WOD Release MOnth Poll Part 2

[Deleted]

January 2089.

[Krazzorx]

One thing I thought was an interesting point (unfortunately I read these stats about a week ago and won't get the numbers perfectly right), the last pvp seasons of Wrath and Cata lasted ~38ish weeks. If we have 2 combined pvp seasons which equal that length, we get somewhere around June.

[Cyno]

Last time I voted May but with a new season that hasn't even been put out on the PTR yet I'm going with September.

[Deleted]

I say September. 6 months after RoS. 2 years after MoP.

[McNeil]

In the previous thread I said late July/early August and it seems like I'm going to be right. Its funny how many more votes March-May had in the previous thread

[Xjev]

September same vote as before

[Deleted]

September because i know blizzard by now, and i am not easily fooled.

[Dirdie]

I know it wont but Im hoping for really soon. IDK how much more of siege of outrageous fail i can take, hate SoO so much. The first 8 bosses is like pounding your head against a block wall.

[Deleted]

Why do so many people think that it's going to be an Autumn release? Predicting it to launch anytime after August is, I think, ridiculous, as that would make Mists tied for the longest-running expansion, and would make SoO tied with ICC for the longest final tier. The longest an expansion has ever lasted was 25 months, and the average expansion duration is 23 months. Blizzard has stated they they are aiming for shorter expansions and patch cycles than in Wrath and Cata, and stated that they do not want to have a tier last as long as ICC again, at 12 months, and that they also think that DS lasted too long at 10 months.

Beta start date to release:

Burning Crusade closed Beta started in early October 2006, and it was released 3 months later, on January 16, 2007.
Wrath of the Lich King started its closed Beta on July 17th, 2008. It was released on November 13, 2008: 4 months later.
Cataclysm Beta testing began at the very end of June, 2010. It was released on December 7th, 2010-- 5 months later.
Mists of Pandaria Beta started March 20th, 2012. It was released September 25th, 2012, 6 months later. It skipped the Friends and Family alpha phase, possibly resulting in an abnormally long Beta duration.

I don't feel comfortable comparing expansion betas with the original Warcraft beta, or with the SC2/D3 betas, because those were for full games, not expansions, and in the case of SC2 and D3, completely different development teams and completely different games.

The Beta test for Warlords will probably be between 5 and 7 months, but it's hard to say because of our lack of knowledge about what is needed to test the specific content we are getting-- 5 months if the "extra" month on Mist's beta was due to a lack of Friends and Family Alpha, and 7 months if we assume that the beta for the next expansion will fit the "pattern" of the duration of the beta taking an additional month each time. It could also simply be 6 months. So, our beta duration window is 5-7 months. Assuming it starts before the end of January or a short beta starting in February, the beta should end between April and July 2014, with a release following immediately afterwards (within two weeks). Of course, I'm making an assumption as to the beta start date, once we have the actual beta announcement, we'll know better. If they want to hit a June target, the Beta needs to start by February, unless we have an unusually short Beta. If Beta starts any time before April, it's going to launch before September.

Some other assumptions and speculations relating to the beta are that, since we have no new class to balance, and no new races (therefore no new starting zones to design), the beta will be shorter than usual. This isn't an unreasonable assumption, but I don't think we have enough evidence backing it up to concretely include it in my prediction. However, there's no good reason to assume that the beta will last longer than 6-7 months at the very most.

Beta tests are volatile and finicky beasts with a ton of variables, so it's hard to predict how long it will last- did Mists's go long because it lacked a F&F Alpha? Did it go long because of the Annual Pass numbers? Will Warlord's be shorter because we don't have a new class to balance or a new race and new starting zones to develop, and they don't need to finish the new character models? We don't know.


Time Between Announcement and Release:

Burning Crusade was announced on October 28th, 2005. It was released 15 months later.
Wrath of the Lich King was announced on August 3rd, 2007. It was released 14 months later.
Cataclsym was announced on August 21st, 2009. It was released 15 months later.
Mists was announced on October 21st, 2011. It was released 11 months later.

Assuming that the new expansion will fall within this wide window- 11-15 months from announcement, it will be released some time between October 2014 and February 2015. This would make Mists the longest lasting expansion of all time, clocking in at anywhere between tied with Wrath at 25 months, and a daunting 29 months, which I think is a fairly ridiculous thing to expect, considering how many past release patterns they'd be breaking in order to fit into this target window.

It is important to notice that Mists was announced several months closer to its release than any previous expansions, and it is reasonable to expect Warlords of Draenor to cut down that window even further with Blizzard's stated intent and interest in trying to shorten the wait between expansions.

I absolutely expect Warlord's to continue the "pattern" set by Mists of a shorter time period between announcement and release, rather than following in BC, Wrath, and Cata's footsteps, since doing so would break nearly every other average and pattern on this list.

Expansion Durations:

Burning Crusade lasted 22 months from its release to Wrath of the Lich King's release.
Wrath of the Lich King lasted 25 months from its release to Cataclysm's release.
Cataclysm lasted 21 months from its release to Mists of Pandaria's release
Mists has been out since September 2012. Assuming that it will last a similar duration to Cataclysm/Burning Crusade or shorter, because those are the norms, we should see the next expansion in spring or summer 2014 (sometime between April at the earliest, August at the latest).

Final Tier Durations (between tier launch and new expansion launch):
Naxxramas in Classic lasted 8 months.
Sunwell Plateau lasted 8 months.
ICC lasted exactly 12 months.
Dragon Soul lasted just under 10 months.

I would assume that Blizzard is shooting for their average 9 month final tier duration with SoO, since ICC is the only outlier. If we assume they achieve their target window of about a 9 month duration of SoO, we will see the next expansion around May-June 2014. If Warlords releases after July 15th, 2014, SoO becomes the second-longest final tier of any expansion, and will be alleviated by no filler content like ICC was. If it releases in September, as many people seem to think, SoO will last a whopping 12 months, the same as ICC, and more than 2 months longer than Dragon Soul.

It is worth noting here that they stated in a Q&A that they think even the 9 months and 20 days of Dragon Soul was too long, and are aiming to have the gap between the launch of the final teir and the release of the next expansion be smaller in the future. Assuming they achieve this goal, the expansion will launch before July 15th, 2014, as any time after that would make SoO longer than DS. It may be worth remembering that, when they said that ICC was too long and they did not want to have a final tier that long in the future, they were good on their word and DS was 2 months shorter.

To be fair, Dragonsoul -> Pandaria will have been several months faster than ICC -> Cata. That being said, I totally agree that it's still way too long. This is something we're committed to making better.

Source.

Fiscal Quarters and Blizzard Releases:

Recently, Blizzard has released their expansions during the last month of a fiscal quarter: Cataclysm during December, and Mists during September. Additionally, they released Heart of the Swarm in March, and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is also going to be released in March 2014. This means that the only products Blizzard has released during a month not the last month of a fiscal quarter since 2010 are full-game titles: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Diablo III itself.

With the addition of the Diablo III expansion, this pattern holds more weight than previously. If it is indicative of a new expansion release pattern, then we can expect Warlords to be released during the last month of a fiscal quarter during the next year- June 2014 (more likely), September 2014 (less likely), or December 2014 (nigh impossible).

Development Progress:

This is a hard sell, because we know so very little about where Blizzard is internally with Warlords, or how their development process works, but it's worth discussing. Anything we see is weeks to months behind their internal testing- even during closed Beta for their expansions, they are typically several builds ahead of what is active on Beta servers. What we saw and played at Blizzcon and Dreamhack is behind the actual state of development for Warlords.

The question here is, is Warlords ahead of Mists is its development timeline? Consider that, in Mists's Blizzcon showcase, we saw only the new male Pandaren model and the Wandering Isle zone, but that in Warlord's showcase, we saw two zones and several of the updated modes as playable.

In addition, we have this tweet from Ghostcrawler saying that it "feels" like they are further ahead:


And, at Blizzcon 2011, Mists was presented with only a rough concept map of the zones, which changed drastically before Beta.

It wasn't until about 5 months after the Blizzcon announcement that we got to see the official in-game map of Pandaria.

They already presented the much more finalized looking in-game map of Draenor, implying that most of the zones are in a more solid place in development than Mists's were.


This points to a shorter window between announcement and live launch, announcement and beta launch, and possibly a shorter beta durations than Mists. However, I personally suggest giving this information less weight than the other patterns outlined in this post. It's interesting for sure, but it's a much less reliable indicator of timeline.

They also said that they would be willing to release Warlords without all of the updated character models completed, meaning that their state of development has no bearing on the release timeline of the expansion.

We’re still in the process of determining which races will be available upon the expansion’s release, but our goal is to update all eight of the original World of Warcraft playable races, along with the Draenei and Blood Elves, over the course of the expansion launch and subsequent content updates.

Source.

They'd Never Release a Major Video-game Title During the Summer!

Yes, they would. They launched Diablo III in May, right before "summer vacation," the apparent killer of gamer activity, and they released Starcraft II in July, right in the middle of the summer holiday. Both games launched to massive financial success and record-breaking sales numbers. There is no good reason to write off a May, June, July, or August release date for a major Blizzard product.

Many people argued that they "would not" or "could not" release Mists in September, because they "had to" wait for the holiday sales window. They did not wait. Because they have subscribed players who must purchase the expansion at launch in order to stay current with the game and their friends, they do not need to target a certain sales "season" in order to guarantee a significant number of sales, and they have proved precedent for this with past releases.

Book Releases:
This one's a little more iffy, but it may be worth noting that we just got the release date for "War Crimes," the "Tides of War" equivalent Warcraft novel for the lead-in to Warlords of Draenor (like ToW was for Mists). The currently listed release date for the book is May 6th, 2014. Assuming that we see a similar release timeline between the lead-in novel for Warlords that we did for Mists, we can expect Warlords about one month after the book's launch- so, the last Tuesday of May at the very earliest, or some time in early to mid June. "Tides of War" was released at the end of August, one month before Mists went live. World of Warcraft: The Shattering was released October 19th, 2010 and Cataclysm was released December 7th, 2010.

The release date for the novel was originally listed as June 3rd, but was pushed back, and is listed as May 6th now on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This may indicate a more solid internal idea of the launch target for Warlords.

The Extra PvP Season:

Holinka recently tweeted that there will be an additional PvP season in Mists, launching a wave of speculation that this means "the end" of an "early" Warlords release.

He went on to say that he would ideally like PvP seasons to last 20-25 weeks going forward, but that he was not referring to the final Mists season or the current season, and that 20-25 weeks is the absolute maximum he would want it to last. He also said that people were reading "waaaaaay too much into it" when tweeted about it affecting the Warlords release date, and that they are "trying to break the trend of long seasons to end the expac."


(Source 1 2 3 4)

If we want to play with those numbers, even though Holinka implied that they apply to the future past Draenor's launch ("going forward"), and that they are being too "read into," assuming that the current season lasts between 20-25 weeks, it will end between February 4th and Match 11th. From there, assuming that the following Season lasts between 20-25 weeks, it will end, at the absolute latest, September 9th, and at the very earliest, June 24th. It will end when the pre-expansion patch launches.

Here's the thing, though. Holinka said that 20-25 weeks is the longest he'd want it to last, meaning that it can and probably will be shorter, if his statement applies to that season. If his statement doesn't apply to that season, then we know absolutely nothing about how the extra season will affect Warlord's release.


In Conclusion:
When looking at all of the pattens as a whole in order to attempt to predict a release date, we see a very, very wide window of April 2014 through February 2015.

However, when you take into the account that only one of the patterns implies a release date later than August 2014 (two if, and only if, Holinka is assumed to be lying when he says "I... did NOT say the new PvP season would last around 20-25 weeks. I'd say that's the max length I'd want it," and "People reading waaaaay too much into it.") (and that hitting the "target" of a date later than August would necessitate a breaking of all those other patterns), while multiple patterns point to, in particular, April-June 2014, I would expect the next expansion to be released closer to May-July 2014, with my money on June because it is the last month of a fiscal quarter.

HOLY NOVA... Nice work!

[heath1056]

Since the book bridging the two expansion won't be coming out until June, usually that's a good indicator of when the next expansion will be released. The previous books that bridged the expansions were release 1.5 - 2 months before the next expansion.

This of course, is ruling out the Arthas book which was release about a week after WotLK, however that's a bit of a different story since it wasn't so much bridging the expansion gap between BC and WotLK as it was just telling the story of Arthas, so it didn't need to be out prior to the expansion.

[Daetur]

Since the book bridging the two expansion won't be coming out until June, usually that's a good indicator of when the next expansion will be released. The previous books that bridged the expansions were release 1.5 - 2 months before the next expansion.

This of course, is ruling out the Arthas book which was release about a week after WotLK, however that's a bit of a different story since it wasn't so much bridging the expansion gap between BC and WotLK as it was just telling the story of Arthas, so it didn't need to be out prior to the expansion.

The moved the book release date to May 6th, 2014 about midway through November, 2013.

[Ryuda]

I'll throw my vote in for July, although I think a Tues between June 17th and Aug. 26th is likely.

This is based on a few assumptions.

1) Based on Holinka's (ideal) post that a PvP season would last 20-25 weeks
2)We have another PvP season after this season.
3) This second PvP season will be a "full" (20-25 week) season, and not cut short or go long.
4)therefore, release will be a minimum of 40 weeks after 5.4's launch (June 17th) and a maximum of 50 weeks (Aug. 26th)

So with 5.4 launching on Sep. 17th, 2013, this would mean that the current PvP season will end some time between Feb. 4th and March 11th, at which point a narrower window may be able to be guessed.

Knowing that we have another PvP season, I think a April/May release is basically out of the question, I think they would just extend the current one a little longer rather than do a 1-2 month season.

Now saying that, barring catastrophic issues on the Beta (Like Blizzard re-building the Jade Forest in Mists), I don't think a late August/Sept. release date is likely, as it would tie Siege of Orgrimmar with Icecrown Citadel as the longest running raid tier ever (something Blizzard all but promised to avoid.)

This leaves me with a "possible" (entering the above assumptions as "fact") window of June 17th - Aug. 26th. And a likely Window of Late June - July. I'll hazard a more precise estimate once we have the end date of the current season.

My "Wild Shot in the Dark Guess™" is: July 8th, 2014

[Dasffion]

I'll throw my vote in for July, although I think a Tues between June 17th and Aug. 26th is likely.

This is based on a few assumptions.

1) Based on Holinka's (ideal) post that a PvP season would last 20-25 weeks
2)We have another PvP season after this season.
3) This second PvP season will be a "full" (20-25 week) season, and not cut short or go long.
4)therefore, release will be a minimum of 40 weeks after 5.4's launch (June 17th) and a maximum of 50 weeks (Aug. 26th)

So with 5.4 launching on Sep. 17th, 2013, this would mean that the current PvP season will end some time between Feb. 4th and March 11th, at which point a narrower window may be able to be guessed.

Knowing that we have another PvP season, I think a April/May release is basically out of the question, I think they would just extend the current one a little longer rather than do a 1-2 month season.

Now saying that, barring catastrophic issues on the Beta (Like Blizzard re-building the Jade Forest in Mists), I don't think a late August/Sept. release date is likely, as it would tie Siege of Orgrimmar with Icecrown Citadel as the longest running raid tier ever (something Blizzard all but promised to avoid.)

This leaves me with a "possible" (entering the above assumptions as "fact") window of June 17th - Aug. 26th. And a likely Window of Late June - July. I'll hazard a more precise estimate once we have the end date of the current season.

My "Wild Shot in the Dark Guess™" is: July 8th, 2014

You obviously missed the rest of honlika's tweets where he said that people were reading too much into the 20-25 week comment and they're trying to break the long final seasons.

[roahn the warlock]

lol june..

We're currently 17 weeks into season 14 ( fyi: s13 26 weeks, s12 22 weeks ).. So this season would might end after 20 weeks (optimistic), so its february and new season need always 2 weeks to start, so we are middle Feb ( still optimistic ). Another 20-25 weeks, what they WANT ( dont forget they wanted to release faster content since wotlk ), so another 6 months -> Middle August.

Btw the season end has previously marked the pre-patch, not the expansion itself! Prepatch for MOP was 28th August, release 25th September.. another month.. wow would bleeding down to <5 million subs. there will be only china farmer, bots and some hardcore fans.

^ this, pretty sure

[BrokenHearthstone]

It's gonna be the end of June, around the time patch 4.2 came out with Firelands. I'm pretty happy because then that means I'll have the whole summer with no school interruptions to play it!

[Peso]

Why do so many people think that it's going to be an Autumn release? Predicting it to launch anytime after August is, I think, ridiculous, as that would make Mists tied for the longest-running expansion, and would make SoO tied with ICC for the longest final tier. The longest an expansion has ever lasted was 25 months, and the average expansion duration is 23 months. Blizzard has stated they they are aiming for shorter expansions and patch cycles than in Wrath and Cata, and stated that they do not want to have a tier last as long as ICC again, at 12 months, and that they also think that DS lasted too long at 10 months.

Beta start date to release:

Burning Crusade closed Beta started in early October 2006, and it was released 3 months later, on January 16, 2007.
Wrath of the Lich King started its closed Beta on July 17th, 2008. It was released on November 13, 2008: 4 months later.
Cataclysm Beta testing began at the very end of June, 2010. It was released on December 7th, 2010-- 5 months later.
Mists of Pandaria Beta started March 20th, 2012. It was released September 25th, 2012, 6 months later. It skipped the Friends and Family alpha phase, possibly resulting in an abnormally long Beta duration.

I don't feel comfortable comparing expansion betas with the original Warcraft beta, or with the SC2/D3 betas, because those were for full games, not expansions, and in the case of SC2 and D3, completely different development teams and completely different games.

The Beta test for Warlords will probably be between 5 and 7 months, but it's hard to say because of our lack of knowledge about what is needed to test the specific content we are getting-- 5 months if the "extra" month on Mist's beta was due to a lack of Friends and Family Alpha, and 7 months if we assume that the beta for the next expansion will fit the "pattern" of the duration of the beta taking an additional month each time. It could also simply be 6 months. So, our beta duration window is 5-7 months. Assuming it starts before the end of January or a short beta starting in February, the beta should end between April and July 2014, with a release following immediately afterwards (within two weeks). Of course, I'm making an assumption as to the beta start date, once we have the actual beta announcement, we'll know better. If they want to hit a June target, the Beta needs to start by February, unless we have an unusually short Beta. If Beta starts any time before April, it's going to launch before September.

Some other assumptions and speculations relating to the beta are that, since we have no new class to balance, and no new races (therefore no new starting zones to design), the beta will be shorter than usual. This isn't an unreasonable assumption, but I don't think we have enough evidence backing it up to concretely include it in my prediction. However, there's no good reason to assume that the beta will last longer than 6-7 months at the very most.

Beta tests are volatile and finicky beasts with a ton of variables, so it's hard to predict how long it will last- did Mists's go long because it lacked a F&F Alpha? Did it go long because of the Annual Pass numbers? Will Warlord's be shorter because we don't have a new class to balance or a new race and new starting zones to develop, and they don't need to finish the new character models? We don't know.


Time Between Announcement and Release:

Burning Crusade was announced on October 28th, 2005. It was released 15 months later.
Wrath of the Lich King was announced on August 3rd, 2007. It was released 14 months later.
Cataclsym was announced on August 21st, 2009. It was released 15 months later.
Mists was announced on October 21st, 2011. It was released 11 months later.

Assuming that the new expansion will fall within this wide window- 11-15 months from announcement, it will be released some time between October 2014 and February 2015. This would make Mists the longest lasting expansion of all time, clocking in at anywhere between tied with Wrath at 25 months, and a daunting 29 months, which I think is a fairly ridiculous thing to expect, considering how many past release patterns they'd be breaking in order to fit into this target window.

It is important to notice that Mists was announced several months closer to its release than any previous expansions, and it is reasonable to expect Warlords of Draenor to cut down that window even further with Blizzard's stated intent and interest in trying to shorten the wait between expansions.

I absolutely expect Warlord's to continue the "pattern" set by Mists of a shorter time period between announcement and release, rather than following in BC, Wrath, and Cata's footsteps, since doing so would break nearly every other average and pattern on this list.

Expansion Durations:

Burning Crusade lasted 22 months from its release to Wrath of the Lich King's release.
Wrath of the Lich King lasted 25 months from its release to Cataclysm's release.
Cataclysm lasted 21 months from its release to Mists of Pandaria's release
Mists has been out since September 2012. Assuming that it will last a similar duration to Cataclysm/Burning Crusade or shorter, because those are the norms, we should see the next expansion in spring or summer 2014 (sometime between April at the earliest, August at the latest).

Final Tier Durations (between tier launch and new expansion launch):
Naxxramas in Classic lasted 8 months.
Sunwell Plateau lasted 8 months.
ICC lasted exactly 12 months.
Dragon Soul lasted just under 10 months.

I would assume that Blizzard is shooting for their average 9 month final tier duration with SoO, since ICC is the only outlier. If we assume they achieve their target window of about a 9 month duration of SoO, we will see the next expansion around May-June 2014. If Warlords releases after July 15th, 2014, SoO becomes the second-longest final tier of any expansion, and will be alleviated by no filler content like ICC was. If it releases in September, as many people seem to think, SoO will last a whopping 12 months, the same as ICC, and more than 2 months longer than Dragon Soul.

It is worth noting here that they stated in a Q&A that they think even the 9 months and 20 days of Dragon Soul was too long, and are aiming to have the gap between the launch of the final teir and the release of the next expansion be smaller in the future. Assuming they achieve this goal, the expansion will launch before July 15th, 2014, as any time after that would make SoO longer than DS. It may be worth remembering that, when they said that ICC was too long and they did not want to have a final tier that long in the future, they were good on their word and DS was 2 months shorter.

To be fair, Dragonsoul -> Pandaria will have been several months faster than ICC -> Cata. That being said, I totally agree that it's still way too long. This is something we're committed to making better.

Source.

Fiscal Quarters and Blizzard Releases:

Recently, Blizzard has released their expansions during the last month of a fiscal quarter: Cataclysm during December, and Mists during September. Additionally, they released Heart of the Swarm in March, and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is also going to be released in March 2014. This means that the only products Blizzard has released during a month not the last month of a fiscal quarter since 2010 are full-game titles: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Diablo III itself.

With the addition of the Diablo III expansion, this pattern holds more weight than previously. If it is indicative of a new expansion release pattern, then we can expect Warlords to be released during the last month of a fiscal quarter during the next year- June 2014 (more likely), September 2014 (less likely), or December 2014 (nigh impossible).

Development Progress:

This is a hard sell, because we know so very little about where Blizzard is internally with Warlords, or how their development process works, but it's worth discussing. Anything we see is weeks to months behind their internal testing- even during closed Beta for their expansions, they are typically several builds ahead of what is active on Beta servers. What we saw and played at Blizzcon and Dreamhack is behind the actual state of development for Warlords.

The question here is, is Warlords ahead of Mists is its development timeline? Consider that, in Mists's Blizzcon showcase, we saw only the new male Pandaren model and the Wandering Isle zone, but that in Warlord's showcase, we saw two zones and several of the updated modes as playable.

In addition, we have this tweet from Ghostcrawler saying that it "feels" like they are further ahead:


And, at Blizzcon 2011, Mists was presented with only a rough concept map of the zones, which changed drastically before Beta.

It wasn't until about 5 months after the Blizzcon announcement that we got to see the official in-game map of Pandaria.

They already presented the much more finalized looking in-game map of Draenor, implying that most of the zones are in a more solid place in development than Mists's were.


This points to a shorter window between announcement and live launch, announcement and beta launch, and possibly a shorter beta durations than Mists. However, I personally suggest giving this information less weight than the other patterns outlined in this post. It's interesting for sure, but it's a much less reliable indicator of timeline.

They also said that they would be willing to release Warlords without all of the updated character models completed, meaning that their state of development has no bearing on the release timeline of the expansion.

We’re still in the process of determining which races will be available upon the expansion’s release, but our goal is to update all eight of the original World of Warcraft playable races, along with the Draenei and Blood Elves, over the course of the expansion launch and subsequent content updates.

Source.

They'd Never Release a Major Video-game Title During the Summer!

Yes, they would. They launched Diablo III in May, right before "summer vacation," the apparent killer of gamer activity, and they released Starcraft II in July, right in the middle of the summer holiday. Both games launched to massive financial success and record-breaking sales numbers. There is no good reason to write off a May, June, July, or August release date for a major Blizzard product.

Many people argued that they "would not" or "could not" release Mists in September, because they "had to" wait for the holiday sales window. They did not wait. Because they have subscribed players who must purchase the expansion at launch in order to stay current with the game and their friends, they do not need to target a certain sales "season" in order to guarantee a significant number of sales, and they have proved precedent for this with past releases.

Book Releases:
This one's a little more iffy, but it may be worth noting that we just got the release date for "War Crimes," the "Tides of War" equivalent Warcraft novel for the lead-in to Warlords of Draenor (like ToW was for Mists). The currently listed release date for the book is May 6th, 2014. Assuming that we see a similar release timeline between the lead-in novel for Warlords that we did for Mists, we can expect Warlords about one month after the book's launch- so, the last Tuesday of May at the very earliest, or some time in early to mid June. "Tides of War" was released at the end of August, one month before Mists went live. World of Warcraft: The Shattering was released October 19th, 2010 and Cataclysm was released December 7th, 2010.

The release date for the novel was originally listed as June 3rd, but was pushed back, and is listed as May 6th now on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This may indicate a more solid internal idea of the launch target for Warlords.

The Extra PvP Season:

Holinka recently tweeted that there will be an additional PvP season in Mists, launching a wave of speculation that this means "the end" of an "early" Warlords release.

He went on to say that he would ideally like PvP seasons to last 20-25 weeks going forward, but that he was not referring to the final Mists season or the current season, and that 20-25 weeks is the absolute maximum he would want it to last. He also said that people were reading "waaaaaay too much into it" when tweeted about it affecting the Warlords release date, and that they are "trying to break the trend of long seasons to end the expac."


(Source 1 2 3 4)

If we want to play with those numbers, even though Holinka implied that they apply to the future past Draenor's launch ("going forward"), and that they are being too "read into," assuming that the current season lasts between 20-25 weeks, it will end between February 4th and Match 11th. From there, assuming that the following Season lasts between 20-25 weeks, it will end, at the absolute latest, September 9th, and at the very earliest, June 24th. It will end when the pre-expansion patch launches.

Here's the thing, though. Holinka said that 20-25 weeks is the longest he'd want it to last, meaning that it can and probably will be shorter, if his statement applies to that season. If his statement doesn't apply to that season, then we know absolutely nothing about how the extra season will affect Warlord's release.


In Conclusion:
When looking at all of the pattens as a whole in order to attempt to predict a release date, we see a very, very wide window of April 2014 through February 2015.

However, when you take into the account that only one of the patterns implies a release date later than August 2014 (two if, and only if, Holinka is assumed to be lying when he says "I... did NOT say the new PvP season would last around 20-25 weeks. I'd say that's the max length I'd want it," and "People reading waaaaay too much into it.") (and that hitting the "target" of a date later than August would necessitate a breaking of all those other patterns), while multiple patterns point to, in particular, April-June 2014, I would expect the next expansion to be released closer to May-July 2014, with my money on June because it is the last month of a fiscal quarter.

Don't know if you mentioned it but the fact that they were considering another annual pass should speak wonders.

Diablo III: ROS is out Spring so goodbye Spring until at-least summer release and a new PvP season. And given the past 2 expansion lengths ICC-DS I'd say September - November is a good estimate and a realistic one.

They're also taking extreme measures to do each new race properly and the item squish will take a huge time going back to way back PRE-BC raids/dungeons to WOD readjusting.

[Daetur]

Don't know if you mentioned it but the fact that they were considering another annual pass should speak wonders.

Diablo III: ROS is out Spring so goodbye Spring until at-least summer release and a new PvP season. And given the past 2 expansion lengths ICC-DS I'd say September - November is a good estimate and a realistic one.

They're also taking extreme measures to do each new race properly and the item squish will take a huge time going back to way back PRE-BC raids/dungeons to WOD readjusting.

How is "given the past 2 expansion lengths" and the length of ICC and DS giving you September-November? DS was 10 months, giving us July, ICC was 12, giving us September, Wrath was 25 months, giving us October, and Cata was only 21 months, giving us June. August-September, maybe. September-November is not a realistic or good estimate.

You seem to be saying "ignore the most recent expansion and the average, I predict it's going to be the same length or longer than the outlier."

You should really read my post, since I talk about the PvP season tweets, the average expansion lengths, average final tier lengths, and the fact that they said they're not going to delay Warlord's launch for the character models, which means that the development of the character models isn't a factor in how long it's going to take to complete development on and release the expansion.

[CosmicGuitars]

War Crimes was pushed up again even closer and supposedly releases in May 6th, so I'm going to stick to my original expectation of Late June/Early July release. Beta beginning in Late January / Early February.

[Arson]

Still going with september, because reasons.

[Deleted]

They're not being slow, though. This is a complaint that a lot of people make that I do not understand. If it comes out any time before June 25th, Mists will be the shortest expansion ever. If it comes out around August, it will be the same number of months as the current average expansion duration. Only if it comes out in September will be be "slow."

We usually have to wait 14-15 months after the expansion is announced for it to be released. We only had to wait 11 months for Mists. If Warlords is released any time before October 2014, it will be the shortest wait between announcement and launch ever.

The average duration of the final raid tier of an expansion is 10 months. If Warlords launches any time before July 15th, SoO will be a shorter-than-average final raid tier.

THEY ARE SLOW ... the content they bring out ist not enough for such long times to wait ... if i look at SoO .. i am done with that after 4 Months ... i achieved all i wanted and there is absolutly no reason to play wow for the next 7 -9 months until wod comes ... i think its ridicolus to think that people are happy with such long final raid tier durations ... maybe blizzard should understand that u cant keep the sub numbers when they do not offer something for 10-12 months ... this is abyssimal ... and pls dont tell me i should play a toon (no interest) and dont tell me i should play pvp (pvp in wow is absolutly dull) and dont tell me to get 20000+k achievement points because this is a senseless timesink