An eagle-eyed Reddit user named "Tiwuno" caught a momentary slip up on World of Warcraft version tracker site BlizzTrack. For the briefest of moments, the most current beta version listed across all regions was 8.0. Blizzard traditionally releases expansions on even numbers. For instance, Warlords of Draenor was 6.0, Legion 7.0 and so on. The 8.0.0.25338 (to be precise) version was only live for a few minutes before being rolled back. However, it indicates that the expansion is well underway.
It likely means that the 8.0 expansion is in Friends and Family testing, a process Blizzard goes through with every expansion prior to and just following its announcement. It further indicates that the expansion is a year away from release. For instance, Warlords of Draenor was announced in November 2013 and released in November 2014. Legion was announced in August 2015 and was released in September 2016 (though the pre event started in August 2016). Following this schedule, it's likely we'll get the expansion announcement at Blizzcon in November, with a pre-event starting in October 2018 and release sometime in November 2018.
You can check out the discussions about the inadvertent leak on the World of Warcraft Reddit, or by visiting the thread on the US WoW Community Forum.
What would you like to see Blizzard keep from Legion moving forward? What would you like to see them do away with? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.
SPOILERS AHEAD - BE WARNED
As for what the expansion might be, we already have more than a few clues. Several lines of dialog where Khadgar is speaking to the player character have been datamined from the current beta version. He speaks of a "wound in Silithus" that could "doom us all". The wound, he further expands, was created by a single drop of Sargeras's blood. Interestingly, datamined screenshots of the wound seem to resemble the Eye of C'Thun, one of the Old Gods that was imprisoned beneath Silithus and thought defeated. This seems to indicate that, as many have speculated, the Old Gods will be coming into play, not as single entities, but perhaps as a unified force. What do you think?