if you try to rewind now, but I'm hunting around to see if anyone had recorded it.
Here are some pieces of what was discussed:
* Kat Hunter was singing and cursing about her ear piece.
* Kat complaining about Metzen, he was pissed at her for leaking Warcraft 4.
Geoff: "I can't believe you leaked Warcraft 4."
Geoff: "Chris Metzen is pissed about you breaking the news."
Kat?: "Yeah, there was no leaks until Kat Hunter was here"
Sources: 1 2
There a lot of talk on twitter about it too.
Here's a transcript of the conversation, care of Mascotte who still had the conversation cached:
K: Look at those great razer headsetsSounds like Kat was imitating Chris Metzen, "I can't believe she leaked Warcraft 4." It was related to a conversation from the previous day with Michael Morhaime where she accidentally asked about WC4 but received no denial (i.e, "All RTS resources currently focused on SC2"). This added conversation, however, does confirm that they know it was an accidental leak.
G: I know
G: Fansy
G: Hello everybody, welcome to our live set
G: (Responding to an unheard question): Yeah
G: (Responding to an unheard question): Right..
(Music playing now, hard to hear anything besides it)
K: Yes thank you
(Someone eating an apple or something)
K: *Coughing*
K: *eating microphone it sounds*
K, now on phone: I need you to do me a favor, you dont have to do it but i need someone to do it this morning, i need you to take the camera in the office, its in the red box by the desk to the left, i need to document every shelf on the store on the backside
(This really isnt interesting at all, just typing this for completion sake)
K: And if someone can take pictures of the front of hall and display cases which is estimated at 4:30
K: And if security stops you say that you have authorization from (full name of someone, not posting since it doesn't add anything) to photograph the art store ony.
K: Thank you, bye.
(couple of seconds of nothing ness)
G(Talking to unknown third person): So am i sure you understand this euh.. Cool.
G: Is there sounds up here or we dont know?
G: OMG they are here! (Reacting to people walking in it seems)
G: For the hordee.., For the hordee
K: Why are they running?
G: For the hordee.., For the hordee
K: Yeah they are coming in.
G: Go go gooo
K: (Awkward laugh)
G: Omg they got warcraft 4 overhere (directed towards the people entering)
K: *Laughing* Yeah..
G: Yes Kat, Kat broke the news yesterday of warcraft 4 (This are his exact words, not MoP, not WoW, Warcraft 4)
K: There are no *Interrupted by G*
G: Metzen was pissed about that.
K: There are no leaks untill Kat Hunter got on stage.
G: I know!
G: Metzen was like how fucking will you..
K: Yeah couldn't believe she (talking in third person now) leaked warcraft 4.
G: Couldn't believe it either!
G: Sow how late was it last night?
K: Didnt get done until 11:30 (This is where the conversation shifts towards what time she ended up going to bed etc so im stopping right here).
(I'm still digging up more information, will update as this progresses. But it looks like folks can still record the conversation if it was precached.)
Here we go, this is an audio recording of the WC4 specific conversation towards the end. Even if it was an accident, it shouldn't have been that big of a deal. But Kat sounds very upset about the whole ordeal, Geoff is making fun of her, Metzen is pissed with her, and Blizzard edited the audio stream to remove the conversation. Normally I would just ignore it (ie, the accident from yesterday), but the serious response to the "leak" tells me it was, in fact, a leak. :)
And, here's the full recording, thanks to Mascotte.
Kat made a Twitter response regarding Warcraft 4. It looks like it was posted about 1 hour before her new leak. Poor Kat. Geoff was being a pain in the ass, and she sounded very uncomfortable and maybe a little scared about the whole thing.. but it definitely didn't sound like sarcasm to me.
22 OctNice cover. So, Kat Hunter, Licensing Project Manager at Blizzard for almost 3 years, prior Frag Doll, professional gamer, and avid World of Warcraft player was confused about the difference between WoW Mists of Pandaria and Warcraft IV. Uh huh.. sure. :)
@kathunter haha, that was icky! we also heard you talk about warcraft 4...oops? ;P
@AmehSweet seriously there is no Warcraft 4. It is a joke from yesterday :)
22 Oct
@kathunter why did you talk about warcraft4 before preshow today but we never heard of it again
@Linkie1987 because Geoff and I were making fun of the misunderstanding the day before. We thought it was funny.
Kat Hunter would never.. EVER.. confuse World of Warcraft's "4th Expansion Pack" with "Warcraft 4". A lot of users are attributing her mistake to not understanding the difference, which isn't true.
I wonder if she's talking about the "first mistake" or "second mistake" though, before the confidential conversation with Geoff?
* UPDATE:
If anyone has a virtual pass, would you mind recording the other Kat mention of Warcraft 4? Virtual ticket holders need to goto the WoW Class Talent System panel from day 1, and jump to the end. Then keep jumping forwards until you reach the in-between panel with Geoff and Kat. A YouTube link would be greatly appreciated. :) Apparently, she wasn't joking when she said she spoke to Metzen and other Blizzard developers and they said "Warcraft 4 is coming down the line". It was made distinct from the X4 expansion pack too (she said it was in addition to X4/MoP coming out, so it appears there's a lore integration being made).
There were a total of 3 conversations held regarding Warcraft 4. Only 2 of them were captured and posted publicly unfortunately. The first was with Kat and Metzen (which Blizzard deleted immediately from the stream) where she asked Metzen about WC4 and how she was talking to developers who were working on it, and he became visibily upset (she was definitely not talking to the dev team about MOP though). The second video, which is on YouTube, has Kat trying to cover it. And the third video is when Geoff is making fun of her, while both are trying to play it off as an accident.
During that Pre-Show coverage, Geoff Keighley & Kat Hunter were saying that there "Haven't been a lot of leaks" and the first time they haven't had any major leaks. :)
Yeah, right. Guess that's the benefit of having a smaller blog.. a lot of things go unnoticed.
I'll have some thoughts put up later on those other new developments that were announced. The "WOW Annual Pass" thing seemed kind of new and rushed, maybe it was to make up for the missing Diablo 3 release announcement. Things are just way too busy right now, and I've barely had a chance to use the PC. Sunday should be better.
* UPDATE (10/22/11 5:21 AM):
Okay, something SERIOUSLY WTF just happened. I was looking at the imgur link again and the "Posting Date" suddenly changed to "Saturday, October 22 at 10:53 GMT". As of right now it's saying it was uploaded "1 HOUR AGO" which is incorrect. I used IMGUR for this exact reason, so that it could be timestamped. I'll investigate to figure out what happened.
* UPDATE (10/22/11 5:57 AM):
Here's a comparison page you can use. This was posted around the same time as the original (so no weird /r/Diablo restructuring.)
Direct Link: http://i.imgur.com/FAp8v.png
Info Page: http://imgur.com/FAp8v
The reason those pages exist were because they were part of a puzzle on the "Important Notices" page.
Here's the specific entry:
* Research research research! If you find new information, share it. It's very important to read everything on the site from beginning to end. It helps many future blogposts make more sense. This blog covers many different topics, and important secrets or hidden gems and puzzles can be found anywhere. Keep your eyes open, investigate, and read..If you noticed, there was discoloration of certain characters, and if you did a mouse-over you would have discovered "hidden" hyperlinks on the characters.
Each of the hyperlinks went here:
http://i.imgur.com/FAp8v.png - How to piece together the puzzle together
http://pastebin.com/RFUi5Mzz -> The letters "TM" and "Case Sensitive"
http://pastehtml.com/view/b47z32u7o.txt -> a link to Youtube where the letters were "r."
http://tinypaste.com/865cd -> The letters "5Q"
(There are info pages on each of those too showing when they were first uploaded, or when the Youtube comment was first made. I wanted to make sure everything had undeniable evidence, but I didn't anticipate this imgur.com quirk.)
They all combined to make: http://i.imgur.com/ TM 5Q r. png
And I found comments about the puzzle (and specific Blizzcon reveals) here, here, here, and here (this is a page with that Blogspot missing comments problem, but hopefully should be fixed soon.)
I can't believe I have to go through this nonsense. It was just supposed to be cut and dry.
* FINAL UPDATE
Ahh here we go! It's a stupid Reddit feature and just temporary. If you view the "embed codes" on the post, you can see the original posting date: http://imgur.com/TM5Qr?tags
The original is still there. Reddit changed info for some reason whenever it gets linked back. So now you can't flame me anymore assholes.
Have you seen the trailer for the new movie CHRONICLE? It looks pretty awesome, check it out:
Plot Outline: Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.
From the trailer, it looks like some real thought went into it.. ie, how people would really behave if the same thing happened to them.
Can't wait to see it when it comes out. Release date is Feb 3, 2012. I hope it's a sleeper hit.