Possible texture from the next expansion datamined in patch

[AdamSavage]

Noticed this on WoW insider earlier today. Was an interesting read.

Datamining must always, always, always be taken with a pinch of salt, and in this instance we'd actually recommend a whole bag of salt. But nonetheless, it is fun to speculate, and this sort of thing has happened in the past and actually turned out to lead somewhere. Back in 2007, WoW Insider's Eliah Hecht reported on a section of the PTR client called "Howling Fjord", and wondered whether this might link to some future expansion taking place in Northrend. Guess what happened?

And now we have word that there is a new item under expansion05 on the PTR client. For clarity, as far as we know, we are currently on expansion number four. Again it's worth taking all of this with a very large pinch of salt, but while the file itself is simply a bit of grey stuff, the name of the folder it's in is "Iron Horde", and its name is nex_envmap01t.


Potential texture from the next expansion datamined in patch 54This is where we really start to speculate. This could be absolutely nothing. It could be a piece of iron that is in a horde area or on a horde outfit, or it could be the name of the next expansion. It could be the Horde's texture of an iron thing, or it could be a new offshoot of the "true Horde" that are coming to terrorize Azeroth in 6.0. Or it could be a red herring put there by the devs to confuse us.

Obviously, this is rampant, unapologetic speculation. It should not be taken as fact, and nor should anything else that's datamined, but it's fun to think about these sorts of things, right?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/07/15/poten ... patch-5-4/

[Wain]

The file name is a Nexus one. So that in itself wouldn't give anything away about a new expansion, other than they might revisit the Nexus, or had just copied a texture they wanted but not yet renamed it.

But my feeling is this is a 5.4 thing they screwed up the path for. Given that MoP is 5.0 it's easy when you're a bit tired to type 5 into the path when it's actually expansion 4.

[Lisaara]

I really hope they revamp Northrend and Outland to be up to date(ESPECIALLY OUTLAND! FFS...XD Questing out there is a DRAG)

[Nevish]

Doesn't look like anything particularly special by itself; the game is chock full of leftover odds and ends with bizarre labels. Being a hobby concept artist, I can vouch that 90% of saved work files usually have barely relevant, spur of the moment names. There's at least two dozen iterations of "kawaii.png" in my folders. So unless we can match a model to the texture, I wouldn't get too excited.

I am, however, also eagerly crossing my fingers for the first signs of the next expansion.

[Wain]

MMO-Champ found its current use:

Currently this texture is only used to provide some sheen on metal in the Siege of Orgrimmar Raid, so it could just be a simple typo.

While it's all guesswork, this does make sense to me that they typed 5 when they meant 4. And "Iron Horde" does seem like a good working title for Garrosh's Horde

[Lisaara]

Makes sense.