"Unironically killing the game" - Asmongold comments on World of Warcraft leak claiming alleged addition of "free-to-play battle pass"

During a livestream on September 26, 2023, renowned Twitch personality Zack "Asmongold" discovered a set of leaks concerning Blizzard Entertainment games. An anonymous 4chan user posted this, detailing alleged information about Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, Hearthstone, Diablo Immortal, and World of Warcraft Classic.

According to them, WoW Dragonflight is the "remains of a canceled mobile game," co-produced by a Chinese partner. They then provided some information about the MMORPG's 11th expansion, claiming it would feature a "free-to-play battle pass" model similar to Destiny 2.

The 4chan user wrote:

"Dragonflight is the remains of a canceled mobile game, co-produced with Chinese partners that was bolted onto World of Warcraft to pad a massive gap after catastrophic response to Patch 9.1. This lead to a ship (shift) in tone that the players have noticed and found off-putting."

They continued:

"11.0 is to be announced at BlizzCon, with a shift to a free-to-play seasonal battle pass model, similar to Destiny 2, with smaller 'micro expansions' sold as optional premium DLC that will include elements like new dungeons, that require these DLC packs to access."

Asmongold believed that implementing these changes to World of Warcraft would "unironically kill" the game, adding:

"I think that, if they do that, they're probably going to end up, actually, unironically killing the game."

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"Integrity of the game has been destroyed with WoW Token" - Asmongold gives his take on the alleged leak which claims the addition of a Destiny 2-like system

Asmongold was about an hour into his livestream when he came across the aforementioned leaks on his official subreddit. After giving his initial thoughts on the supposed World of Warcraft 11.0 information, the content creator stated that he had no objections to the MMORPG adopting a free-to-play model.

He elaborated:

"Like, I have no problem with them making it free-to-play, with the seasonal battle pass that you have to buy. Like, I don't really think... that would not ruin the game for me. The way that I look at it is that - I think WoW already, like, the integrity of the game has been destroyed with the WoW Token."

According to the co-founder of One True King (OTK), the integrity, value, and accomplishment were "destroyed" when Blizzard Entertainment enabled players to buy in-game gold through WoW Tokens:

"Like, any integrity and any value, and any accomplishment in the game was destroyed the moment that they allowed you to buy gold. Because you can just buy gold and get anything that you want in the game. And, it's completely legal and that's it. So, I don't really care about this."

Timestamp: 00:54:25

Asmongold speculated that the addition of a battle pass in World of Warcraft could lead to players abandoning the game:

"The reason why WoW is successful is because people are, like, very invested (and are) already into it. And, there are very rarely times that you have to, like, redo that investment. Like - you buy an expansion, what, every two years or something like that? Asking people to buy, like, a regular battle pass all the time is going to be... that's going to let a lot of people stop playing."

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Fans react to Asmongold's take on the supposed WoW's 11th expansion leaks

Asmongold's comments on the reported World of Warcraft expansion information have elicited over 2.1k reactions in the YouTube comments section. Here's a snapshot of some pertinent ones:

Fans in the YouTube comments section discuss Asmongold's take on the reported WoW leak (Image via Asmongold Clips/YouTube)

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Readers should note that none of the leaks mentioned in this article have been confirmed or denied by Blizzard Entertainment. Such information should be taken with a grain of salt.