How Realm First verifies a Project Camelot signal

The useful question is never “does this sound plausible?” It is “what can another reader reproduce from the original evidence?” Realm First uses the same short sequence for every developing Camelot story.

1. Find the earliest available source

We start with the original Blizzard page, public build record, repository, interview or attributable observation. A screenshot of someone quoting an article is not the source. Ten articles repeating one observation are still one observation.

For build reporting, the public record may be a tracker such as BlizzTrack. For an announcement, the standard is an official Blizzard page, broadcast or transcript. Secondary reporting adds context; it cannot silently become official confirmation.

2. Record the observation before interpreting it

The ledger stores the URL, publisher, access time and the precise fact being used. For example: build 1.60.0.69698 appeared on the tracked WoW Dev 5 regions with no public keyring. That sentence describes the record. “Classic+ is launching soon” would be an inference the record does not support.

3. Assign a visible claim status

• Confirmed means Blizzard or another responsible primary source said it directly.
• Observed means a public technical change can be reproduced.
• Interpretation means the newsroom is connecting evidence and explains the reasoning.
• Unconfirmed means the claim is still missing adequate support.
• Debunked means evidence contradicts or retracts it.

Evidence strength and claim status are separate. A build record can be strong evidence that a build exists while providing no evidence for a release date.

4. Write what the evidence does not prove

Every signal story has a hard boundary. A branch name does not reveal a feature list. A CDN change does not announce a beta. A schedule with World of Warcraft panels does not confirm that one of them concerns Camelot.

This section is not legal padding. It stops a cautious source from mutating into a confident headline as the story gets reposted.

5. Keep the correction path public

Material changes update the timestamp, status and correction note. We do not erase the old conclusion and pretend it never existed. The public record should make it possible to see why confidence went up or down.

What this process cannot promise

Source discipline cannot make an unannounced project predictable, and it does not turn Realm First into an official Blizzard publication. It gives readers a compact way to separate what happened from what the community hopes happened.