Legion Raid Release Schedule

[Avalrand]

wasnt it orginialy like 10 itlv higher ?

At the pre-patch PTR and first few weeks after 7.0 went live loot in both EN and NH was 850 / 865 / 880. Though, they've written in the tweet that the gap will be like between HM and BRF. One can guess, loot in EN can go up to 890, that's why they did Mythic NH loot 905. I don't think anyone will be full 890 prior to NH release, so it seems an extreme overkill to me.

for all we know if they toss in stormheim raid they can put tier gear in there for t19

Then Stormheim should be 6 bosses at least. I wouldn't consider it 'small' in this case.

[Master Guns]

I'm not really sure Blizzcon 2015 is really any type of valid information at this point. That was over a year ago.

[Ammanas]

Its honestly so strange that they STILL haven't given the official opening date for EN. There are a lot of people in top guilds that need to request time off of work and still don't know the exact date 2 weeks from the expansion launching. Either they know the date and just aren't telling us officially or they somehow still don't know internally. Both options are pretty bad, the whole thing just doesn't make much sense.

[Deleted]

OK tier might not be the correct term. 7 boss raid for 5 months is way too few

The small Stormheim raid will come between Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. So you have 7 bosses in Nightmare, probably 1-4 bosses in Stormheim and all the other content the launch of an expansion holds. That's a lot of content to do for everyone except the very top end hardcore raiders.

They they said that 4-5 months is a good time between raids, not between raid tiers. A good raid schedule would be something like:

Late September 2016: Emerald Nightmare
November-December 2016: Small Stormheim raid
February 2017: Nighthold
July 2017: Tier 20
January 2018: Tier 21
August 2018: 8.0 prepatch

Each raid would have enough time for people to progress on it, and no 1 year wait for the next expansion. Having some small content patches in between major raid patches would be even better.

[Spotnick]

No.

That not incorrect.

That 100% correct.

They said at Blizzcon that they want a raid schedule similar to that of WoD. WoD released November, several weeks later they released Highmaul, and another couple of weeks later they released BRF in February.

Legion releases end of August, almost September. Emerald Dream will come a couple of weeks later, probably in October, and then another couple of weeks later they will release Nighthold. If it is released January then that will have been a couple of weeks.

Facts:

WOD release date: November 13, 2014
Highmaul release date: December 2, 2014 (19 days)
BRD release date: February 3, 2015 (63 days)
HFC release date: June 23, 2015 (141 days)

the only reason why you can't say there were 2 weeks between the launch of WOD and Highmaul opened is because for some weird reason they released the XPAC on a thursday. So basically it's 2.5 lockouts. So saying "several weeks" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Now Ion said in an interview they felt BRF was released too soon, and obviously they won't release it in Christmas Vacation, so expect the Suramar raid in LATE JANUARY IMO..

Except there is this new info that they want to put a Helheim raid between both raid, that could change everything and they could push the Suramar raid because of that, who knows.

It's safe to assume Emerald Nightmare will open on September 13 if they follow indeed the WOD schedule, and not the MOP schedume with MSV opened 1 week after launch.

[Vestig3]

Suramar Palace is a the next raid tier

If Kara is coming with 7.1 then Suramar is in the same tier as Emerald Nightmare.

[Deleted]

that incorrect - there was twits sugesting that will you will to wait till january till nighthold opens

Then why is the nighthold already in the legion (7.0.3) content journal and currently being tested on the beta realms ? It makes no sense as they re already talking about a new small scale raid we never heard about (nor tested) before, which is supposed to come in between ED and the nighthold. Furthermore, the nighthold has been featured in the legion extended feature video.

I sure hope they re not pulling out a move to artificially increase the number of raid tiers, because then it would be silly. Needing to release a ToC type raid (not yet developed) to make people wait for an already developped content seems to be a weird move.

[Tojara]

The video from IGN at gamescon has Chilton saying raids would come a couple weeks after launch, and about 10 seconds after he said that he mentioned raids would be out about three weeks after launch.

So September 20th is probably the first week of EN, with Mythic opening up on the 27th.

I'm curious if Nighthold is still going to be considered part of the first tier, or it's going to be part of the second tier in the game? If they are part of the same tier the statement of tiers lasting 4-5 months would be really weird, because they also stated that they thought BRF was released too soon in relation to Highmaul. In such a scenario where they wanted to space them out but allow one tier to last 4-5 months, that would put Nighthold in January, with the second true tier arriving sometime in May or June? Total length of that first tier would be 8 months, which is fine for me, but seems to go against their design philosophy.

I mean if you look at the iLvL disparity between NH and EN, it's 25 between both Mythic Versions, which is a lot.

It would make make sense to me if the 7.1 patch was suppose to be the ending of the first major tier, and the Stormheim raid was meant to be the conclusion of the first tier, with NH starting off the second tier of the expansion.

EN - Mid September (Emerald Nightmare)
7.1 - November (Karazhan, Stormheim raid with 2-4 bosses, and 890 gear from Mythic Difficulty)
7.2 -February (start of tier 2, Nighthold)
7.3 - April (another dungeon addition, another raid with x amount of bosses to conclude the tier, 915 gear from Mythic difficulty)
7.4 - July (start of tier 3)
7.5 - September (conclusion of tier 3)

From there I wouldn't know. Presumably a new expansion would be revealed at Blizzcon November 2017 and would hopefully release in Spring of 2018? That or the timeline above gets stretched out a bit more and you see a summer release of the next expansion in 2018. Or they just keep adding patches along such a timeline.

Whatever the case though it doesn't matter. If EN is mid September and we get Stormheim in November, and Nighthold in February, with all of them considered the first tier.. well that's fine with me. I just hope that in such a scenario they don't drop the second tier of the expansion based off of when EN was released, because for one that wouldn't make sense. Realistically if Nighthold is part of the first tier (and I believe it still is) we probably won't see the true second tier of the expansion until May or June of 2017 (which is fine). 8 months of the first tier isn't bad. Especially considering 7.1 is adding a new raid, Karazhan and world content. It's highly likely that when Nighthold is released some additional content will be added with it's unlocking as well.

The other scenario is the 7.1 content is going to be added to the unlock of Nighthold after the new year, meaning that 7.1 would be absolutely massive. If what they say about 7.1 going on the PTR as soon as Legion launches to be true, I find it hard to believe that the PTR for such content would be up for 4-5 months potentially.

[jjonesssec]

Nighthold gear used to be equal to EN, but now it is 25 ilvl higher in atlas.

Thanks for the update, that a good thing then. Will check out Atlas

[Crimsonfell]

bump for relevance, blizz please give us an official release schedule for the first 2 raids <3

[kamuimac]

Then why is the nighthold already in the legion (7.0.3) content journal and currently being tested on the beta realms ? It makes no sense as they re already talking about a new small scale raid we never heard about (nor tested) before, which is supposed to come in between ED and the nighthold. Furthermore, the nighthold has been featured in the legion extended feature video.

I sure hope they re not pulling out a move to artificially increase the number of raid tiers, because then it would be silly. Needing to release a ToC type raid (not yet developed) to make people wait for an already developped content seems to be a weird move.

why ? it would artificially give them extra tier during legion - from marketing standpoint it would be brilliant

[Deleted]

why ? it would artificially give them extra tier during legion - from marketing standpoint it would be brilliant

I wouldn't call that brilliant, no. Especially when the nighthold has been advertised as being a launch (or closely after launch) feature.

[kamuimac]

I wouldn't call that brilliant, no. Especially when the nighthold has been advertised as being a launch (or closely after launch) feature.

it never was - they told very early on that nighthold will be in january

[Deleted]

it never was - they told very early on that nighthold will be in january

Do you have an actual official source for that ? Because it is quite unclear. Especially when said raid is already in the content journal, has been featured very early in the legion videos and when there aren't any set gear in the EN (which goes to show EN and nighthold were supposed to be in the same tier).

[Smithsonian]

Are people suggesting that T19 will be the first raid tier without tier sets? That would be the case if Nighthold is T20 unless they update loot tables in EN to contain tier, which would be strange that 6/7 bosses drop tier. This would be pretty sloppy in that T19 gear just wouldn't exist.

[Marston]

https://www.twitch.tv/fatbosstv/v/84480726

A post regarding the release schedule will come up in the next few days. Ion said during the stream, that raids, PvP Season and Mythic+ will open 3 weeks after launch. Nighthold will be an early 2017 raid (so probably 3 months after EN, unlike the 2 months Highmaul had).

[Reloe]

I wouldn't call that brilliant, no. Especially when the nighthold has been advertised as being a launch (or closely after launch) feature.

I can't believe people are already making the same, completly wrong, comments on the first Tier in Legion as they did in Warlords.
BrF and Nighthold ARE part of the first tier of each expansion but it was NEVER said that they are a launch-thing. The very first time blizzard spoke about Legion Raids they said that the first Tier will be very similar to how Highmaul/BrF was, just with a little bit longer timeframe between those 2 because many guilds felt like Highmaul was over to fast.
Highmaul and Emerald Nightmare are kind of the Introduction Raids to the expansion and the actual "Tier-Raid" is BrF/Nighthold, thats also why people cared more about BrF Rankings than Highmaul.
Also EN and Nighthold were NEVER planned to have the same itemlvl, it was nothing but a Placeholder thing in the Dungeon Journal as they were still figuring out how much ilvl difference they want to do between those 2 Raids.

Oh and also the itemlvl difference needs to be higher than it was in Warlords because of how the titanforged-system works, otherwise you'd be able to "outgear" Nighthold when it comes out.

[Deleted]

I can't believe people are already making the same, completly wrong, comments on the first Tier in Legion as they did in Warlords.
BrF and Nighthold ARE part of the first tier of each expansion but it was NEVER said that they are a launch-thing. The very first time blizzard spoke about Legion Raids they said that the first Tier will be very similar to how Highmaul/BrF was, just with a little bit longer timeframe between those 2 because many guilds felt like Highmaul was over to fast.

Then why was the nighthold featured as soon in the life of the expansion ? Especially in the content journal you can find ingame in the current 7.0.3 patch or in the "extended feature" video ?

Also EN and Nighthold were NEVER planned to have the same itemlvl, it was nothing but a Placeholder thing in the Dungeon Journal as they were still figuring out how much ilvl difference they want to do between those 2 Raids.

If the item level between two raid isn't the same then it cannot be the same tier, by definition. Especially if they aren't released at the same time.

I can't believe people are already making the same, completly wrong, comments on the first Tier in Legion as they did in Warlords.

How is it wrong ? People have been testing nighthold on beta for months, blizzard put it straight into the 7.0.3 content journal, feature it in the "legion feature" video, and then tells people they ll have to wait several month before it is released (though I m still waiting on an official source on that).

[Reloe]

why does a number matter to you?
the only reason nighthold will be released in 7.1 is because other content(karazhan) will be released between those 2 Raids, otherwise it would still be 7.0.3 by the time Nighthold comes out.
I'm talking about pure timeframes, they never stated that its released at the same time/close after EN

[Deleted]

why does a number matter to you?
the only reason nighthold will be released in 7.1 is because other content(karazhan) will be released between those 2 Raids, otherwise it would still be 7.0.3 by the time Nighthold comes out.
I'm talking about pure timeframes, they never stated that its released at the same time/close after EN

Does it seem logical to you that non developed content (5 man KZN + the small raid) is scheduled to be released before already developed content ?

Also yeah perhaps they never stated nighthold would be at release, but the way things were presented on a commercial and marketing standpoint are borderline. Because when you take a look at the extended legion feature video and the content journal (currently in game) you clearly see both EN and nighthold. When you open the nighthold raid in the journal, it isn't written that it won't be available at release (or in the next few weeks after release), which is obviously misleading.