Blizzard is hiding Forever's loot from data miners

For twenty years, a new WoW patch has followed the same script. The files hit a test server, data miners pull out every item, and before launch day there is a best-in-slot list for every spec. WoW Forever is trying to break that habit on purpose.

What Blizzard said

In a BlizzCon interview with MMORPG.com, senior game designer Josh Greenfield said every item in Forever is obfuscated: you won't see an item's stats until it has dropped for you, or for someone else. The goal, in his words, is that nobody goes into the first raid knowing their best-in-slot list.

That isn't the only change:

• No public test realm for raids. You find out which bosses a raid has by walking in.
• No Dungeon Journal hand-holding at first. Boss mechanics are for players to work out.
• Secrets in the world. Blizzard says there are plenty of them, and that it will take a while to find them all.
• Not a "no changes" game. Classes and content will keep being adjusted after launch, so today's numbers aren't final.

How it works, as far as data miners can tell

Early looks at the beta client match what Blizzard described. The records for most new items are encrypted, and the keys to read them aren't shipped with the game. Data miners can see that thousands of new items exist, but not what they are. When an item drops for someone on the beta, the server sends that player its data, and from then on it can be read. So the database fills in as the community plays, which is exactly the "discover it together" idea.

Some things still get out. PC Gamer reported that data miners had already found item set bonuses on low-level gear. Classes and talents aren't hidden in the same way: our talent calculator is built from them, and they show a lot of change on their own (35 talents reworked).

The data miners' side

Not everyone who digs through game files wants to spoil it. Marlamin, one of the best-known WoW data miners and the person behind wago.tools, wrote that he would keep documenting the technical side, like file formats and database tables, but wouldn't post story content such as quests, voice lines or models on social media while Forever is fresh. On Blizzard's forums, players have gone further, with threads asking Blizzard to shut datamining down altogether.

What it means for you

Expect the first weeks after launch to feel like 2004 again. Gear guides will be written by people as they play, not copied from a spreadsheet. If you care about discovery, stay away from spoiler threads for a while. If you care about gear, the upgrade checker compares any item Wowhead knows about. Since Wowhead only learns an item once it has dropped for someone, it follows Blizzard's rule automatically.