Looks like 5.4 might in fact be Siege

[delus]

In 5.2 Jaina gets the weapon that will be used to break the gates of Org from the thunder king so quite possibly.

[Justignoreme]

Short expansion, 3 raid tiers, let's just hope SoO isn't going to last a bloody year.

[Mister J]

The main assumption that 5.4 won't be the Siege is the timeline. We have a year and a half until the next expansion, roughly. They will announce at Blizzcon and it'll be a 2014 summer..maybe sooner, release. (All estimates, based off previous expansion release schedules).

5.2 will be in March, at the latest.
A 5.1-like-patch will be roughly 2 months later, so lets say end of may for 5.3
3-4 Months development time for the next patch will bring 5.4 around September (This will be right after August Blizzcon or right before October Blizzcon)
We then have 3 months until the end of the year and then at least 3-4 months into 2014. There is no way we'll get a mini-patch to tie us over. There will either be a raid in 5.4 with a set up patch in 5.5, or we'll get a few patches with a few instances.

My bet is a raid between ToT and SoO.

[Beefhammer]

That is exactly what I am thinking also. They have already told us the whole 2 month-4 month thing. My biggest fear about 6.0 is that because they have been putting out 5.1 and 5.2 so fast, they are actually not putting as much resources into the next expansion now as they did in previous expansions. But I think overall, you have it exactly correct with their plans.

You know they have an expansion team building the expansion separately from the live team? Also project leads can multitask and manage both live and expansion development.

[Chickat]

Not one. I used two months to show it'll be late in the month.

Either scenario, we're talking 10-12 months without new content and thereby another DS.

Which reminds me, I have a thread about Garrosh to make.

.... Or it will go like this

5.2 - march
5.3 - may
5.4 - September
5.5 - November-December
6.0 - March-April

What is so wrong with that? That puts them at about an 18 monthish cycle like they want.

[Mawnix]

.... Or it will go like this

5.2 - march
5.3 - may
5.4 - September
5.5 - November-December
6.0 - March-April

What is so wrong with that? That puts them at about an 18 monthish cycle like they want.

I'd be surprised to be honest if that happened, but it's possible.

I don't doubt if 5.4 is Siege then 5.5 will be another Lore patch to wrap things up.

It'd be a very nice touch to things and keep content fresh.

[Deleted]

1. They reduced stat inflation for cata because they saw how out of control they were at the end of wath. 4 tiers would have that again. 2. We've never gone over 100 from dungeon blues to final boss. At this rate we probably will but an addition raid would bring it to like 140. Way too much. A lot of bearing, as I said.

Or they might do like Icecrown, a zone wide debuff that decreases dodge by 20% to bring avoidance down, after that they tune dps requirements after the levels gained in the gear obtained.

[iamthedevil]

If it came out 5.4, this expansion would be over in less than a year. I don't see that happening.

5.3 is planned 10 weeks after 5.2.

[Avikur]

.... Or it will go like this

5.2 - march
5.3 - may
5.4 - September
October - Blizcon - New Expansion announced, released for Beta testing
5.5 - November-December
6.0 - March-April
6.1 - New Expansion - May-June

What is so wrong with that? That puts them at about an 18 monthish cycle like they want.

I'd say this is most likely, they have said they want shorter gaps between expansions, we know they have been working on the next one since before MoP came out so i think with the above timescale they could announce it at blizzcon 2013 in October right after 5.4 and get it out for beta testing straight away.

[Video Games]

Or they might do like Icecrown, a zone wide debuff that decreases dodge by 20% to bring avoidance down, after that they tune dps requirements after the levels gained in the gear obtained.

Or they can just have 3 tiers to avoid having to do that and people bitch about it again.

[Kralljin]

Then it's going to have to be that ToT lasts at least 8 months, or we'll have a year without content again like DS.

And I may not come back after leaving again due to lack of new content.

This could be very true, however i do not see what kind of Raid Blizzard wants to throw out between ToT and SoO.

Obviously they could create one, but raids that have no previous establishment within Lore tend to be a little crappy, thinking of something like Ruby Sanctum, you simply cannot fill an entire raid with stuff people have never heard of, you should give at least something which the playes are familiar with.

Questing also established the Mantid/Klaxxi, but they are pretty much dealt with for now unless I'm forgetting something.

The Mantid would have never been a threat without the Sha of fear corrupting their Empress, the Sha corrupted her into commanding to swarm the Wall a few years to early, the Sha have rarely been directly an direct enemy, mostly they corrupted others.

Also, i think the Mantid empire needs time to rebuild, their palace has been cleared out by us, their new Empress is actually far too young, their Amber trees are sha corrupted or dead and the only healthy tree left got attacked by Horde / Alliance.

[Deleted]

The Mantid would have never been a threat without the Sha of fear corrupting their Empress, the Sha corrupted her into commanding to swarm the Wall a few years earlier, the Sha have rarely been directly an direct enemy, mostly they corrupted others.

While I do think the Mantid only became a threat because of the Sha's influence, the corruption was not the reason for the Mantid to attack the wall. If you either finish the Klaxxi-Questline or collect all Mantid Lorewalker-Objects, you'd know that the Mantid attack the wall every generation (and as the end of the Klaxxi questline reveals, to sort out the weak and only let the strong Mantid remain).

[Alvito]

FIVE tiers? No way.

5.4 can very easily be the final tier, with a 5.5 patch to keep people playing until 6.0. In fact, if they want to give us faster patches and expansions, that is what they should do. Besides, by the time 5.4 arrives, we'll probably have heard the first rumours about the next expansion and Blizzcon 2013 will be around the corner, people will want the new features as soon as possible.

That would only be 3 not 5. Not all the big patches have raid content as we just saw with the last one.

---------- Post added 2013-01-28 at 01:10 AM ----------

.... Or it will go like this

5.2 - march
5.3 - may
5.4 - September
5.5 - November-December
6.0 - March-April

What is so wrong with that? That puts them at about an 18 monthish cycle like they want.

Based off of past testing schedules they would have to start alpha testing for the next expansion now to meet that timeline. Sine we know nothing about it yet that seems highly unlikely.

[Kralljin]

While I do think the Mantid only became a threat because of the Sha's influence, the corruption was not the reason for the Mantid to attack the wall. If you either finish the Klaxxi-Questline or collect all Mantid Lorewalker-Objects, you'd know that the Mantid attack the wall every generation (and as the end of the Klaxxi questline reveals, to sort out the weak and only let the strong Mantid remain).

This is true, however it is stated that the Mantid cycle kicked off a few years too early, usually the Swarm is very predictable since it's not an actual attack on the Pandaren but a rite of passage for the Mantid.

That's why the Klaxxi guys talk about "preserve the cycle" since the Sha corrupted Empress broke the cycle by attacking the Serpent's spine too early.

[Kiea]

What I think is important is that they don't have the huge gap of 10-12months after the last raid tier like they had in Wrath/Cata.

Whether or not they put out the next expo quicker or add an additional tier is up to them, they've seen the numbers of Cata in the end, ToC in Wrath wasn't the greatest, but I think the main problem was you could do it 4 times a week, other than that it was an okay raid, interesting bosses just lacked some scenery.

Next up I will say ICC was the time I had the most fun in the game, it was an amazing raid, good lore, lots of stuff to do in the game. Yes it had a very high item level, but it was mostly because of 10man, 25man and heroics, with 3 different item levels, however I don't care about that, I really enjoyed ICC and don't care if we get inflated stats again, they can always do something like -20% dodge/-5% hit, etc.