july at the earliest, it's not looking good, they'll prolly even drop 9.3 at this point
july at the earliest, it's not looking good, they'll prolly even drop 9.3 at this point
I found this. https://www.wowhead.com/news/activis...merican-321466
Anytime between Soon and When It's Done.
It is definitely at least 2 months off. I mean that is the absolute minimum for a patch of this size. And if they don't want daily hotfixes for well over a week after release they don't want the minimum.
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I'd say 9.3 dropping is the sane course of action at this point. There are just not enough months left to squeeze in another raid tier after 9.2
I assume it'll be a while. It isn't even on PTR yet, and we haven't seen anything new since those promo clips at BlizzCon. In their defense, it is a pretty massive patch. A new raid, a new mega-dungeon, a new zone, new content for the covenant campaigns. I'm guessing development times are longer because of COVID too.
The current raid tier was only opened three months ago too, so I'm assuming they want to milk a few more months out of it before the new raid comes out and makes Castle Nathria obsolete.
On the other hand...a lot of the active players in my guild are currently taking a break from the game and plan to come back when 9.1 is released. I know a lot of other players are also dissatisfied with the lack of content, so Blizzard may try to push the patch as fast as possible so they don't lose more subscribers. After all, the longer we have to wait the more likely it is that the players who are on break have found something else to play in the meantime and won't come back.
Okay, let's do it. We are four months into SL.
Vanilla: 1.3 (release was 1.1)
TBC: Pretty much around the time 2.1 was released so first major patch.
Wrath: Well 3.0.9 was February 10 while 3.1 was April 14 so we were in a limbo.
Cata: 4.1 was pretty much out or we were days before it. Of course that didn't have raids in it.
MoP: 5.1 released 3 months into the expansion, first raid patch was 7 months in.
WoD: 6.1 the infamous selfie cam patch was released 3 months in. 6.2 entered the PTR 5 months in.
Legion: 7.1 was released 1 month in. 7.2 was deployed on the PTR 4 and a half months in.
BfA: 8.1 was out a few days before the 4 month mark.
Last edited by Wangming; 2021-03-27 at 04:00 PM.
My personal guess is that the classic team might be borrowing a little bit of manpower from the retail team atm, to speed up getting classic TBC out the door (as that is, closer than 9.1) Once thats out the door, They'll be putting alot more time and effort into 9.1 and getting that out as soon as possible while alot of the players are busy getting their TBC fix in..
Ofcourse theres people playing only Classic or ONLY retail, But thats not the playerbase that blizzard is trying to please anymore.. They want to please those playing both, which is why i personally think they're trying to get BC out first, so that takes up some of the "drought" time from Shadowlands.
either way, BC launch likely in May, with shadowlands coming as a winter release.
Reused asset raid. Reused tier set. New zone which is just a new part of an existing so likely to be relatively small.
Its looking like a fairly puny "major patch" i cant see it taking too long to make.
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Or they'll release part of it and then the rest later.
The "When its done" mentality stopped being true awhile ago.
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
I dont really think we can use "previous dates" as an estimate this time around.. Theres a pandemic going on which is, Without doubt, slowing everything down.. its harder for the developers to test, fix and deploy, than it has ever been.. especially because they have to distribute the fixes to EVERYONE and not just to pc's on campus anymore..
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
You do realise that Square Enix (Japan based) arent under the same covid restrictions as Activision Blizzard (US based) right? Japan never really got hit as hard, and didnt really shut down as hard or as long.. While in both Europe and the US we're seeing major shutdowns all over even right now, with the third wave causing problems in EU right now... Square Enix's developement team LIKELY hasnt been split up in the same way as US based developement teams did.
Which is bullshit for two reasons:
1) The pandemic has been out for over a year now. This is nothing new.
2) If they are indeed slowed down, they should come clean about it. Like how Naoki Yoshida said that 5.3 will be delayed due to covid. And it was, by 1.5 months. Things are back on schedule. We know this because the devs communicate with us. Actually communicate not just talk about the good old days and congratulate themselves.
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You do realize every cutscene is also voiced in English , French and German and the localization teams aren't in Japan. Right? Right?
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I would say 1991, but that would be a bit too cheeky. Granted August is still an estimate, but my "dumb hater trolling" is looking more and more like reality.
The model has been, for the last few expansions, 6 months(ish) per season, with the tail moving the next release along the calendar as required. In late BFA the world got covid extending the tail well beyond intent, so a mini-lull or two in SL to put the next expansion release in a different, more fiscally comfortable spot on the calendar wouldn't be entirely nuts. Indeed BFA had one or two mini-lulls before X.Y patches in what appeared to be an effort to cut into a long tail... and then covid happened.
I for one am loving shadowlands, and should that stop, I know that there will be a soft power reset at 9.1, so it really doesn't matter if I take a break and inevitably come back. So long as I have cosmetics to pursue with a daily/weekly efficient burst of activity, WoW fits into my life just fine.
Diablo IV is the best MMORPG Blizzard has ever made!