They no longer do Friends and Family Alpha stage after the massive leakage that happened during Cataclysm when everyone and their mother's had a private server with the new world running to check it out.
Now they simply do the alpha stage among employees, then move on to selective beta, then open the same build to a much broader audience, the closed beta.
Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor
Believe nothing until it comes from a legit source, like say Blizzard itself. I'm not buying anything there until I hear it in some official capacity. Too many people see it on the internet and go off half-cocked before they know the details or even if X is true or not and then things just spiral out of control from there. We've seen the damage these rumors can do, and how no one will let them go even when they've been proven to be false.
Take a step back and just don't believe the hype until some sort of real information comes forward. It's far better than spreading idiotic gossip that could lead to another Dark Below debacle.
“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― G.K. Chesterton
I'm not just a white knight. I'm a freaking Paladin.
Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor
quick question which has been bothering me. with all the speculation about the release date. why during summer? people go on holidays and generally go out and about enjoying the weather. so why release an expansion during this period?
Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor
There's a very high chance of this being fake... but.. I want to believe!
My addons:
Announce Interrupts: Announces in chat when you interrupt a spell.
Tol Barad Reminder: Reminds you to queue for Tol Barad by printing a message when the battle is approaching.
EasyLogger: Turns on /combatlog inside raid instances, and off outside.
Simple class resource bars: Paladin Rogue Shaman Monk Priest
hmmm true, but surely with a game like wow, soon as an expansion is released people just want to jump in and play and usually remained logged in exploring new content for a large amounts of time. Then there's the issue with laptops and fps, then latency issues while on vacation creating a poor gameplay experience. Summer, vacation + expansion release doesn't make sense to me. The only useful thing coming out of a summer release is that people will be on holiday and by the time they get back; any bugs, server stability problems will have been addressed.
"Photoshops are done"..... really...... that's hilarious
Well, a lot of people who play are also kids and young adults. They'll be out of school on summer vacation, and back from college. I don't have very many friends anymore (19 this July, still in contact with maybe 5 or 6 people from my graduating class, and a few others who are older or friends of my girlfriend, whom graduates this June), but it'll be the same as it always has been for me, with the priority being "Girlfriend > friends > WoW." Lucky for me, she plays WoW too, but a lot more people will be playing it over the summer than you'd think.
Internally they'd have release dates. Its essentially a message to employees "you better get done by X day." Open ended "it doesn't matter when you're done" isn't the most efficient thing to do. Yes they may not be hard set release dates in case of a disaster, but by now they know when its gonna be released or at least within a very small range.
to me its just like the content patches, i remember when TOT came out about this time last year, i think it was around February wasnt it? couldn't wait to play it, then i played it, for a few months, cleared it, farmed it, got really bored, so i ended up taking a long vacation from wow, I'd only log in once in awhile, pretty much from April through September when 5.4 came out, and then it was awesome again, 5.4 yay! and then now...4 months later...taking another break from wow cuz so bored with little to do
so i very much hope WOD comes out in june ish, because right now there isn't much else to do in wow, farm mounts/pets/achievements, get a 3rd/4th alt through SOO/Flex, or get a 3rd toon's legendary cape...feels worthless now when wod is "close" if its coming in June...
Also i think we will see wod sooner than we think, because they said they were going to do pre-orders for wod, and when they do that you can get your free 90 so you can have a "few months" to play on your new toon, and even get your legendary cape done in time...cape takes ~2 months ish to complete, so if that was a legitimate goal....
Also look at Reaper of Souls pre-order, it comes out in march, didnt the pre-sale start in january? thats ~4 months prior to release? so if sometime in February they announce pre-order of wod, even though yes its a different game title going by ROS pre-sale timeline, that puts wod at about end of june ish? (4 months....) and if wod beta comes out this month, they'd have a 4 month beta, that's plenty long enough, there isn't huge things they need to test like mop (new class/race, entire new continent etc)
WOD areas are sorta re-vamped outland areas, yes they look almost completely different...but they already had the theme/ideas/visuals rolling from previous content, with MOP they started everything from scratch, unique models, doo-dads, enviroments, everything, and story....WOD is already rich in story/ideas/models and theme, they just have to tailor it and mold it to fit the expansion, where as MOP they had to do everything from ground up...wod's ground work was/is already done in comparison
so to me its pretty much going to be june for WOD...but this is blizzard, they love to mess with our heads and "its done when its done"...either way I'm excited and ready!
i'd say within two weeks, pure assumption of course. and forgoing strange happenstance disasters in coding /animations.
to the OP, again...really....
i'll just go with the flow and say "i want to believe"
(might be careful, i'd be willing to bet a company that is trying to stress secrecy might 'reveal' some mis-information just to narrow down where leaks are coming from.)
of course being info from your friend who's brothes- wifes- father works for activision blizzard might be far enough down the chain not to be able to pinpoint the source.
Still I cry, tears like pouring rain, Innocent is my lurid pain.
I do the same thing when going on vacation I take my laptop with me so I can log on and play. I just don't raid on vacation because I don't play as much. Heck, with every other expansion I have purposely taken vacation time so I could play as much as I wanted to at launch. Even have had a couple parties for launches. I am already planning a WoD party this year.