Nick, Rei, and Eric are here to talk about Gamescom coming up this week. But first, Rei and Eric talk about running alts through content. One of their guild members said they don't believe in alts, which leads to a discussion about the why alts are good. They also talk about the Trial of Style, which Nick ran and had fun with and even managed to win once! Nick's also making progress on his warlock and death knight hidden appearances.

Gamescom is this week and Blizzard is streaming the reveal Wednesday. It looks like there will be info about Patch 7.3, since Turalyon is prominently featured in the key art, but Nick is distracted by the girl who ostensibly represents Hearthstone. She has a purple hearthstone card and a leather vest and a white mouse in a scarf! WHO IS SHE!?!?!?!? Nick talks about how there probably won't be an expansion announcement, but it would make sense for there to be one, and it all depends on Blizzard's internal development schedule which we are not and can not be privy to.

Also in the news, there was an RP event, The Tournament of Ages, that was affected by sharding on the old continents. Twitter and reddit were upset over this and Blizzard hotfixed the sharding within a day. Additionally, Duncan Jones announced a screening of the Warcraft movie with himself and Rob Kazinksky in Los Angelels. The timing of this with Gamescom this week seems suspicious. Also from Blizzard, they announced a diversity intiative for increasing their female and minority hires. Warcraft III is getting a PTR to test new maps. This could suggest that a remaster is coming sooner rather than later. The Blizzard App is back to being Battle.net, although it feels like it always was. And there's a new beta build for World of Warcraft, hinting that a new expansion is around the corner.

Thank you for listening to WoW! Talk! #88. Follow us on twitter at @wowtalkmtb for streaming times and podcast updates!

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