When will they release chains of domination?

[Lolites]

Most probably never. 9.0.5 is the end of WoW.

again? god knows how many "ends of wow" ive been through since march 2005 when i started... and even more "wowkillers"...
then again, in my relatively short life i already survived 3 or so ends of the world...

[Accendor]

Currently it looks like around july, maybe August. Hope it will be faster tho

[Zorachus]

So in conclusion we aren't that far behind when it comes to content release, but the absence of a PTR version is troubling.

LOL what? 9.1 is even on the PTR yet, meaning it's still 90 days away. Everything I've read and heard consistently is 9.1 coming July / August. Meaning it will have been well over 200+ days making it considerably the longest time it took for a .1 patch release, also meaning something's seriously wrong behind the scenes.

Right now there's just nothing to do in the game, except run the same old dungeons yet again for the 200th time each. Or do the Raid again for like the 15th week now, ugh, zzz...wake me when something new comes.

[Omedon]

Okay, let's update it after a week has gone by. Will be easier for me to find it as well, for future reference. So to make sure I don't eff it up, I used an online calculator rhat counts the days between two days. Not gonna look up leap years and shit.

As of today local time we are 124 days into Shadowlands.

The North American release date for Vanilla was November 23 which gives us 121 days till 1.3.1. Granted back in the days patches were small and frequent. I mean we got as far as 1.12.2 which is fucking mental.

Now TBC time: Joint NA/EU release at January 16. 2.1 Aka Black Temple came at 126 days. So we aren't there yet. Granted it is highly unlikely we will get 9.1 in two days, but let's be fair. Illidan was in good health.

Now Wrath. The good old days when WoW had the most subs. November 13 soo. 152 days till 3.1 and Ulduar. (and Dual spec). That is 28 more days. So a veery short PTR cycle away.

Cataclysm time December 7 2010. The worst of the bunch, unsurprisingly. 140 days till 4.1 the Zandalari patch. The first expansion WoW actually lost subs. Go figure. For those curious 203 days till 4.2 and the Firelands, the first raid patch. That would be 79 days from now. AKA a little over two months and two weeks on the PTR if 9.1 drops now. Not impossible, but we will see.

MoP, aka hindsight is a bitch. September 25. We had to wait 63 days till 5.1 which is very impressive, but we only had scenarios and the Brawler's Guild, so no dungeon or raid. That came with 5.2 161 days from release. 37 days from now. No way in hell is 9.1 beating this. Of course we know how MoP ended. 177 days between the last hotfix and WoD. Ugh

WoD, the we are no longer reporting sub numbers, expansion. Released in November 13 2014. 103 days till 6.1. Heirloom tab, Garrison updates, and the selfie cam it will never live down. 6.2 was 221 days which is 97 days from now. 3 months one week on the PTR. Not unprecedented, but would be unfortunate.

Legion, the renaissance, the so called best expansion by many, despite classes being at their worst when they are without an artifact weapon. Literally the worst time to roll a fresh character. Yeah I'm salty. Least I admit it. Released August 30 2016. 56 days till 7.1 with a mythic only dungeon and a 3-boss mini raid. That's better than MoP. 142 days till 7.2 which is 18 days from now. Granted the raid itself was staggered 138 days from the patch (LOLwut) but give credit where credit is due.

BfA, the Drustvar and other things I'd rather not talk about expansion. August 13, 8.1 was 120 days in. So we are 4 days behind. With 316 days Rise of Azshara is 192 days from now, piss easy to beat. Over half a year. Granted 8.1 had a second mini raid in 8.1.5 along with more allied races and questlines. 211 days, so 87 days from now. A little under 3 months. Can be beaten.


So in conclusion we aren't that far behind when it comes to content release, but the absence of a PTR version is troubling.

This is a really cool breakdown, thank you for taking the time!

I had a theory around 8.1.5 that mid-expansion mini-droughts (which many said we were in at the time) existed on purpose to cut into the traditionally long tail. I might have been proven somewhat right if COVID hadn't happened, but I'd like for a moment to come back to a variation on this line of thought.

COVID has utterly munged any and all sense of what felt like a quarterly (if you count X.Y.5 patches) cadence that WoW was settling into starting with legion: Two year expansion gets broken down into four seasons, approximately 6 months each, with a "point five" bisecting most of them, with some serious wiggle room involved... and as always there's the tail, which messes with that. Now they're in a position where the calendar positioning is just totally messed up. I don't see them cutting shadowlands short of its four-phase lifespan, but I can see them dragging it out with multiple mini-lulls to put 10.0 closer to a target date on the calendar. The working from home narrative (and reality) helps this along, but one thing I don't see them doing is WoD'ing shadowlands "because an expansion has to be two years only." I do see them erring on the side of getting all of Shadowlands' intended beats out, but dragging it out to make sure that happens AND to strategically place 10.0 somewhere intentional on the calendar to re-align with financials or the potential for a live Blizzcon to get that live 10.0 unveil pop.

Just a thought that I won't call a prediction... but it wouldn't surprise me if Shadowlands is the first expansion to go WELL beyond a 2 year lifespan to an unprecedented degree.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Covid is a big culprit weather the world likes it or not.

[Stardrift]

Honestly? I hope they just scrap it and move all their resources into next expansion. Some respect would be gained if they could step forward and say "yea we fucked up and will be focusing on 10.0" and put WoW on cruise control until then.

I mean, for a game that charges you $15 a month, some could say it's always been on cruise control with how seldom it comes out with updates.

If 9.1 is too far long to just dump it, then I hope it'll be SL's only patch.

[Stevano]

The pandemic is definitely the reason for a portion of the delay. Remember they also had to reschedule the initial release-date for SL. Although I hear sounds of 9.1 releasing around late june or even august. If that is the case, we are no longer in a delay because of the pandemic. There is so much drama going on at Blizzard. Employees getting the boot, while scumbag Kotick has once again another overexaggerated bonus. Could be very bad timing, but I doubt you'll fire 10% of your employees if you are in the financial position to grand yourself 200 milion dollars. The workhorses at Blizzard are getting underpayed, demotivated on top of already hard conditions because of working from home.

All that combined let's us pay for a game with limited customer service and non-existing patch content. The main reason is probaply the hilarious stupid actions of Activision. In short: I'd love to spend my money for a game that shows love, time and the right treatment for it's employees. Now it feels like I'm paying for the lowest of services and 90% of that money goes to Kotick. That's how it feels like and that's why I'm not longer paying.

[WowIsDead64]

Again. Why do we need new content? Because we have run out of content in SL? But have we? This xpack has 4 covenants and 4 armor types. Total 16 characters are needed to consume all it's content. But all of a sudden Blizzard do everything to limit us to just one character, like it was back in BFA. So do we really need new content or it would be great, if current content just would be fixed? All I actually need from 9.1 - is flying and Anima grind nerf. Because if Anima grind is supposed to be 100% completed by the end of SL, then we can be 100% sure, that it WILL BE nerfed. And it would be ok to grind it now, if it would be 10-20% stretching. But 500-1000% overstretch??? Isn't worth it till nerf. And if nerf won't happen then... Well, SL is doomed to be BFA 2.0, i.e. new worst xpack ever made.

But do we need 9.1 for this? Do we really need to wait for months till that PTR, then release, then another Renown gating? It's it just formality? We can actually do it RIGHT NOW! But Blizzard refuse to do it. And it's their core problem. Situation is bad, but they kill their own game even more. It's the worst time to be stubborn, remove mostly used payment options (because who needs sub fee, if game has only 2 weeks of content?) and increase local sub fee prices for no reason.

[Omedon]

Honestly? I hope they just scrap it and move all their resources into next expansion. Some respect would be gained if they could step forward and say "yea we fucked up and will be focusing on 10.0" and put WoW on cruise control until then.

I mean, for a game that charges you $15 a month, some could say it's always been on cruise control with how seldom it comes out with updates.

If 9.1 is too far long to just dump it, then I hope it'll be SL's only patch.

As I said in my longer post above, I absolutely do not see them "WoD'ing" Shadowlands in a large part because a) it FEELS like a "destination expansion" to set a new tone to the whole game, and b) This is an "odd numbered redemption expansion" following a panned "even numbered flop," a pattern that hilariously dates back to the first "even numbered flop" with Cataclysm.

No, if they're doing anything crazy with Shadowlands' timing, it'll go long, not short, and get all its beats in, because 10.0 needs to be the first "even numbered hit" in a long ass time, and shadowlands' story is almost certainly setting a whole new tone for the perpetuity that the level squish (and likely subsequent squish to 50 every pre patch) and chromie time were put in place to support.

[PsychoSe7eN]

I think they are in trouble and we won't see a release till August minimum.

[Masternap]

fastest added x.1 (WITH raid, i refuse to include pandaria with just q line or cata with remade dungeons) was nighthold in 7.1.5 at 4.5 months after release of expansion... we just reached 4 months, so "should been already out" is a bit weird thing to say...
it should be on PTR now or soon, ill give you that, but thats it

It's not that weird. The comparison to other expansions would make sense, if all of them had been released with a similar amount of content. The thing is that Shadowlands released in a state where there wasn't much to do to begin with. So naturally new content should come out much faster. ´

[Wangming]

He says it somewhere around 6:20.

Not rock solid intel but thanks anyway.

LOL what? 9.1 is even on the PTR yet, meaning it's still 90 days away. Everything I've read and heard consistently is 9.1 coming July / August. Meaning it will have been well over 200+ days making it considerably the longest time it took for a .1 patch release, also meaning something's seriously wrong behind the scenes.

Right now there's just nothing to do in the game, except run the same old dungeons yet again for the 200th time each. Or do the Raid again for like the 15th week now, ugh, zzz...wake me when something new comes.

Cut me some slack dude, I'm trying to be fair. It's not that easy with this clusterfuck of an expansion, but not many expansions had a raid patch out at this point and we don't know how staggered content will be when it releases.

This is a really cool breakdown, thank you for taking the time!

You are very welcome. As for the covid related delay. I don't want to bring up FFXIV again out of all the competition, but that's the game I know well enough to compare. They were transparent about there being a delay for patch 5.3 It came out 175 days after 5.2 Usually for FFXIV we have 3.5-4 months between major patches (this doesn't count .5 patches that also include some content. In this case 5.3 came 5 months and 24 days, so almost six months after 5.2. The content gap is back to normal. 5.4 came 132 days after (4 months 10 days).

So yes, a delay is expected. But I'm missing the honest dev communication regarding the issue.

[Lolites]

Shadowlands released in a state where there wasn't much to do to begin with.

really? bcs i play daily and im far from done... people might not like some of the content, but that doesnt mean there is no content
after legion and bfa people were whining about forced grinds so now most things are optional and people complain there is nothing to do while they DIDNT do the optional things...

[Stardrift]

As I said in my longer post above, I absolutely do not see them "WoD'ing" Shadowlands in a large part because a) it FEELS like a "destination expansion" to set a new tone to the whole game, and b) This is an "odd numbered redemption expansion" following a panned "even numbered flop," a pattern that hilariously dates back to the first "even numbered flop" with Cataclysm.

No, if they're doing anything crazy with Shadowlands' timing, it'll go long, not short, and get all its beats in, because 10.0 needs to be the first "even numbered hit" in a long ass time, and shadowlands' story is almost certainly setting a whole new tone for the perpetuity that the level squish (and likely subsequent squish to 50 every pre patch) and chromie time were put in place to support.

I feel you're onto something, and are most likely correct.

Either way though, next expansion has got to be a good one. Three horrible expansions in a row would be disastrous.

[FelPlague]

hey bobby just fired - again - around 10% of entire employee numbers, and will fire even more, because they cost less than even 5% of his bonus salary he just got
what, u want him to get only 185 million usd instead of full 200 (assuming of course all fired employees were minimum wage)?
and of course all those 'fired' were from non-important department, because 10% of entire work population in a company is just janitors or something

10% of the entire employee numbers?

What the fuck?
dude blizzard has 8000 employees
They did not fire 800 employees my dude.

also all of the employees were the esports live tournoment team, nothing to do with game dev.

- - - Updated - - -

blizz themselves said june is an optimistic expectation. it'll probably be closer to august.

got a source on that? cause no official note has come from blizzard.

[aceperson]

slight correction as apparently it wasn't an official statement but said by an employee at blizz to towlie. and i'm more inclined to believe whatever an employee says over the managers who only talk to us in lawyer speak.

[Zyky]

This is weird. So we will play the same content for 7-8 months?! They used to reset the season every 3-4 months or so.

Seasons were never 3-4 months. Major content patch cycles were generally always 7+ months long. That said we're in the middle of an unprecedented epidemic, don't expect content to be pushed as fast as it was in the past because it's unrealistic.

[Lolites]

idk why people want shadowlands to be doomed so badly

bcs some people are miserable and want others to be miserable aswell, bcs they think that will make them feel better, and since they dont have actual reason they have to make one

[Dracullus]

Seasons were never 3-4 months. Major content patch cycles were generally always 7+ months long. That said we're in the middle of an unprecedented epidemic, don't expect content to be pushed as fast as it was in the past because it's unrealistic.

People seems only to remember X.0->X.1, which was always shorter (but longer with every expansion, Uldir was longer then EN, EN than Highmaul, and if I remember correctly Highmaul longer than MGV).

Imo stretching first season to be equal with S2/S3 is correct, but game still needs patch every ~3 months to avoid drought (+ of course 8-10 drought at the end is unavoidable, but you can keep people interested like 8.3 drought proved).

That's why Legion idea for patches was genius, even if not everything worked out in the end. In perfect world 9.1 would come in March, bring new zone, with some catch up to let ultra casual easy gear to like 207, new dungeon and campaign similar to Nightfallen (so instead of raid early on, whole plot leading to raid). 9.1.5 would have just evergreen content, raid (+ season).

In BfA and now SL devs decided to release content in bigger chunks and I'm not sure why, it's completely opposite what Ion told us on Blizzcon '16. Or maybe that was plan, but pandemic screw it up.

[Wangming]

this whole conversation around 9.1 is so interesting across this community because...it's all about fueling "i hate wow" and rage instead of actually discussing when the content is coming out. i'm personally baffled that after asking for raid logging/no grind/no punishment gameplay to return, the community has reverted to "nothing to do" when they got a balance of endgame progression that wasn't a grind/endless/punishing with cosmetic open world stuff and continued season gameplay. 9.1 sounds cool and SL is solid. it's ok-we don't have to just hate the game.

9.1 def releases in june/july making season 1 6-7 months. not an issue. mop tier 1 was around 6 months, legion tier 1 was 4 months for EN, 5 months for nighthold, makinng it 9 months between launch and tomb, which was the new content not developed for launch. BFA was 5.5 months before bod, but we all know a lot of that was a different timeline for a mess of reasons. point being, 6-7 months for a first tier is fine and not at all a sign of the end of wow. idk why people want shadowlands to be doomed so badly: the game is fine rn and has a lot of good stuff happening. i personally think it's gonna shake out like mop where the first tier was a good game and it only improved as the expansion went on.

Here is an interesting concept. Maybe the ones asking for the change before and the ones raging now aren't the same people. It happens. As for a definite release, we just don't know that. We can only guess. But based on previous expansions we can at least guess that 9.3 very likely will not happen.