UPDATE: Our own Bill Murphy reached out to Blizzard for comment on this story. This is the response we received in return:

Hey Bill!

Thanks for reaching out to us. The Public Test Realm provides our players with access to content that's currently being brainstormed, developed, and tested, oftentimes many months (or even years) before release. Many times this content never even appears in the live game. While we have exciting plans for the future of World of Warcraft Battlegrounds, we don’t have any additional details to share at this time, including if and when any new content on the PTR will become available.

A new rumor (and a credible-ish one too!) has surfaced at VG247.com that Blizzard will be introducing a MOBA-like feature with the next World of Warcraft update. Called "Defense of the Alehouse", the feature has been 'leaked'. What shows is a top-down map that seems to allow up to ten players to take part. What do you think?

Originally posted by ichihaifu
Milkin everything out of the cashcow yo

Well to be fair, there's been a fair amount of comments over the years how stale BG pvp has become. The bigger maps like Alterac Valley tend to be a PvE race with PvP mixed in (depending on how much your team is defending). While other maps are basically just roving packs of people trading points. The two new BGs Blizzard added in MoP are boring as hell too (in my opinion). They added a payload style BG which...doesn't seem to fit, and then the hold the ball type of match, which again seems out of place.

A 3rd person MOBA style bg might be what the doctor ordered to make pvp interesting again. In many ways, that type of map seems more "lorefriendly" opposed to the other types of maps available (with the exception of the large 40 man maps). As long as players don't find ways to bypass the mechanics (aka getting past the "creep" to destroy the base in the first 30 seconds), I might be interested in pvp in WoW again.

I was suggesting this feature for WoW a long time ago.

I consider it a good step if it's true.

Kudos to them for trying something new, bringing more contents for player.

Now, please scrap dailies.....

Originally posted by GeekieDave
If people are going to complain and say that they are trying to milk everything they can out of this game, You need to rethink about where World of Warcraft actually came from. Warcraft started as a MOBA game and was a huge hit. I personally look at this new feature to be a homeage to what they were like once and where they have made it to now!

MOBA started to attract players with DOTA, not Warcraft 3.

Originally posted by ichihaifu
Milkin everything out of the cashcow yo

 Thats how WoW was born, not sure why you would expect it to change.

Originally posted by ichihaifu
Milkin everything out of the cashcow yo

I know right? A business trying to make the most profit from a very popular product they created? Crazytown.

Too bad Blizzard can't be more like all those other charitable MMO's whose developers work for free!

Originally posted by XAPGames
Developing and testing tech for use in Titan would be my guess.

SOE did the very same thing with EQ2 and SOEmote so wouldn’t surprise me at all if Blizzard are using WoW as a test bed for Titan ideas. If they add something to Titan and it fails it’s a big deal but with WoW it doesn’t matter people will still play it even if it sucks.

Originally posted by Nitth
All i see is trees?

-lol, thats their way of covering up their flat art content- i give them props for them trying new techniques to make the game more dimensional appealing and keeping up with the times, they do have a huge following.

Originally posted by Nitth
All i see is trees?

^

Originally posted by GeekieDave
If people are going to complain and say that they are trying to milk everything they can out of this game, You need to rethink about where World of Warcraft actually came from. Warcraft started as a MOBA game and was a huge hit. I personally look at this new feature to be a homeage to what they were like once and where they have made it to now!

Warcraft was not a MOBA game lol. Term MOBA was created for the mod called Defence of the Ancients map that was created for Warcraft 3.

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Honestly I just want from the bottom of my heart for WoW to just die off already. Its existence itself is destroying many other games that come out that try to imitate it, not that its a good thing itself, but they only try to imitate WoW because its what it is, a giant of a game that has the attention of practically everyone of this world. If it didnt exist, we would have other innovative games. Thankfully we're slowly breaking out of copy-the-wow world of gaming we're so used to seeing.

Dont get me wrong here, I loved the game for 6 long years, but now its just boring to me as I've already seen everything wow itself has to offer, but it hasnt really presented us anything new during the past couple of years. That is why I feel like it HAS to retire, so that Blizzard could make something new and maybe even better than WoW itself was.