How sources are classified

Every fact on this site carries a pill that says where it came from, and a note that says how confident we are in it.

The four pill kinds

• Blizzard — stated in an official Blizzard post, panel, or in-game text.
• Datamined — pulled directly from the beta or live game client, such as with wago.tools.
• Community — reported by press outlets, streamers, or other players, and not yet confirmed by Blizzard or the client.
• This site — written or compiled by this site, such as a guide or a methodology page like this one.

What “single-source” means

A page or fact marked single-source has been reported by exactly one outlet, and has not been confirmed by Blizzard, by the game client, or by a second independent outlet. Single-source facts can turn out to be wrong, incomplete, or superseded once the beta client is available. Pages marked confirmed are backed either by Blizzard’s own words or by two or more independent outlets agreeing. Pages marked inferred are this site’s own reasoning about what is likely true, based on what has been said elsewhere, and are the least certain of the three.

When we get something wrong

We correct it in place, say so on the page, and add a dated entry to the changelog explaining what changed. We do not delete the original changelog entry, because the record of what was reported on the day is itself worth keeping. Two corrections have been made so far: transmog turned out to be opt-out rather than opt-in, and new classes turned out not to be ruled out.

Primary sources this site checks

• Blizzard’s official news hub for Blizzard’s own posts.
• wago.tools for datamined build data once the beta client is available.

Panel recaps and transcripts

• Blizzard’s What’s Next panel recap and Deep Dive panel recap, Sept 12 and 13.
• Blizzplanet’s What’s Next panel transcript, which quotes the stage directly where Blizzard’s recap paraphrases.
• Wowhead’s liveblogs of the What’s Next, Deep Dive, and Hardcore panels.
• MMO-Champion’s write-ups of the Deep Dive and Hardcore panels.
• Output Lag’s timestamped live log of the What’s Next panel, which recorded slide detail other recaps skipped, including dungeon level ranges.

Developer interviews

• IGN with Kris Zierhut and Mike Nuthals.
• Inven Global with Ana Resendes.
• But Why Tho with Anna Resendez and Clayton Stone.
• ScreenRant with Tim Jones and Nora Valletta.

Community data we credit and reuse

The BlizzCon demo was playable on the show floor and streamed, so a lot of what is known about abilities, racials, and Legacy perks was transcribed off footage before any client existed.

• Talents Forever publishes its whole dataset at talentsforever.com/data.json under CC BY 4.0. Where this site uses its ability, racial, or Legacy data, it is credited as “Talents Forever (demo transcription)” with a link, as the licence requires. Its talent trees include estimated rank values and we do not reuse those.
• Icy Veins transcribed all nine races’ racials from the demo.
• Power Up Gaming counted the talent trees and published a per-class breakdown of what is new, changed, and unchanged.

Demo transcriptions are marked community, and single-source unless two outlets independently read the same number. They will be replaced with datamined values once the beta client is available after Sept 17.