RUMOR: World of Warcraft expansion pack to be subtitled The Burning Crusade?

What we heard: With World of Warcraft playing musical chairs in the "top 10 PC games" chart, interest has never been higher in its forthcoming expansion pack. So little wonder then that forums were aflame this week following a rumor that the expansion pack would be titled The Burning Crusade. The thermally tinged name sounded like something that Blizzard might cook up, as evidenced by the subtitle of its last Warcraft III expansion--The Frozen Throne.

The source was an image of the November cover of The Games Machine, an Italian games magazine owned by UK-based Future Publishing. GameSpot obtained a scan of the cover of the November Games Machine. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that we obtained two covers of the magazine: one hyping The Burning Crusade and the other promoting Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. The dual covers could mean only two things: Either one magazine cover was fake, or they were both legit--and Blizzard asked the magazine's publisher to yank the story. Either way, it won't be long until we find out what the title is, because the World of Warcraft expansion will be playable at BlizzCon next weekend.

Bogus or not bogus?: Probably not bogus.