So, 9.1 first or TBC Classic?

[Skandulous]

TBC Beta hasn't even started yet and people think it'll be out in less than two months? That's some strong delusions right there.

https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/the-bur...y-begun-321511

it started today. guess we know whats coming first now

[Nize]

https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/the-bur...y-begun-321511

it started today. guess we know whats coming first now

TBC will be in beta longer than 9.1 will be in PTR. TBC beta now, 9.1 ptr in April, 9.1 release in late June, TBC in August is going to be my guess.

[Skandulous]

TBC will be in beta longer than 9.1 will be in PTR. TBC beta now, 9.1 ptr in April, 9.1 release in late June, TBC in August is going to be my guess.

no it wont theres a string in the patch that says tbc character clone may 18th 2021 which would be the prepatch date. TBC will be out mid June early July

[Echocho]

https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/the-bur...y-begun-321511

it started today. guess we know whats coming first now

Awesome! It should easily be out during July, early August at the latest.

[razorpax]

If 9.1 doesn’t hit ptr this week I think ion needs a dictionary for the word soon

[Unholyground]

Well let’s math this

9.1 is 5-8 weeks of ptr

TBC is months of alpha and beta...

People screeching about delays with no information are going to say tbc and claim “they can’t release them too close to each other” ignoring the CEO saying there isn’t significant overlap between the two games so they don’t let it effect the release even though as I’ve shown above they won’t release near each other

They fixed most of the engine bugs in Classic, it won't take even close to as long for the TBC beta.

[FelPlague]

https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/the-bur...y-begun-321511

it started today. guess we know whats coming first now

uh oh spaghet, dont count your chickens before they hatch?

[Onikaroshi]

They fixed most of the engine bugs in Classic, it won't take even close to as long for the TBC beta.

I figure it might officially start this week on wed (it was not actually released today) run testing to make sure prepatch functions properly for a couple months, launch prepatch on the 19th of may, keep the beta running through prepatch and then once everything is honky dory from the beta, launch fully a month after prepatch.

They don't test content in these classic betas, just make sure the systems are working.

- - - Updated - - -

uh oh spaghet, dont count your chickens before they hatch?

It's not actually launched.


https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/blizzar...ot-live-321513

[Maljinwo]

Finally, we can beta test something from 2007

[razorpax]

They fixed most of the engine bugs in Classic, it won't take even close to as long for the TBC beta.

If it’s shorter than 2 months I’ll laugh my ass off

[FelPlague]

It's not actually launched.


https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/blizzar...ot-live-321513

i know, thats why i said "dont count yoru chickens before they hatch"

[WowIsDead64]

I've got tired of constantly explaining, why WOD content was good. Example vs SL. In SL you have fast 1-50 leveling, but then 50-60 leveling is very slow and boring. After that you have two weeks of Renown grind, while constantly getting stuck with nothing more to do. After that you have pointless Anima grind and therefore have to level next alt instead. Such intensive alt leveling causes burnout pretty fast. It's not replayable content at all.

And WOD. In WOD you had old school 1-90 leveling, but it was pretty fast and fun anyway. I like to do things from scratch, because it's very RPish. You truly felt, how your character progressed. Then you had access to your Garrison after short intro quest line. So, at that point you was already starting to actually play endgame content. There was no need to hurry. There was no gating. Then. Leveling to 100 was taking just 1.5 locations. After that you were able to go to Tanaan and start doing long term business there. And leveling was so good, that I was always completing Loremaster anyway. Even if it wasn't necessary. Just because it was fun and default followers were good thing. After that it was Tanaan, that had perfect difficulty and progression curves. First it was a little bit hard. Not all rare were killable. But you could pick easier ones and that was perfectly enough, because you needed 3-5 of them every day. Baleful tokens provided interesting gameplay with some sort of compromise between buying new tokens to make things easier and upgrading existing ones to start progressing towards your goal as early, as possible. Then it was becoming easier. Some rares required tactics, but were still doable solo anyway. And with the best gear you were able to kill everything, as it should have been. Minimal content required you to do just one (of 2) zone. Second quest - two more (any) zones. Then it was Fel Appexis quest, that was easily done via killing rares. And you could also complete all 5 zones to get extra Appexis. Throne was 100% optional. Via doing it you could get around 10-12k Appexis every day. That meant one item upgrade once in 2 days. And as you had 13 items to upgrade, it was taking around 26 days to complete your Baleful set. There were also weekly campaign quests, that were granting nice bonuses. And after that you still had your Garrison to level, so your alt wasn't useless. You still had reason to log on it. Garrison leveling was lasting for about 2 months. But it wasn't taking so much time to do it, so you had free time to level you next alt.

And all of that with just perfect design, that wasn't felt, as if content would be intentionally stretched to milk extra game time from you.

This is what is called perfectly replayable alt leveling pipeline. Almost infinite amount of content, limited by 50 character slots only.

[zhorteye]

The most realistic scenario is this: TBC is right around the corner, they are skipping alpha and going straight to a beta, The beta on this likely wont be as long as other betas as pretty much everything is ready and its just tuning and making sure everything works and a few stresstests for server stability.

TBC is likely to release early summer

Whereas 9.1 isnt even close to PTR yet as it seems, raidtesting dates arent announced and theres alot more to test in 9.1 PTR than in TBC beta.. I dont see 9.1 until late summer early autumn maybe even winter.

TBC Will come first, to keep some players engaged while they then have time to develope 9.1 properly.

And now, i know these are 2 different teams, but its VERY likely that some of the retail team is actually helping out on the TBC side of things seeing how its all running on the shadowlands client, and this would allow them to speed up the release of TBC, Once TBC is released, alot of the "developement" on it goes to standby mode as most of it is just Upkeep and releasing phases and not actual developement work, allowing much of the team to then move onto 9.1, help out there and get that to a "good enough for release" state.

[Nitrax]

I don't know why they released such a content-low 9.0 without having 9.1 ready. If you dont do mythics and raiding its nothign to do. I guess thats why they went forward with TBC classic to keep people subscribed maybe until 9.1.

[Nyel]

TBC Classic launch > Shadowlands content patches

We haven't heard anything about 9.1 since virtual Blizzcon. TBC Beta accidentally went live. I think the priorities are clear.

- - - Updated - - -

SL is literally the BEST leveling and replayability in years wtf are you talking about.

I am currently leveling my 30th alt ( My account is maxed at 50 toons and I get them all to max level every xpac).

Plus playing my main throigh mythic+15s and raiding.

Best leveling if you do it once. The leveling is horrible on subsequent characters as it's the same. The 4 Covenant campaigns on max level are good content, but they don't add much replayability as you can play them with one character. Levelin on rails in Shadowlands is nice for the first or maybe second time, but after that it's sluggish and incredibly boring.

[Wangming]

In the immortal words of Shang Tsung

It has begun!

[Argorwal]

I've got tired of constantly explaining, why WOD content was good. Example vs SL. In SL you have fast 1-50 leveling, but then 50-60 leveling is very slow and boring. After that you have two weeks of Renown grind, while constantly getting stuck with nothing more to do. After that you have pointless Anima grind and therefore have to level next alt instead. Such intensive alt leveling causes burnout pretty fast. It's not replayable content at all.

And WOD. In WOD you had old school 1-90 leveling, but it was pretty fast and fun anyway. I like to do things from scratch, because it's very RPish. You truly felt, how your character progressed. Then you had access to your Garrison after short intro quest line. So, at that point you was already starting to actually play endgame content. There was no need to hurry. There was no gating. Then. Leveling to 100 was taking just 1.5 locations. After that you were able to go to Tanaan and start doing long term business there. And leveling was so good, that I was always completing Loremaster anyway. Even if it wasn't necessary. Just because it was fun and default followers were good thing. After that it was Tanaan, that had perfect difficulty and progression curves. First it was a little bit hard. Not all rare were killable. But you could pick easier ones and that was perfectly enough, because you needed 3-5 of them every day. Baleful tokens provided interesting gameplay with some sort of compromise between buying new tokens to make things easier and upgrading existing ones to start progressing towards your goal as early, as possible. Then it was becoming easier. Some rares required tactics, but were still doable solo anyway. And with the best gear you were able to kill everything, as it should have been. Minimal content required you to do just one (of 2) zone. Second quest - two more (any) zones. Then it was Fel Appexis quest, that was easily done via killing rares. And you could also complete all 5 zones to get extra Appexis. Throne was 100% optional. Via doing it you could get around 10-12k Appexis every day. That meant one item upgrade once in 2 days. And as you had 13 items to upgrade, it was taking around 26 days to complete your Baleful set. There were also weekly campaign quests, that were granting nice bonuses. And after that you still had your Garrison to level, so your alt wasn't useless. You still had reason to log on it. Garrison leveling was lasting for about 2 months. But it wasn't taking so much time to do it, so you had free time to level you next alt.

And all of that with just perfect design, that wasn't felt, as if content would be intentionally stretched to milk extra game time from you.

This is what is called perfectly replayable alt leveling pipeline. Almost infinite amount of content, limited by 50 character slots only.

Why again are you comparing a mid expansion catchup zone (Tanaan) to an initial launch?

The truth is until 6.2 WoD had exactly 1 garrison based daily quest to fill up the bar as the “world content.”

Other than that you were doing raids/dungeons (for a week)/PvP for gear and character improvement.

Token gear for upgrades on alts as part of catchup has been a staple since Timeless Isle.

We had them in WoD, Legion, BFA, and likely will again in Shadowlands in a future patch.

[Todesbote]

Knowing Blizzard? Both will drop on the same day to make everyone playing both implode with rage.

,

pretty much this

[Dracullus]

Finally, we can beta test something from 2007

True, I really don't get people that want access so bad (except streamers of course, free views).

[ippollite]

I just dont see them releasing these within 2 months of one another. And, this close to the expected patch cycle in retail, if one of them has to be dragged out a bit longer to make room for the other, its ...likely.... gonna be TBC.

Still, if TBC drops before June, then August for 9.1 isnt even out of the current ballpark of expectations (late june to early september). But if theyre hoping for late june-mid july for 9.1 then i can easily see TBC pushed back to early september. It would also give them more 'time' (or is that 'goodwill') to spend a bit longer on 9.2 (with a heft of their playerbase switching over to play TBC in the downtime). So, best case is tbc releasing after (since it gives them a cushion for the next major patch). But if 9.1 really is still in the early stages, then TBC is there to add the cushion before it drops - but that does suggest 9.1 is pretty far and that 9.2 is basically next year.