The Blizzard of today is not the Blizzard that used the MO you describe. People complained about the Azerite system throughout the BFA beta and they made no attempts to fix it. We already know the release date for Shadowlands so asking for a date on the pre-patch is not unreasonable. There's nothing to "rush out" in the prepatch either because it's an event they've reused twice already and the level squish already present in Shadowlands beta.
Lmao quickly deleting tweets. They are in panic mode. I bet they're currently busy coming up with a nice corporate speak explanation for the delay of the expac.
The funniest thing of this whole drama is that now people somehow assume the late prepatch release means a delay of SL release...what? Why? How?
Not saying its impossible for them to delay the expansion but Blizzard is very careful about announcing things without being VERY confident they can make that date. Unless something major has set them back a long ways, I wouldn't bet on a delay to the expansion release. Here's the thing, they have (if the pre-patch comes Oct 6) 3 weeks of pre-patch and then 2 weeks of "launch" to really iron out the wrinkles. Both of these periods are non competitive periods where they can apply weekly patches to finalize everything. Not to mention that I am sure they gave themselves some leeway with the expansion release date, not like Covid-19 was a surprise to us AFTER they announced the release date, they knew the limitations of their work flow long before they announced that release date. I don't expect a delay, just a short pre-patch.
As for that tweet. Soon(tm) has become notorious for meaning a long time. So much so that a Blizzard employee even once posted "Not Soon(tm)" and clarified that he meant not long. This post did not convey what Blizzard has planned, obviously, and was promptly removed.
Referenced blue post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...march-1/113138
People need to seriously stop this "delayed expansion" sillyness. Its not going to happen.
Spreading false information based on nothing does no godo other than making people confused and endless pointless discussion about something which is not the case.
Stop assuming things you can't know is a good rule on the internet.
It was one tweet, not plural like the post you quoted would make you think. It simply said "Soon(tm) its ready when its ready" in reference to when the prepatch is coming. They promptly removed that tweet and nobody really knows why, so all of the intellectuals in this thread are back to tell us why their hair-brained reason is more likely than our logical ones.
didn't the BfA pre-patch come out two weeks before the release of BFA?