Patch 10.2.6 is a big secret… but do we really want big secrets?

The upcoming patch 10.2.6 is the first patch in a really really long time that WoW has had a patch without a PTR. While many people talk about returning to the sense of mystery that vanilla WoW had — where you didn’t know how to complete all the quests or what was over that next ridge — time and gaming expectations have moved on. Unlike when World of Warcraft went live nearly 20 years ago, today there’s someone streaming every hour of the day for almost every major game. The only way content remains a secret for any length of time once it goes live is if it’s deliberately obfuscated in the game files, otherwise dataminers and keen-eyed gamers quickly identify and map anything new. I’ve contributed to this in the past myself hunting for new content on PTR with the WoW Secret Finding discord.

Players talk about wanting the mystery back, but at the same time they anticipate online guides and feature write-ups, actively hunting information about how to do new quests or where to find new NPCs. Is this one of those “you think you want it but you don’t” moments? Which raises the question: who is this secret patch for?

Players are hungry for new information, and content-creators are running out of speculation (probably). Did Blizzard overplay its hand by even letting us know there was a secret patch coming? Blizzard could have easily had 10.2.7 as the next item on the roadmap and drop the secret patch as a complete surprise — if that was what Blizzard really hoped to achieve. By teasing this “secret” patch for so long, the the pot can’t decide if it’s gone cold or boiled dry.

How do you feel about patch 10.2.6? Are you excited for when it eventually arrives? Do you think at this point it can’t possibly live up to the accumulated hype? Do you care at all? What are you doing until the ‘super sekrit’ patch drops and will it affect your play habits at all?