Oh wow guys....the game will be released much later than most expected.

[Tiberria]

Their entire approach to raid testing and class design/balancing seems to indicate that they are being a lot more measured and careful with raid and class design and balancing this expansion than they have been in the past. I don't think I remember Ghostcrawler ever being as active in interacting with players in regards to class design (at least not since maybe Wrath development). I also don't think the Cata raid testing was as extensive as what we are seeing now (and we aren't even halfway through it).

Maybe they figured that they got burned by Cata (class balancing and raid design was a mess at launch), and burned by D3 launching with all kinds of unresolved issues, and they want to slow down the cycle and make sure they have it right before releasing MoP. That theory seems to lean to a release date somewhere between October 2nd and October 30.

[Tampwn]

Masks? Seriously going to use MASKS? as proof that TRINKETS don't mean a thing? Masks that are totally cosmetic compared to TRINKETS with an ilevel of 470 and stats.... just mean nothing.... O.o ok dude... lol[COLOR="red"]

---------- Post added 2012-07-23 at 04:28 PM ----------

.

*squaaaaaawk* Trinkets..... yes, pretty trinkets......

[Deleted]

I wish it was just that simple man I really do. If it had been that simple you all would have known back at the end of June what was going on. The problem is I'm under an agreement not to disclose certain aspects, I can point out facts and discuss things that are topics as they happen and are being discussed. But I can't START new topics or break news and such of sorts. I can be an observer and comment on things. But I can NOT reveal and there ARE people watching. Like my friend

Now i did ask a question and it's a good question. I'm curious if anyone has any new ideas on what might be going on. Trying Start a new line of discussion, because frankly everyone sounds like they are about to try to slap each other silly. (Trying to be nice in light of Colorado)

I am still not sure if i believe to Bristae agreement and internal source theory but he sure has some good reasoning to support his ideas. The only clue that he seems to totally ignore is the 60 days window between announcement and release (which i keep on taking into consideration).
Anyway, my guess is 25th sept if we get a release today/tomorrow and 16th oct if we get the release date at gamescon.

[Chrysia]

I am still not sure if i believe to Bristae agreement and internal source theory but he sure has some good reasoning to support his ideas. The only clue that he seems to totally ignore is the 60 days window between announcement and release (which i keep on taking into consideration).
Anyway, my guess is 25th sept if we get a release today/tomorrow and 16th oct if we get the release date at gamescon.

Again, the issue with this is we have two "always happens" items that contradict each other.

According to the 2 month notice "always happens," Sept. 25th is the earliest possible release.

According to the "flow of pre-patch" "always happens," We should see it at latest Sept. 18th. With Blizzard's statements on the pre-patch events, it could be as early as September 4th.

We'll just have to see the way it pans out.

[Deleted]

Again, the issue with this is we have two "always happens" items that contradict each other.

According to the 2 month notice "always happens," Sept. 25th is the earliest possible release.

According to the "flow of pre-patch" "always happens," We should see it at latest Sept. 18th. With Blizzard's statements on the pre-patch events, it could be as early as September 4th.

We'll just have to see the way it pans out.

I agree with you....and i still hope that they break their 60 days pattern since there are lots of others signs which point to an earlier release. But, on the other hand, i have to admit that i really do not see the reason for Blizz to announce it let's say 1 month before rather then 2. They want to make an hype spike by surprising their customers? BLizz do not need that, we are hyped enough..P They want to take away attention from GW2? Could be, but they would reach that goal even if they announce it today.
As long as i don't see a good marketing reason, i won't 100% believe to the possibility of a <60 day window.. Prove me wrong guys, plz prove me wrong!!!!! :P

[xanzul]

This thread = 71 pages of masturbation, I guess if we all tell each other an August release is still realistic then it'll come true!

Who is saying anything about an August release now? You might want to read the thread you are complaining about.

[brothernads]

Another tidbit...according to Zarhym, important things have been achieved in the Mists development timeline:



https://twitter.com/CM_Zarhym/status/227644172167938048

[Synstir]

Despite all arguments which sound very logical.... there is also the aspect of waiting and anticipating tooooooo long.

Don't forget that a lot of people are getting bored with DS and a lot of players are waiting for news.. any news.
We can hold on our excitement for so long only.
If Blizzard waits too long to surprise us with a release date..... well.. it could also mean that from some point forward we won't be interested in a release date or that we will be less excited about it.

creating a hype needs good timing also.

just keeping all sorts of political reasons in mind, like r.d. of other games or when it will sell the best or whatever, only goes as long players can keep their patience. But patience has an expire-date also.

people are anticipating on a release date.. they dig up all sorts of reasons, arguments, facts about past releases and stuff... only because the game itself is getting less engaging and people are bored. Blizzard should also keep this in mind.... we are humans and not programmed characters of WOW; we can loose interest and patience if we are bored too long.

I'm going by this now: They don't announce it because they don't know exactly when they will release yet.

At start I was expecting a late june/early july release. Since they missed that I am expecting a Nov/Dec release.
i don't have any fancy arguments for this, just one: This was the period they released previous ones in, so this will be the same.
My idea is just that they failed to release it earlier...... because of their old schedule and so it will be on schedule, not the player-schedule but the Blizzard-schedule.

it is amazing cause they I assume they started working on this since or even before release of cata. How they still could mess up their plan for an earlier release, beats me.

Who where the ones going: Never ever an icc-like (1 year) raid again?
I think even Blizzard said this..... so mathematical one can argue that 10/11 months are less than 1 year..... but people are not always mathematical about everything, we do have emotions and it could be that the fact that DS is shorter than icc, 10 months will feel like 1 year.
And icc got a filler somewhere.... ds is just ds, nothing else.

But I know, that whenever people want to defend something and it is really hard to do so, people fall back on mathematics, so 10 or 11 months will not be the same as a year.

[goombatommy]

Despite all arguments which sound very logical.... there is also the aspect of waiting and anticipating tooooooo long.

Don't forget that a lot of people are getting bored with DS and a lot of players are waiting for news.. any news.
We can hold on our excitement for so long only.
If Blizzard waits too long to surprise us with a release date..... well.. it could also mean that from some point forward we won't be interested in a release date or that we will be less excited about it.

creating a hype needs good timing also.

just keeping all sorts of political reasons in mind, like r.d. of other games or when it will sell the best or whatever, only goes as long players can keep their patience. But patience has an expire-date also.

people are anticipating on a release date.. they dig up all sorts of reasons, arguments, facts about past releases and stuff... only because the game itself is getting less engaging and people are bored. Blizzard should also keep this in mind.... we are humans and not programmed characters of WOW; we can loose interest and patience if we are bored too long.

I'm going by this now: They don't announce it because they don't know exactly when they will release yet.

At start I was expecting a late june/early july release. Since they missed that I am expecting a Nov/Dec release.
i don't have any fancy arguments for this, just one: This was the period they released previous ones in, so this will be the same.
My idea is just that they failed to release it earlier...... because of their old schedule and so it will be on schedule, not the player-schedule but the Blizzard-schedule.

it is amazing cause they I assume they started working on this since or even before release of cata. How they still could mess up their plan for an earlier release, beats me.

Who where the ones going: Never ever an icc-like (1 year) raid again?
I think even Blizzard said this..... so mathematical one can argue that 10/11 months are less than 1 year..... but people are not always mathematical about everything, we do have emotions and it could be that the fact that DS is shorter than icc, 10 months will feel like 1 year.
And icc got a filler somewhere.... ds is just ds, nothing else.

But I know, that whenever people want to defend something and it is really hard to do so, people fall back on mathematics, so 10 or 11 months will not be the same as a year.

I think the thing that gets me to the most, is that people rely too much on patterns. Because Blizzard did this twice in a row with previous expansions, that they're going to do an identical repeat with this one. Yea, sure we can speculate and hope - but at the end of the day Blizzard is a business. And the objective of a business is to make money and profit. It could have been purely coincidental of them following the same scheme the previous x-pac's, but that was at a time when WoW peaked in terms of population.

WoW's population is slowly bleeding, the players are hungry looking for new content and I'm sure Blizzard is willing to bend the "rules" little bit.

[Synstir]

Well as any company they will have an schedule.... as this is what they do. Wow is their major-prd, so it is just good practise to have a schedule for it. I am not going by what they did previously with announcements, releases etc.. I'm just simply looking at Blizzard as company and seeing them making another xpac to their main source of income. This is why I think that how they tried to release this earlier, the processes in-company where just too tight and huge to bend them.

They are not repeating, that we can see clearly at this point. I am not talking about repeating... I am talking about refreshing their main-product. They must have some schedule for that; it is too important to not have any schedule.

[trasker712]

This will be a Q4 release, don't expect it in Q3 they will finalize development unless something drastic happens... October - Nov release I am predicting. They have a lot of internal polishing to do before we see it. Plus any events will take a month. I'm sure everyone is dying to stop face rolling deathwing but Blizzard is anything but hasty.

Any release after oct is shear stupidity. I still say Sept 18th.

[Synstir]

Do you guys think that the news of selling Act-Blizz will have influence on release date?
I haven't seen anyone taking that into account yet.

BTW i also think Q4.

[goombatommy]

Do you guys think that the news of selling Act-Blizz will have influence on release date?
I haven't seen anyone taking that into account yet.

BTW i also think Q4.

I'm pretty sure that the deal broke and didn't happen last I heard. Could be wrong though.

[Synstir]

There must be others who wants to buy it?
it is an interesting thing to buy....... so, maybe they're keeping MoP as something to make it more interesting for buyers?????????
As it will bring in a lot of money? It is a nice feature to have as an incentive, it seems to me though.
So it is not unthinkable that that is a reason why it is not announced yet?

[r3d3mpt10n]

i want it around the 13-14 of september.. since ive taken 2 weeks off then, which would give me alot of gametime on it

[brothernads]

Despite all arguments which sound very logical.... there is also the aspect of waiting and anticipating tooooooo long.
Don't forget that a lot of people are getting bored with DS and a lot of players are waiting for news.. any news.
We can hold on our excitement for so long only.
If Blizzard waits too long to surprise us with a release date..... well.. it could also mean that from some point forward we won't be interested in a release date or that we will be less excited about it.

This is a really good point. The act of anticipating something does take a certain level of effort and energy. Blizzard can only hope to sustain that for so long. As the days drip by without a definitive release date, people get tired of waiting and wondering. It doesn't help them to drag things out, even if the plan is for a surprise announcement and shortened time to release. I think almost everyone is pointing to the cinematic reveal as the next big signpost in the Mists release watch. If we don't hear anything before then - and, however unlikely, if we don't hear anything at Gamescom - then I think we'll see a bigger exodus from the game.

I'm going by this now: They don't announce it because they don't know exactly when they will release yet.

At this point, I think they definitely have a release window (e.g., a set of 2-3 dates), if not an actual release date. The fact that we’ve seen the official box art and upgrade options on battle.net suggests they are preparing the ordering systems for use. Even if it ends up being in October or November, I think they must already have a pretty good idea of when the game will be released.

At start I was expecting a late june/early july release. Since they missed that I am expecting a Nov/Dec release.
i don't have any fancy arguments for this, just one: This was the period they released previous ones in, so this will be the same.
My idea is just that they failed to release it earlier...... because of their old schedule and so it will be on schedule, not the player-schedule but the Blizzard-schedule.

I think this beta cycle has shown us that we shouldn’t entirely rely on what they’ve done in the past as a predictor of what will happen this time. There is a long list of events and facts that suggest a Sept/Oct release. Waiting until Nov/Dec would mean that a large chunk of the Annual Passes will be expired. If Mists fails to impress, there would be nothing to stop some of those players from unsubbing and not coming back.
It makes more sense to release in the next few months (before the APs expire) so that people will be more apt to pay for another year of the game. With all of the freshness and excitement that comes with an expansion release, I think more people would be inclined to renew their AP if they have a new continent of content to explore. If they’re still running Dragon Soul and Mists is not yet released, there would be minimal incentive to renew.

[Synstir]

As all AP holders got a beta inv (not all of them used it though) it is known to them if they wanna play MoP or not; more so than all people who are not in beta. I think that the people who are not in Beta, will have a larger urge to buy MoP, as they don't know if they will like it or not.
The beta-players know already if they will buy it or not....... so personally I think that waiting for AP to expire, is not relevant.

I don't even think that the release of an xpac is the right time for an AP, as most players will play the game, everything is new.
AP sounds logical as the last raid is released, cause then there will be no new content, so that is the time you want players keep paying.

[xanzul]

I'm pretty sure that the deal broke and didn't happen last I heard. Could be wrong though.

There was no deal. Vivendi has been in talks with numerous companies but no deal has been struck with any of them.

[brothernads]

As all AP holders got a beta inv (not all of them used it though) it is known to them if they wanna play MoP or not; more so than all people who are not in beta. I think that the people who are not in Beta, will have a larger urge to buy MoP, as they don't know if they will like it or not.
The beta-players know already if they will buy it or not....... so personally I think that waiting for AP to expire, is not relevant.

I don't even think that the release of an xpac is the right time for an AP, as most players will play the game, everything is new.
AP sounds logical as the last raid is released, cause then there will be no new content, so that is the time you want players keep paying.

Very true - your arguments make a lot of sense.

The only issue with not having people signed up for an AP is the risk that they can unsub at any time. As we saw during Cataclysm's life cycle, the sub numbers steadily declined despite content patches. At the beginning of Cataclysm, WoW had about 12m subs. When patch 4.1 was released, the number was down to about 11.4m. When patch 4.2 released, the number was still falling to 11.1m. When patch 4.3 released, the number went down again, to 10.2m. As of the last report, it had held steady at that number - presumably in part due to the AP. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it fall further on the earnings call next week.

So despite steadily releasing new content, the subs kept declining. Many people point to Cataclysm as uninspired and unengaging content. Maybe Mists will wash the bad taste of Cata out of our mouths - but, at the end of the day, it's still the same game. The core playstyle hasn't changed. People who were unsatisfied during Cata probably won't be completely reinvigorated with Mists.

Sure, the sub numbers will probably pop back up during the quarter when Mists is released. But, the days of sub numbers steadily increasing or maintaining a consistent level (without devices like the AP) are probably over.

[Bristae]

Very true - your arguments make a lot of sense.

The only issue with not having people signed up for an AP is the risk that they can unsub at any time. As we saw during Cataclysm's life cycle, the sub numbers steadily declined despite content patches. At the beginning of Cataclysm, WoW had about 12m subs. When patch 4.1 was released, the number was down to about 11.4m. When patch 4.2 released, the number was still falling to 11.1m. When patch 4.3 released, the number went down again, to 10.2m. As of the last report, it had held steady at that number - presumably in part due to the AP. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it fall further on the earnings call next week.

So despite steadily releasing new content, the subs kept declining. Many people point to Cataclysm as uninspired and unengaging content. Maybe Mists will wash the bad taste of Cata out of our mouths - but, at the end of the day, it's still the same game. The core playstyle hasn't changed. People who were unsatisfied during Cata probably won't be completely reinvigorated with Mists.

Sure, the sub numbers will probably pop back up during the quarter when Mists is released. But, the days of sub numbers steadily increasing or maintaining a consistent level (without devices like the AP) are probably over.

Big part of the problem is that the rampant cancer of the tready Blizzard hatred. I hope I don't get flamed for this because it's going to be harsh to some. but it's a harsh reality. Most people are lemmings. Cattle that go with the herd, lead by a bull or two that dictate the flow. Somewhere a "bull or two" decided that they had a chip on their shoulder with Blizzard and started hammering out critiques. Now not that those critiques were NOT valid but they were as massive as they were made out to be either. but as they got louder the lemmings or cattle added to them and grew... The followers followed.... and so on so and so on... That's why now when some of us ask people here, "Why was "XYZ" so bad? or what was wrong with ***?" They can't give straight coherent clear well thought out answers. They are always regurgitated reused canned statements that they may or may not fully understand when probed to explain deeper.

It's that rampant furor that drives the NEED to find the "WoW-Killer" It's that rampant furor that's going to cloud opinions of the people who might come back to try to MoP or might not.. and if they do, the need to be part of the "tready crowd" might be too great, even if they ENJOY MoP, to stay sub'd so they'll public denounce the game as "Terrible as they thought it would be and WoW IS DEAD!" and storm off to be part of the herd, one with the crowd.

Now I'm NOT saying EVERY person who is turned off by WoW is like this above... so PLEASE do not take it as that... PLEASE....

I have a good friend who originally got me into MMORPGs years ago. Not too long before WoW went in Alpha. I started played EQ2 with him at launch. At first I was AGAINST the idea of paying a subscription to play a game... how stupid!!! I paid 50$ for the game and now 15$/mo!!!! WTH!! But I got hooked! I was a fan of Warcraft I, II, and III as well and had the chance to play in WoW Beta. I was hooked. Bought WoW CE at launch and have played ever since. I have another friend of ours that quit WoW because he can't play from his couch with an Xbox 360 controller effectively. O.o Seriously. Man's 35 years old. and he HAS to have a Xbox 360 controller! So people have different reasons to leave. He did say he's come back if Blizzard came up with a way to use like an iPad as a WoW controller with a Computer. that way he could sit on his couch and play on his 100" 1080p projector still. lol.

I know that WoW is NOT for everyone. That is fine. I played Guild Wars 2 over last weekend's beta and well. Graphics were nice and it had some good qualities. But frankly, it wasn't for me. It did NOT capture me in the least. It didn't propel me to WANT to continue to play. I tried all the races and 5 different classes WANTING to be hooked. WANTING to have another game to enjoy... Sorry... It was another Guild Wars 1 to me.