* 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. :)

Continuing on with my thoughts about manipulation and how (many) users don't view Facebook was very useful or reliable, I wanted to demonstrate a practical example of how it can be used and has been used (many times) with great success.

This is also a warning piece about the dangers of employees using Facebook, really any profile site for that matter.

Here's a very good practical example from a completely open (public) Facebook profile:

And remember, this is just one example out of HUNDREDS, if not thousands. I chose this one specifically because it was public, and you can see it for yourself.

While others are saying "Facebook is unreliable for real information!!!" I think that you're beginning to see some of the real possibilities here.

The problem with WOW phishing scammers is that they don't really have any personal details about their targets, so they're left with very generalized phishing lure emails, and they try to email as many people as possible (usually using email addresses datamined from WOW gaming forums.)

But look at the dangers associated with Facebook in this case.

• You now have detailed personal information about every one of these individuals.
• You know where they live.
• You know their profession and where they work.
• You know their family members and their email addresses too.
• You have their own personal email address.
• You know that this is also their Battle.net LOGIN ID.
• And you know that they're in the Diablo 3 Friends & Family beta.

I don't know about you, but to me that's a tremendous amount of highly useful information for targeted and very convincing phishing scams or trojan horse email attachments. This is the kind of stuff that scammers salivate over.

All of these users just publicly posted a ton of information about themselves and they didn't even care. This is how dangerous Facebook is, and why it is indeed reliable for useful information or leaks.

All over Facebook, Blizzard employees have been handing out F&F Diablo 3 beta invites like candy (typically 15 available each). Even to people they hardly even know. Can you see how easily certain employees could be manipulated, or how anyone with insincere intentions could get an invite too?

Here are some theoretical examples;

• Pick a group of lesser known Blizzard artists (Concept, Cinematics, Character, Environments, etc) who have Facebook accounts. Start following them on their blog or art forum, compliment them on their new postings, stroke their ego, and do it over a few weeks or months. Once they start getting use to your name/alias, send a FB invite to join them and tell them who you are ("Hey, this is uberfan98 from CGHUB! I love your art, mind if we connect through FB?") It works better before the F&F beta starts of course, but it's still possible get an invite if they haven't burned through them already.
• This isn't just limited to artists or developers, though, often the support staff or sound engineers are overlooked and they have plenty of extra beta invites available; IT Managers, Customer Service, Recruiting, DBA, Network Administrators, Web Designers, etc.
• You can also get invites through their blog, Twitter, or other profile. And, the shy or quiet ones will always have a lot of beta invites available (look for ones who blog about their cats.. just sayin'). If their blog is more about themselves, and they don't have any pictures of their family or friends, they'll have a lot available.
• People who are in a hurry can just randomly send out Facebook invitation requests to random employees to see who bites ("I'm a huge fan! Let's be friends!"). Or, because FB reveals so much about users, it's makes it really easy just to pretend to be an old friend from high school or college ("Hey! I sat behind you in.. uhhh... History, yeah that's right").
• The problem with pretending to be someone else, though, is that you need to create a backstory for your new internet identity. For example, create a new email address, create a new Battle.net account, and use a different mailing address in your registration. The overly paranoid should also use VPN during all of this. It's very unlikely that your "mark" would every confirm IP information to your location, though, and they would just look at your email address or B.Net account summary.

This is something I've known about for a very long time, and I know for a fact that many people have exploited their "friends" for Beta invites. There are hundreds of profile accounts out there right now, with thousands of F&F beta invites still available. And, once you get your foot in the door, you're more eligible (almost guaranteed) for future beta invites.

Facebook unreliable and not very useful? Right.

Anyone who ever says this is completely oblivious to the dangers of the internet, and they have probably revealed a ton of personal information about themselves publicly. If you were to leave a USB drive labelled "naughty pix" outside their front door, they're the kind of people who would plug it into their work computer to see what's on it (and not even consider the ramifications.)

The internet is not always a nice place, and you would be wise to remove all personal information about yourself from it. This is just one example of why (and why you should never mix your social life with work).

I thought I might mention it anyways, since certain keywords in resumes really stand out to me.

Sometimes nothing turns to be nothing and sometimes it turns out to be something.

Wallace D. Robinson is Lead Lighting Artist for Rockstar Toronto.

He worked for Rockstar San Diego for more than 5 years, where most of his time was spent on Red Dead Redemption.

Max Payne 3 was announced in 2009, when he was still in SD working on RDR.

When he moved to Rockstar Toronto in August 2011, he started work on an "Undisclosed Project". Apparently, R* Toronto is working on another project and it's not Max Payne 3.

Also, pay attention to his job description:

* He copied-and-pasted his RDR job description to his Undisclosed Project.
* Developers use "Unannounced" and "Untitled" for game names that haven't been selected yet or announced. "Undisclosed" typically means existing franchise.
* He has RAGE experience with RDR and R* Toronto has also been working with the RAGE Engine for Max Payne 3.

I don't see why RDR would need a lighting artist (unless it was more than a PC port) though, so this could be Bully 2 using the RAGE engine, or another game they're working on besides Max Payne 3.

I've always found that Rockstar employees are even more careful than Blizzard when it comes to posting online information, but I'll dig around to see if I can find out anything else. It's probably too early into the project to find anything though.