I like the idea but in practice the reality is, if its not good or not what people are expecting (in a good way) it could do a huge amount of damage to the game.
Plus there is no hype… just a thought.
There’s no doubt the secrecy and meming on social media by some of the devs has probably set expectations a lot higher than is the norm for a minor patch and that does create a risk that the expectations won’t be met leading to disappointment - but I’d suggest that huge amount of damage is a bit… hyperbolic.
If we are let down we will no doubt express that disappointment forcefully via the usual channels but I suspect after that we will move on and the game will be fine.
As for hype - I’d argue that the secrecy has led to increased hype - the lack of info from the game feels unusual compared to the last year but long droughts in both the game and info are pretty usual for the 2nd year of an expansion.
It had to be extremly bad to do " huge damage" to the game, if you played this game a few years your expectations can’t be that high.
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oh no
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I personally like no data mining and spoilers they should ban it in my view wowhead and icy viens need to tone it down.
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The game isn’t in a position for it to just be fine as they are still working on trust and bringing people back. As for hype, I posted this because i just just remembered there is a patch coming, I’d forgotten.
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I like it when there is no spoilers of what is coming. You finally get a sense of excitement or dread as to what could be coming.
When everything is data mined months before it’s release, you just go “oh ok!”.
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Personally don’t mind the secrecy and i don’t think it will damage the game at all, but it could be a bit of a nightmare for addons working since authors won’t be able to update and test prior to release.
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I highly expect some of the big ones know and they’ve signed an NDA to avoid anything being leaked.
Most of the leaks with content for WoW prior to data mining always come from internal sources. Like friends of employees who can’t keep their mouth for and spill everything.
But true, having things kept hidden is always a good thing for engagement. With the individual saying that they should tell everything because they’re in the stage of building trust and bringing back players… interesting theory, but that’s not how the world works.
They have said it is an experiment, if people react badly to it they won’t do it again.
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I think over the years the amount of data mining and info we get way in advance has simply spiralled out of control.
A new patch, expansion for sure, needs a certain element of secrecy and wonder about it.
Thinking back to when I first started playing, I had no clue what to expect. I knew it was an MMORPG, where you could fight NPC’s, do dungeons and raids, or do pvp, and that I had to do quests or missions to level and gear.
But those were some very broad things, nothing in detail. When I first entered the world it was amazing. figuring out where to go, what to do etc. Ok others already knew how to operate the treadwheel, but that didn’t matter to me.
Back then new players were still welcomed and shown around and helped in dungeons as they learnt. Not like today, the moment your not speed running, or you stop to read a quest or don’t know what a boss does because you didn’t know dungeon journals exist you get booted because “LMAO Nub scrub”.
We have lost so much of what made us a community, and what gave us a thrill of seeing things for the first time.
I welcome this and hope it succeeds so we might have more to come in the future.
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It won’t. Players may complain for a few days after having unrealistic expectations, then life goes on. The sky will stay right where it is.
Announcing a secret patch with an unknown release date keeps players subscribed during the last stretch of the expansion.
Everything is dataminable = “STOP SPOILING EVERYTHING BLIZZ! 
”
Something is kept secret = “THIS COULD DESTROY WOW! ”
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The problem of the secret patch, is telling people about the secret patch.
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I’m mostly afraid not about meeting hype expectation, but lack of testing. The last “surpise” event without PTR was Warcraft Rumble promotion and it was bugfiesta, with not couting quests, quests you can do twice and lost your coins, missing coins in their location in the world, not triggerring achievements… Took like 2 weeks to fix all the problems for Bliz.
At this point whatever blizzard does someone still will be unhappy and offended
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I disagree with every word of this.
False expectations ruin games. Both from Devs and Players alike.
This exactly, any other time they want to do this, they should just keep it for themselves and not put it on patch roadmaps.
It might create a new type of forum post tho: omg we had a secret patch last expansion but not now. 
Y no secret patch Blizzard? So maybe it is never good enough.
For myself, i didnt notice we would get a secret patch until i read this post. Yes i did see the patch roadmap on mmo-champ but thats a once read and forget the day after 
the real problem with a secret patch is that there is a 99.9% chance that the patch is complete garbage.
I mean you are making such a fuss about a supposingly small patch that it will certainly create disappointment if it is not something spectacular which it won’t be for sure.
And what most people care for anyways are patches that shake the meta, rebalance or rework classes etc.
A small stupid event like superbloom will be played by casuals for 2 days and then it is dead anyways
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I’m 100% expecting it to be something like time rifts or the new secrets of azeroth thing we got last time, i.e. an event that repeats itself every hour where you fill a bar of some sorts by clicking on things or killing waves of mobs.
Oh and at the end a big health-sponge NPC appears through a portal yelling menacing things.
You can get a few cosmetics that you grind out by repeating the event 5 times or so and then never touch it again.
But yeah this is a tad overdramatic imo 
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