My BfA pre-purchase prediction

[oldgeezer]

My prediction is that they get less than 50% of the pre-orders they are expecting/hoping for.

Mm. How many pre-orders are Blizzard expecting, in your opinion?

[Musta]

Im still betting july 4th holiday.

[Seramore]

Yeah I have a feeling that 90% of players don't understand they won't be able to get their main on an allied race unless they pay extra $$....and when they find out they will FREAK out.

It'd be nice if it were free and all but it's no different than any other new race being introduced.

[In Ogres We Trust]

May at the earliest (unlikely) and July/August/September at the latest.

P.S. They'll want it out before Gamescom.

[RotDog]

I feel like they should give everyone 1 free race change with new xpac.. that way people can race change their main if they want to.

I get where you're coming from because there are SIX of them, and you know damn well people will bitch if it doesn't happen, but we haven't gotten them when we've gotten new races in the past, so people really shouldn't expect them now. It's all a part of developing, new content, and new story. They're great options, but they are optional, and if you want one badly enough you can level an alt instead of paying.

[huth]

I would only say that the leaker (the guy that was 100% accurate on everything Blizzard announced for WoW- a week before Blizzcon), also said that 7.3.5 will have the Legion allied races unlocked. I am only saying this because literally everything he posted was accurate about Blizzcon.

Nobody had everything 100% accurate. Some were closer than others, but none were exact.

[Twix]

I get where you're coming from because there are SIX of them, and you know damn well people will bitch if it doesn't happen, but we haven't gotten them when we've gotten new races in the past, so people really shouldn't expect them now. It's all a part of developing, new content, and new story. They're great options, but they are optional, and if you want one badly enough you can level an alt instead of paying.

I know but we never had SIX new races.. I think it would be a smart move to give us ONE free race change instead of a free boost when you purchase the new xpac. Just my 2 cents.

[In Ogres We Trust]

I know but we never had SIX new races.. I think it would be a smart move to give us ONE free race change instead of a free boost when you purchase the new xpac. Just my 2 cents.

There's no chance in Hades.

[The Anax]

Nobody had everything 100% accurate. Some were closer than others, but none were exact.

Nope, he was 100% accurate.

[Twix]

There's no chance in Hades.

How can you be so sure?

[zlygork]

There's no chance in Hades.

I would have said the same before (was it WoD?) when they gave a free lvl boost. Not that I am certain it is happening, considering that it is no different from all the other times we had new races, people just try to pretend that there is some big difference between getting Zandalari when we already had Darkspear compared to getting blood elves when we already had night elves.

[In Ogres We Trust]

How can you be so sure?

Because we're talking about Blizzard. You'll get the free boost, because at this point, it's a core feature of each expansion, and there's no chance in Hades that they'll give up an easy $35 (or whatever it is). As for the boosts, at this point, I have three of them (2 100s and 1 90) from my two accounts.

[Tiberria]

October/November 2018
- It's been said repeatedly, but every expansion has taken at least 11 months from announcement to launch date. Anything earlier than October 2018 would be the fastest ever cycle, so anything earlier than that is probably excessively optimistic.
- They didn't give the impression at Blizzcon that BfA is all that far along in development compared to previous expansions. Everything was talked about in very vague terms, and they responded they don't know or haven't decided yet on anything with more detail. In comparison, Legion felt much more fleshed out and detailed in concept. Legion still took about 10 months after Blizzcon to release. BfA probably takes longer than that given what we saw at Blizzcon, which again puts a release later than September 2018.
- Since WoTLK, the final raid tier has lasted 12, 10, 13 and 14 months for an average of 12.3 months. Yes, they keep saying they don't want to do 12+ month final tiers, but they've said that since ICC and have not once delivered. Until we see a final tier of under 9 months, it's all BS. That also points to a release around November 2018.
- Public alpha/beta start date. Last Blizzcon, they said beta was imminent, and public alpha started within a month. This Blizzcon, they had no similar definitive timeline outside of the nebulous "soon". If it starts after early December (almost certain), it's behind Legion's release cycle, which was right at the end of August, again pushing it to the fall.
- The fact they are doing a 7.3.5 with major new features suggests we are going to have at least a 2-3 month PTR. I think it's likely they will want 7.3.5 PTR wrapped and live before they start BfA beta testing, which probably pushes a beta start date into about March. Beta (or at least the public Alpha/Beta cycle) in Legion lasted 9 months, so a similar or slightly shorter cycle in BfA would push launch to November/December 2018. I also don't think they would be pushing these new features to live before BfA if it was going to be a quick 6-8 month process (since in that case, why not go all in and get BfA out). They seem to be hunkering down for another year cycle.

For me, all points point towards the October - December 2018 timeframe. I would estimate somewhere around the weeks of November 5 or 12, 2018 as the release date.

[pyrostorm9001]

October/November 2018
- It's been said repeatedly, but every expansion has taken at least 11 months from announcement to launch date. Anything earlier than October 2018 would be the fastest ever cycle, so anything earlier than that is probably excessively optimistic.
- They didn't give the impression at Blizzcon that BfA is all that far along in development compared to previous expansions. Everything was talked about in very vague terms, and they responded they don't know or haven't decided yet on anything with more detail. In comparison, Legion felt much more fleshed out and detailed in concept. Legion still took about 10 months after Blizzcon to release. BfA probably takes longer than that given what we saw at Blizzcon, which again puts a release later than September 2018.
- Since WoTLK, the final raid tier has lasted 12, 10, 13 and 14 months for an average of 12.3 months. Yes, they keep saying they don't want to do 12+ month final tiers, but they've said that since ICC and have not once delivered. Until we see a final tier of under 9 months, it's all BS. That also points to a release around November 2018.
- Public alpha/beta start date. Last Blizzcon, they said beta was imminent, and public alpha started within a month. This Blizzcon, they had no similar definitive timeline outside of the nebulous "soon". If it starts after early December (almost certain), it's behind Legion's release cycle, which was right at the end of August, again pushing it to the fall.
- The fact they are doing a 7.3.5 with major new features suggests we are going to have at least a 2-3 month PTR. I think it's likely they will want 7.3.5 PTR wrapped and live before they start BfA beta testing, which probably pushes a beta start date into about March. Beta (or at least the public Alpha/Beta cycle) in Legion lasted 9 months, so a similar or slightly shorter cycle in BfA would push launch to November/December 2018. I also don't think they would be pushing these new features to live before BfA if it was going to be a quick 6-8 month process (since in that case, why not go all in and get BfA out). They seem to be hunkering down for another year cycle.

For me, all points point towards the October - December 2018 timeframe. I would estimate somewhere around the weeks of November 5 or 12, 2018 as the release date.

I counter this with, how many xpacs have had playable dungeons, zones that are not the first 5 mins of a demo, and new playable races with customization?
if i recall MoP correctly we only had male pandas and not much was available.
WoD was a damn mess and redesigned a few times.
Legion had DH starting zone but that was about it.

Seems like BfA is on much more stable ground for the reveal, plus Ion said in one of the interviews that they started on BfA as soon as legion launched.
There has been a strong steady stream of content for all of Legion, they are proud of it and tout it as often as they can, I dont seem them backing down from this schedule too much so im thinking with the last raid of the xpac, plus the right amount of content in a prepatch we could be 7 to 8 months away for BfA

[Seramore]

I know but we never had SIX new races.. I think it would be a smart move to give us ONE free race change instead of a free boost when you purchase the new xpac. Just my 2 cents.

What does the amount of new races in this expansion has to do with the fact that they'd do a free race change? It's irrelevant and still no different than any other race that was added to the game. It's a possibility that they might add a free race change but it's also very unlikely.

[Yamuri]

If I had to pick a date I'd say late August or early September based on Raid length of time. Also based on the length of time it was between the book release of Illidan to the release of legion. Basing it also on the length of average expansions.

I'm probably nowhere near the mark, but no one knows anyways. We just know it will be soon™. I'm excited for it but Legion is the expansion that has kept me busy almost the entire time so I'm not as worried about release date as previous ones.

[willtron]

You're nuts for thinking they won't have a late summer release tbh.

Yeah, it won't be late summer, it'll be in the autumn earliest. Everyone always predicts too early, even autumn is optimistic.

[Tiberria]

I counter this with, how many xpacs have had playable dungeons, zones that are not the first 5 mins of a demo, and new playable races with customization?
if i recall MoP correctly we only had male pandas and not much was available.
WoD was a damn mess and redesigned a few times.
Legion had DH starting zone but that was about it.

Seems like BfA is on much more stable ground for the reveal, plus Ion said in one of the interviews that they started on BfA as soon as legion launched.
There has been a strong steady stream of content for all of Legion, they are proud of it and tout it as often as they can, I dont seem them backing down from this schedule too much so im thinking with the last raid of the xpac, plus the right amount of content in a prepatch we could be 7 to 8 months away for BfA

All previous expansions (at least since MoP) have had more polished Blizzcon floor reveals. WoD had Frostfire Ridge and Slag Mines pretty much 100% done and playable. For Legion and MoP, they chose to use the Pandaren and DH starting areas instead, but again what they showed was in a polished and virtually release worthy state. The stuff they showed for BfA was a mess - buggy, laggy, poorly balanced. It didn't look anywhere near the level of completion in the previous 3 expansions.

[DeicideUH]

I wouldnt be surprised if the legion 4 came out (for prepurchasers) in 7.3.5, considering that part of them is in the current legion database, unless the other 2 which I assume won't pop in the DB till 8.0 at the earliest

Blizzard will probably make them ready for 7.3.5, but delay access for later, so that we consume 7.3.5 other content first, then during drought we get the allied races storylines to unlock them to keep people busy.

[Deleted]

I don't think they will allow you to play allied races more than a month before release. Ofc you will have to preorder which opens their story Quest-lines to obtain them.

My prediction for BfA release is end of 08/2018. 2 years after legion