Warlords of Draenor 27th June 2014??

[Thessik-Irontail]

Hi All,

Was ordering some games from an online website and Warlords of Draenor was up for pre-order with a release date of 27th June 2014! Hmmmm.......

Not sure if I am allowed to post links?

<links snipped>
Laters....

Moderator note: I snipped the links because the correct answer given several times below doesn't require going to any sites. [ML]

Seriously, in 2014 people still think these shops have any clue?

[Sinndra]

In three years time no one will remember this as the runt PvP season that didn't count. There's no evidence to suggest that this won't run the full duration and if it wasn't then Blizzard would be honour bound to inform people of this possibility now before they devote themselves to farming gear and building rankings?

no, Blizzard has never been "honor bound" to tell the players how long a season will last, regardless of its intended duration, so they have "ample time to farm gear"

If 20 weeks 'feels about right' then why did they let the last season go to 22 weeks. Surely if they thought this was going to be a shorter season they would have shortened the last season to make this one a more reasonable length?

no, they do not sit around during the beta of an expansion planning out the exact number of seasons and then making sure each season has an equal amount of time.

It may not have got its own set of gear but this possibility of this season was prepared for last summer, well before they knew what state they would be in now. It may be that they'd rather go with their re-colours and keep their team working on WoD than spend time designing another tier of PvP gear.

no, they did not know last year that they were gonna need another pvp season. this was created last minute because allowing the season to run on for longer than what they thought "a comfortable amount" was, would be frustrating to the PvP player base.

I don't know when they'll be ready but I think they'll let this season play out to a meaningful conclusion before the pre-patch and then we'll have at least 4 weeks of pre-events before the expansion hits.

this is the only concept that makes sense. yes they will end the pvp season with the release of 6.0. but this has no bearing on how long or short an ~extra~ pvp season will be. if you dont believe this season is a runt season, then you have a strange idea of what a full season is. i expect it to have its own unique armor sets, mounts, and titles. since they said they didnt have time to do this, it suggests this season was very last minute and not intended to be a real season. you can be pessimistic and speculate a longer time until the expac drops, but i am optimistic and not trying to read into what they say, and give them the chance to do what they have been saying for weeks and months.

[Deleted]

no, Blizzard has never been "honor bound" to tell the players how long a season will last, regardless of its intended duration, so they have "ample time to farm gear"


no, they do not sit around during the beta of an expansion planning out the exact number of seasons and then making sure each season has an equal amount of time.


no, they did not know last year that they were gonna need another pvp season. this was created last minute because allowing the season to run on for longer than what they thought "a comfortable amount" was, would be frustrating to the PvP player base.


this is the only concept that makes sense. yes they will end the pvp season with the release of 6.0. but this has no bearing on how long or short an ~extra~ pvp season will be. if you dont believe this season is a runt season, then you have a strange idea of what a full season is. i expect it to have its own unique armor sets, mounts, and titles. since they said they didnt have time to do this, it suggests this season was very last minute and not intended to be a real season. you can be pessimistic and speculate a longer time until the expac drops, but i am optimistic and not trying to read into what they say, and give them the chance to do what they have been saying for weeks and months.

You are being optimistic but you're equally prepared to ignore all the precedents.

The last PvP season of Wrath: 37 weeks.
The last PvP season of Cataclysm: 38 weeks.

There would be no need for them to have added another PvP season if they were planning a June release and were happy to follow past precedent. Allowing for minimal pre-patch events, they would have only needed a 33 or 34 week PvP season to hit a June release. This is evidence that they thought there is a risk at least that the season would have to be extended beyond reasonable limits.

It remains the case the some PvP players are very serious about rated PvP and would be upset if the season were cut short. True Blizzard could just ignore this but I don't think they're completely insensitive to their fan base either. My judgement on this differes from yours.

Also this season wasn't created out of thin air at the last moment. It may be have a sad excuse for rewards in terms of re-colours etc but these were data-mined out of the 5.4 patch so the preparation for the possibility of this patch goes back to last summer. It wasn't finished and so I think we'd be in agreement that it's better now that they went with the place-holders than divert time off of WoD.

As ever past performance isn't a guarantee of the future, but thus far everything is shaping up to run much like the previous two expansions and you need some reason why they would break with precedence. They did offer up their aspiration of a release date but they've been remarkably quiet about that since then.

[Donald Hellscream]

It's likely gonna be in July or August as the War crimes novel is slated to be released the 3rd of june and expansions have usually followed within 1 or 2 months of the book bridging the expansion

[Soulwind]

Except that isn't a great time to release. I think late August is more of a possibility. People say US Labor isn't such a good time either but I can't see it going beyond September.

Early June wouldn't be so bad but once it starts getting into 'high summer' then too many people are going to be distracted by vacations. I know I would defer until the end of August if they launch much past the middle of June.

That doesn't really work for expansions. Those who buy the expansion immediately will do it whenever it launches, and everyone is 'forced' to eventually get it, since the rest of the content gets obsolete.

[Deleted]

That doesn't really work for expansions. Those who buy the expansion immediately will do it whenever it launches, and everyone is 'forced' to eventually get it, since the rest of the content gets obsolete.

I'm a bit older (more than likely) and so may be out of touch with this but summer generally seen as a 'quiet' time. When companies are going for a 'big launch' they want to get as big a buzz as they can to focus and maximise the interest. Some times are better than this than others - pre-xmas being the classic time.

Blizz used to make a lot of this to drive the publicity of the game. I recall they didn't do this with MoP as they figures didn't allow it so perhaps they won't even let themselves get concerned about that sort of thing this time.

It's true that people who are actively playing the game and been tearing their hair out to get the game will buy the expansion as soon as it comes out - and may be there'll be some promo pricing for pre-orders to encourage people to upgrade regardless of the date. Upgrading and subbing are quite separate - I've upgraded before and then had to sub to play and also not bothered upgrading at release even though I had some sub left...

One possible factor is how they want to use the launch figures to encourage ex-players to come back. Ex-players have much less cause to upgrade immediately and may decide to wait until after their summer holidays. In which case Blizz will need all the more publicity to lure them back.

The important thing is to accept that the people who post here are completely unrepresentative of the mass of people who've played WoW. Don't think your concerns are typical. Most people haven't finished raiding normal mode or even flex. I have several friends who can sub to WoW without even logging in for six months! Most people haven't heard of Metzen and when I mentioned in (my heroic raiding) guild chat that Ghostcrawler had quit the general response was "who?".

[Deleted]

It's likely gonna be in July or August as the War crimes novel is slated to be released the 3rd of june and expansions have usually followed within 1 or 2 months of the book bridging the expansion

War Crimes novel will be released on May 6

[Donald Hellscream]

War Crimes novel will be released on May 6

in that case it will be a August release at the latest as having a wait bigger than 3 months from the time the novel is out to the time of the expansion is a way too huge gap.

[Captiosus]

in that case it will be a August release at the latest as having a wait bigger than 3 months from the time the novel is out to the time of the expansion is a way too huge gap.

Sure. August. If Beta starts right now and only lasts 4 months.
In other words, you're delusional.

Every other expansion has been fall/winter in the Northern Hemisphere and this one is going to be NO different. September is, by all accounts, the most optimistic estimate. Consider we're almost to mid-March and they JUST started up a blog to feed info to the hungry masses who are waiting for a beta. The longer we go without the faintest whiff of a beta, the longer into fall you can expect it to go. The release date of book is utterly irrelevant. By May 6, beta will likely only be open for a month, maybe even less.

[Bullettime]

Sure. August. If Beta starts right now and only lasts 4 months.
In other words, you're delusional.

Every other expansion has been fall/winter in the Northern Hemisphere and this one is going to be NO different. September is, by all accounts, the most optimistic estimate. Consider we're almost to mid-March and they JUST started up a blog to feed info to the hungry masses who are waiting for a beta. The longer we go without the faintest whiff of a beta, the longer into fall you can expect it to go. The release date of book is utterly irrelevant. By May 6, beta will likely only be open for a month, maybe even less.

The expansion, from what they've shown and told us, is further along than MoP was 2 months after its beta launch and we're not even in public beta yet.

This entire expansion has a feel of inhouse testing like BC had. Given Pardo is back at the helm, this wouldn't surprise me either. It's entirely possible that we see a short beta test due to Blizzard doing a ton of testing inhouse instead of the past few expansions where everything was slowly released in phases and drastic changes made left and right that needed testing.

-Holinka is already PvPing with the 100 changes, making comments about it, has been for a month or so.
-Healing changes are obviously already implemented and have been for devs to make comments about the new design models.
-Frostfire and Shadowmoon completed already and have been for months.
-Garrisons already appear to be fairly polished.
-Their "alpha talents" and a few changes are further along than Cata or MoP beta which had virtually no class changes until a couple months in.
-Blizzard openly stating that the last few beta tests have yielded very little effective and constructive feedback from the players. And most of said effective feedback was about the Monk in MoP (no new class this time around) or dungeon feedback which doesn't depend on the players.

And now with the prepurchase starting soon, it's entirely possible that Blizzard opted to do a lot more testing inhouse with a short beta instead of an extended public beta.

[Brewhan]

i expect it to have its own unique armor sets, mounts, and titles. since they said they didnt have time to do this, it suggests this season was very last minute and not intended to be a real season.

I agree with this 100% after all these years of PVP seasons and this is the first time with no new models or heck even a NEW COLOR like arena seasons 1-3 were just recolors of tier gear. The fact they simply swapped the items you purchase from vendors from horde /ally saddens me. I never though it would come to this point that a whole new season starts and all we get is the opposite faction gear which is a slightly different color of already existing models for last seasons gear. We didnt even have last seasons gear before added to crafting professions like most have become. Just goes to show this was a last minute season and only added to keep subscriber retention and pvp people happy to some degree.

[Arganis]

They told their investors it would come out in the second half of the year, most took it as Q3, which is July-August-September. A late June release would be possible, but late July/early August sounds more likely at this point.

If that's so, then they better get ready for another 'cataclysm' in their sub numbers... I can barely handle the boredom I feel when I log on to WoW these days as it is. So another 4-6 months....

[valcrist]

Why are so many putting this game at a Fall Release lol? There is NO way in hell this game is going to ship later then MOP did, the game is farther along then MOP, pre-order advertisements are already coming up slowly and they cant afford to keep SOO going tell the fall. Just going by the longer PVP seasons that puts WOD in the July-Aug time frame. If i had to guess 6.0 Patch will end around June and WOD is in July. Players keep going off the beta but with no new Race or Class to balence I fully expect beta time to be cut in half quite a bit, i think most seem to forget the Monk was the main reason MOP took so long to get out, and the game is already in Beta just not closed for players which they are prepping.

[MetroStratics]

Late august is my vote. Considering the beta isn't even out yet, I can't see how anyone could think any earlier than that.

[valcrist]

If that's so, then they better get ready for another 'cataclysm' in their sub numbers... I can barely handle the boredom I feel when I log on to WoW these days as it is. So another 4-6 months....

Its called relax and take a break for awhile. Once i complete the end game content i usually take a break tell beta info and the pre expansion patch is close.

[Bullettime]

Late august is my vote. Considering the beta isn't even out yet, I can't see how anyone could think any earlier than that.

TBC was only in beta for 3 months due to a ton of inhouse testing being done and game world being polished prior to public beta. The 3 months were used for dungeon feedback and to use players as guinea pigs for a few class changes.

It's entirely possible that they're doing this again. Ghostcrawler even had stated a few times before that the extended public betas have yielded very little useful feedback.

[Cannibalus]

Dont. dont start this crap. Holinka stated that 20 weeks *feels about right* when speaking generally about pvp season durations. it in no way indicates Blizzards intent to ensure that this extra pvp season will last the full duration. thats right.. this pvp season is extra. it didnt even get its own set of rewards, just slightly increased stats of last seasons rewards.

any date is still plausible, though June is the most likely candidate right now.

The main problem with a shortened season right now would be getting the gear. A lot of people will be very disappointed.

An average player that is at 1.6-1.7 RBG rating will get ~2.5 conquest points/week.

1st week 2.2k conq and the next weeks 2.5k conquest means without being an astounding mathematician that that player would need ~ 11-12 weeks to get full Prideful gear. And then the fun starts.

That means around early june if i am not mistakened.

So let's say that by your standing it will end then. What about 6.0? Pre-expansion patched were usually left for what 2-3-4 weeks ?

And if that's not abominable enough people go on holidays during summer especially the second half of summer.

I'm grabbing my crotch offensively, your argument is invalid.

[DriveKnight]

December.

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

pssshh you cray.

June-August

[Feali]

That's my birthday... I don't want to hardcore level on my birthday...