When is 9.1 coming out?

[rhorle]

That's not true at all. 6.1 had Blackrock Foundry, when we go by that. Was it released the day 6.1 released? No. But it still released during 6.1. And although 6.1 was maybe the worst patch in WoW's history, it had a little bit more than just the selfie cam.

BRF opened up on February 3rd. Patch 6.1 came on February 24th. Tier 17 was in the game with the launch of WoD but just not enabled. Everything you keep point out as "obvious" is just your opinion of what is happening. It doesn't prove anything as fact or anything at all. It doesn't matter if a patch added a new zone or not. There is no set rule that it can't be added in a patch X.1. X.1 patches have seen zone revamps which for all intents and purposes is a new zone. Did you even play 5.1 Landfall? Or 8.1 Darkshore? The only pattern is conspiracy type of connections.

That would mean there are still plenty of people left after the content drought Shadowlands is having for several months now. People that stayed until now in retail will stay for 3-4 more weeks or even longer as they seem to simply not care if there's a new patch or not, they're just subbed. The critical amount of people left Shadowlands 2-3 months ago when 9.1 should have went live.

Are you really trying to make the claim that retail won't lose anymore players? lol.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. Exactly that. Finally you get it

Which means they are tanking MAU just to see one specific product have good numbers. That doesn't make sense. Both Retail and Classic can have good numbers at the same time.

[tomten]

Are you really trying to make the claim that retail won't lose anymore players? lol.

Yes. If you're still subbed today, you will still be subbed in 2 months. The drop off from now will be insanely small.

[rhorle]

Ever since pvp seasons were a thing, they have never NOT given 2 week notice.

A few have been under 14 days. The last WoD season was 11 days for example. So there isn't a hard rule of 14 days (2-weeks). Is it a decent guide line? Sure. But isn't something that is required so a 1-week notice could be given.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. If you're still subbed today, you will still be subbed in 2 months. The drop off from now will be insanely small.

I don't think anyone would cover a bet that says Retail will lose zero players in the next 2 months if there is no new content patch. Hell they will lose some players even if patch 9.1 comes out tomorrow.

[Lolites]

If COVID is still slowing dev appreciably their IT and engineering management should be fired.

they can surely be up the "normal" speed, yet if they were delayed by couple months in the begining they cant get that time back...

[Lorgar Aurelian]

If COVID is still slowing dev appreciably their IT and engineering management should be fired.

Look, I get that early on they needed to setup VPNs, figure out meetings and get all the systems in place. And there was the simple stress of lockdowns and how long this would last and all that. But by now any semi-competent software org has figured out the technical issues and while remote collboration isn't like in person, staff should be up to speed by now. Sure, some people will have kids at home who take attention which wasn't an issue when the staff was in office...

But come on.

By this same metric pretty much every big studio would have to fire there IT and engineers as almost every big company is still suffering from delays.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

if 9.1 is taking this long just imagine how long until 9.2. we probably won't get it until next year or 2023

[thunderdragon2]

It would just be the very tail-end of june. That being said, whats on the PTR is what we are going to get. Hoping for more is delusional at this point. Since BfA "oh that's it?!" is pretty much the norm.

hoping for bug fixes is delusional now is it? no wonder the dev team is very uncreative and uninspired when it comes to the ptr

[Nyel]

if 9.1 is taking this long just imagine how long until 9.2. we probably won't get it until next year or 2023

9.2 will come out early next year most likely, maybe late January. If they separate patch and raid release 9.2 might even come out in December, but that would require a lot of effort and catching up on Blizzard's side.

If we get 9.1 in July, which becomes more likely every day, January would be the month due to their normal release schedule. Even February would be okayish for a 9.2 release then.

[Dorothyjean]

The base patch is almost 7 months old. 9.1 was announced in February or March..? It is now June 9th, 6 days from the 2nd quarter of June. June 21st marks the first day of Summer. When is this patch going to release? This has been one of the longest if not the longest content droughts for a -patch- I've ever seen. No, not counting the patches between patch and next expac like Siege.

Earliest is July... but given that SL was supposed to come out in October and was delayed til November... AND Amazon's New World comes out on August 31st and they want to nurture TBC for all the money it's worth hence releasing it at the end of Q2 so it moves into Q3 fiscal quarter...

August 31st is my guess and largely because of COVID-19 being the major factor for the delay.

[clevin]

By this same metric pretty much every big studio would have to fire there IT and engineers as almost every big company is still suffering from delays.

Well then... yes. Look as @Lolites notes, you can't get back delays that happened early last year. But there's not much excuse in software org to have remote work be a reason for significant delay anymore.

Devs can have computers at home that are just as powerful as at the office. Source is checked in and managed on the network and once you have secure access up and running the connections from home are just as fast as inside the office. Likewise artwork, etc.

They and their apologists need to quit using COVID as a CYA strategy for work that's happening now. Also, they can and should require vaccinations at this point (yes, this is legal at least in the US) which removes the 'we can't meet in person' BS.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Well then... yes. Look as @Lolites notes, you can't get back delays that happened early last year. But there's not much excuse in software org to have remote work be a reason for significant delay anymore.

Devs can have computers at home that are just as powerful as at the office. Source is checked in and managed on the network and once you have secure access up and running the connections from home are just as fast as inside the office. Likewise artwork, etc.

They and their apologists need to quit using COVID as a CYA strategy for work that's happening now. Also, they can and should require vaccinations at this point (yes, this is legal at least in the US) which removes the 'we can't meet in person' BS.

There hasn't been any new Announcements that we would apply an ongoing delay to just the time lost earlier which still be time they couldn't get back pushing things further back then originally planned which would apply to 9.1 and every other big company.

[Rootsbum]

I understand from a companys point of view that they wont tell "take a break, nothing new for 7 months", but at the same time I would be mutch more understanding if they had SOME kind of dialogue with theyr customers about what the hell is going on.
Its ridicilous by now and im not sure if I even want to return to the game again.
First BfA and now this?

[sargento]

9.2 will come out early next year most likely, maybe late January. If they separate patch and raid release 9.2 might even come out in December, but that would require a lot of effort and catching up on Blizzard's side.

If we get 9.1 in July, which becomes more likely every day, January would be the month due to their normal release schedule. Even February would be okayish for a 9.2 release then.

That makes sense for a 9.2 release date. Honest question to everyone though - If 9.2 is released in the first quarter of 2022, should Blizzard just cut their losses now and make that the last patch (kill Jailer) and just focus on the next expansion release for end of 2022 or early 2023?

[Lolites]

Well then... yes. Look as @Lolites notes, you can't get back delays that happened early last year. But there's not much excuse in software org to have remote work be a reason for significant delay anymore.

from this, im not sure if you understood me
yes there is no reason to still work slower and INCREASE the delay, BUT! the delay that happened last year is STILL THERE, its not going anywhere for long time...

think about it this way, in THEORY if they get delayed by 3 months it would take them half a year of overtimes in amount of half of normal hours to get back to the point they should be, so if the delay happened at the begining of year they would just now catch up, and lets be real, even at job that is 8h/day it would be incredibly unlikely people could manage to work 12h/day for half a year... so realisticaly speaking, a year is more reasonable timeframe to "catch up"

i work as accountant at company that (mostly) works on software where most people already work from home regularly, and yet on some bigger projects we moved deadline by 1-3 years, so delay of few months is actualy not that bad...

[justandulas]

from this, im not sure if you understood me
yes there is no reason to still work slower and INCREASE the delay, BUT! the delay that happened last year is STILL THERE, its not going anywhere for long time...

think about it this way, in THEORY if they get delayed by 3 months it would take them half a year of overtimes in amount of half of normal hours to get back to the point they should be, so if the delay happened at the begining of year they would just now catch up, and lets be real, even at job that is 8h/day it would be incredibly unlikely people could manage to work 12h/day for half a year... so realisticaly speaking, a year is more reasonable timeframe to "catch up"

i work as accountant at company that (mostly) works on software where most people already work from home regularly, and yet on some bigger projects we moved deadline by 1-3 years, so delay of few months is actualy not that bad...

The competition has no problem putting out content during a pandemic. Both eso and ff14 have put out more content, including expansions, with a budget many times smaller than WoW

Covid was an excuse last year as to why SL was months late, Covid is NOT an excuse to why delays are happening in summer 2021

I suspect it was something more along the lines of they were making 9.1 in the image of the maw and torghast and had to emergency pivot when it wasn’t so well received and they aren’t creative enough to get around that imo

[Martymark]

2023 is lookin' good.

[Meow]

Only Blizzard is using COVID-19 as an excuse to cover their internal conflicts now.

[justandulas]

Only Blizzard is using COVID-19 as an excuse to cover their internal conflicts now.

This. Delaying SL to November over Covid was a valid excuse. Delaying SL content almost a year later, is not an excuse. It’s just incompetence

[dacoolist]

Ill say this: I work for an org that Rona for sure heavily affected us - what really sucks though is that even though we got hammered.. we arent even NEAR the level of scary that Blizz is in with 7 months of 0 content. Btw, I’m literally a blizz shill, like I protecc them like I protecc my 401k right… but uhh.. they dun goofed harder than I’ve EVER seen. I’ve played continuously since August 2007-Now (no breaks, no unsubs.. I play roughly 10-15 hours per week every single week since August 2007.. this is the first time I’ve ever been worried. Cata lost more people in a single quarter than it has current retail subs world wide: still was more content than this.

I hope with every single bone in my body that blizz releases this damn patch like ASAP

[Lolites]

Cata lost more people in a single quarter than it has current retail subs world wide

damn, thats some next level guesswork...
at my job we moved deadlines for some projects by 1-3 YEARS, 2-3 months blizz is behind is not half bad...