Originally Posted by
Bullettime
You're right. But Blizzard does have a history of dropping patches and game changes right before other launches.
Wildstar isn't a longterm threat to WoW. But given Blizzard's history, could definitely see them dropping something before Wildstar just to renew some interest in the game. Whether or not Wildstar is a longterm competitor is largely irrelevant though. Siege of Orgrimmar is going to be lasting around 14 months. New games become more appealing in downtime like this, even to be played as short term stopgaps. Blizzard will definitely want to do something before summer is in full swing to get ahead of some of the inevitable bleeding from summer, burnout from extremely long content, and other game launches that will take money from them in the downtime. Otherwise, their Q2 sub losses could be catastrophic.
It's in Blizzard's best interest to try to keep focus and attention on WoW and keep people playing during the downtime. Every sub lost to summer, burnout, or new games is 15 bucks a head just in sub money, not counting potential microtransactions. Cataclysm lost a million people during its downtime even with sub retention measures in place like progressive nerfs to Dragon Soul and an annual pass. MoP is two years older, last tier will be the longest in history, amd the latter part of the 14 month tier, and thus burnout, will be happening during the summer with no sub retention measures put in place like they were in the past to keep interest during the downtime.