Jumping to conclusions: 23rd September

[clevin]

Other than the fact that textures are missing, the majority of those zones is extremely finished, compare to mop, it's day and night difference.

The buggy stuff you describe are probably the rollbacks and server instabilities, which aren't created by the client itself.

You try playing WoW without a server. Go ahead.

In case you're missing the point of that comment - both the server and client need to be stable to ship. It doesn't matter at all if one's stable if the other is crap. Also, textures are easy. The only beta I did, Wrath, had fine textures... but the NPCs had placeholder names and the performance sucked... and much of the world didn't exist yet (Storm Peaks, etc).

Look, Sept 23rd is just the first Tuesday of the fall. Some store person picked that because t hey needed a date to list things under. Or do you really believe some random German guy is the only person outside of Blizzard who knows for sure the ship date and it just happens to be the first Tuesday of fall?

Come on people, reasoning skills. Learn them. Use them.

[Deleted]

Would be really nice.

[Nayaga]

http://wow.mmozone.de/warlords-draen...r-2014-europa/

It's a German article about the game guide release date which generally matches the expansion release date.

BradyGames Guide	BradyGames Release	Blizzard Release
Burning Crusade	16. January 2007	15. January 2007
Wrath of the Lich King	13. November 2008	13. November 2008
Catalcysm	7. December 2010	7. December 2010
Mists of Pandaria	25. September 2012	25. September 2012
Warlords of Draenor	23. September 2014	Unannounced!

As I said "jumping to conclusions" but maybe this is true

I've been playing on Beta and seems to have a long way to go. December seems more likely, just my opinion.

[Deleted]

You try playing WoW without a server. Go ahead.

In case you're missing the point of that comment - both the server and client need to be stable to ship. It doesn't matter at all if one's stable if the other is crap. Also, textures are easy. The only beta I did, Wrath, had fine textures... but the NPCs had placeholder names and the performance sucked... and much of the world didn't exist yet (Storm Peaks, etc).

Of course it needs to be stable, I'm not denying that. But so far the world seems stable, the zones seem stable, but the servers are not.
Then again they are deliberately stress testing tanaan jungle, so a lot of stability issues could just be a result of that.

But I mean mop beta... There were weeks at the start, when you came near someone your client crashed.

When you entered a dungeon, you'd be in a dc loop for an entire week. Not to mention characters vanishing and such.

That all happened in the first few weeks of the mop beta, appeared in the end again, but got fixed a day after.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been playing on Beta and seems to have a long way to go. December seems more likely, just my opinion.

Been playing aswell and I don't really agree. So yeah. I guess you aren't used to much testing are you.

[Steehl]

You know, as awesome as it would to have a September release date, the game is nowhere near that point. Not just based on how buggy the beta is, but where they are in class rotation iterations. They are still actively changing rotations and spells that classes and specs have, which is something that needs to be set in place for proper tuning and balance.

We've done 0 raid tests, only tested 3 zones, have tested 2 dungeons, haven't even glanced at any end game content, and you still think a little under 3 months till it's out? I would fear for this game if that were to happen.

[Haven2011]

Of course it needs to be stable, I'm not denying that. But so far the world seems stable, the zones seem stable, but the servers are not.
Then again they are deliberately stress testing tanaan jungle, so a lot of stability issues could just be a result of that.

But I mean mop beta... There were weeks at the start, when you came near someone your client crashed.

When you entered a dungeon, you'd be in a dc loop for an entire week. Not to mention characters vanishing and such.

That all happened in the first few weeks of the mop beta, appeared in the end again, but got fixed a day after.

- - - Updated - - -

Been playing aswell and I don't really agree. So yeah. I guess you aren't used to much testing are you.

The people I talk to say it's worse than mist due constant dcing

[thelightthatstrays]

To put it short, nobody cares about the normal reset week,

And yet, that still would not make the week disappear.

[apelsinjuice]

The people I talk to say it's worse than mist due constant dcing

well, constant dcing got fixed yesterday.

"After several days of troubleshooting and collaboration between engineering and design, we now have stable beta servers! Thanks everyone!"

[Deleted]

The people I talk to say it's worse than mist due constant dcing

I think they are slightly exaggerating then. It wasn't really constant dcing.

And in mop literally every build for weeks in a row made clients crash for various reasons, so you couldn't even test.

Also they are stress testing in tanaan jungle... generally stress testing means mass dcing people and expecting them to log back in all at once and see how the server or the zone handles that kind of instant volume, because that's how it will be for the first week of launch. Doesn't help that EU was getting a lot of ddos attacks on certain isps or services, which probably made it worse.

So far I haven't dcd once today and been playing for 4 hours ish. Think the servers went down a few times though.

[Baelroc]

You know, as awesome as it would to have a September release date, the game is nowhere near that point. Not just based on how buggy the beta is, but where they are in class rotation iterations. They are still actively changing rotations and spells that classes and specs have, which is something that needs to be set in place for proper tuning and balance.

We've done 0 raid tests, only tested 3 zones, have tested 2 dungeons, haven't even glanced at any end game content, and you still think a little under 3 months till it's out? I would fear for this game if that were to happen.

This is par for the course if you are familiar with Blizzard's beta testing. Every other expansion I have beta tested for them has been the same way. They get a lot done in a short amount of time leading up to release.

[Steehl]

Been playing aswell and I don't really agree. So yeah. I guess you aren't used to much testing are you.

I've tested every form of WoW in its beta. Unless we've been given an early alpha version to play with and they have a much, much further advanced beta to release to us soon, there's absolutely no way the game would be ready by September. Now the leveling content would probably be fine, but that's not what I'm worried about.

We still haven't gotten to test any of the real level 100 content, which is where the bulk of the game matters to most of the players. With a new raid size for Mythic, and flexible sizes for LFR, Normal, and Heroic, there absolutely has to be testing done on this. Blizzard needs to see how heroic guilds will handle the changes. Blizzard has admitted on many situations that players will discover sneaky ways to do encounters that they never imagined, like Dark Simming Wrack on Sinestra or completely ignoring a phase on Ra-Den, two bosses that were NEVER tested by players before they were released. Another example would be at the start of SoO where heroic guilds were killing Norushen by stacking and burning, never sending anyone down because you could beat the enrage timer by dropping a healer or two for dps and having a couple of shadow priests run Divine Star. That was even suggested multiple times during testing and Blizzard ignored it, only to later change it on live after they saw it was actually possible. And that was all on sizes and difficulties we've had around for a while.

Mythic will be a whole new beast. Raid comp balance will be huge. Players will find ways to min/max the number of healers needed that Blizz may not forsee. It all requires testing. To think otherwise would be silly, and to think they'll have enough testing done in the less than three months to the alleged release is almost as silly.

[luduns]

seems a bit earlier if 23rd sept.
net enough tests on beta and incoming ptr

[Redasurc]

With how Blizzard is cutting back on features for WoD I wouldnt be surprised it came out at 20 Dec 2014 as announced when you buy the game at battle.net.

Lets be realistic, Printing and shipping after release goes gold is probably 1 month alone. Considering game is still in early beta I hardly see the september release.

[Haven2011]

I've tested every form of WoW in its beta. Unless we've been given an early alpha version to play with and they have a much, much further advanced beta to release to us soon, there's absolutely no way the game would be ready by September. Now the leveling content would probably be fine, but that's not what I'm worried about.

We still haven't gotten to test any of the real level 100 content, which is where the bulk of the game matters to most of the players. With a new raid size for Mythic, and flexible sizes for LFR, Normal, and Heroic, there absolutely has to be testing done on this. Blizzard needs to see how heroic guilds will handle the changes. Blizzard has admitted on many situations that players will discover sneaky ways to do encounters that they never imagined, like Dark Simming Wrack on Sinestra or completely ignoring a phase on Ra-Den, two bosses that were NEVER tested by players before they were released. Another example would be at the start of SoO where heroic guilds were killing Norushen by stacking and burning, never sending anyone down because you could beat the enrage timer by dropping a healer or two for dps and having a couple of shadow priests run Divine Star. That was even suggested multiple times during testing and Blizzard ignored it, only to later change it on live after they saw it was actually possible. And that was all on sizes and difficulties we've had around for a while.

Mythic will be a whole new beast. Raid comp balance will be huge. Players will find ways to min/max the number of healers needed that Blizz may not forsee. It all requires testing. To think otherwise would be silly, and to think they'll have enough testing done in the less than three months to the alleged release is almost as silly.

No one seems to understand that raids take up 4 months to test and there test a lot new stuff

[Advo]

This beta needs at least another month to test 90-100 content, and then at least two months for endgame content. September will not happen.

[Deleted]

I've tested every form of WoW in its beta. Unless we've been given an early alpha version to play with and they have a much, much further advanced beta to release to us soon, there's absolutely no way the game would be ready by September. Now the leveling content would probably be fine, but that's not what I'm worried about.

We still haven't gotten to test any of the real level 100 content, which is where the bulk of the game matters to most of the players. With a new raid size for Mythic, and flexible sizes for LFR, Normal, and Heroic, there absolutely has to be testing done on this. Blizzard needs to see how heroic guilds will handle the changes. Blizzard has admitted on many situations that players will discover sneaky ways to do encounters that they never imagined, like Dark Simming Wrack on Sinestra or completely ignoring a phase on Ra-Den, two bosses that were NEVER tested by players before they were released. Another example would be at the start of SoO where heroic guilds were killing Norushen by stacking and burning, never sending anyone down because you could beat the enrage timer by dropping a healer or two for dps and having a couple of shadow priests run Divine Star. That was even suggested multiple times during testing and Blizzard ignored it, only to later change it on live after they saw it was actually possible. And that was all on sizes and difficulties we've had around for a while.

Mythic will be a whole new beast. Raid comp balance will be huge. Players will find ways to min/max the number of healers needed that Blizz may not forsee. It all requires testing. To think otherwise would be silly, and to think they'll have enough testing done in the less than three months to the alleged release is almost as silly.

In the past blizzard used to do raids after leveling content, but with the scaling tech they will do it during the leveling content.

Also no more 10 heroic and normal scaling, which generally took tripple the time of 25 heroic/normal testing and flex, lfr combined.

They can cut a few weeks of that, easily. I don't see max content testing being much longer than 5-6 weeks.

Also the creative process is generally the longest in the beta's of blizzard, in mop half the zones were blank. at start, now they are all finished.
(albeit they are missing a few textures here and there, but there hasn't been any part of the continent that's completely blank).

About the exploits or clever use of mechanics, they read forums, 100% guaranteed someone will post it there, and they'll fix it shortly.

Why you think they delay raids by a week? They can tune an additional week and make sure all these bugs are fixed before it opens up.

[schwarzkopf]

This beta needs at least another month to test 90-100 content, and then at least two months for endgame content. September will not happen.

Unless they release WoD - but don't release the new continent/levelling for 2 months. There is big difference between this pre-patch and all previous ones.

[Sinndra]

This beta needs at least another month to test 90-100 content, and then at least two months for endgame content. September will not happen.

those two things.. can and have been tested simultaneously in past beta's no reason to suspect they cant test them that way this time either. i swear i dont know where you people come up with this crap. they test stuff at the same time, in iterative builds. they have premades options for a reason, so that they can skip the leveling stuff and get people into endgame content right away if and when necessary.

[Deleted]

The whole point about this thread is:

There is a publisher who has set a date for their strategy guide.
This publisher has dates set for previous strategy guides set for the same (or extremely close) dates to the release of the related expansion.
This MAY indicate that they have insider information. (Which may be true as this same publisher was advertised on the Battle.net site for their MoP strategy guide shortly after release.)

HOWEVER, For it to MEAN anything we need one specific piece of information:
Did these dates get put up BEFORE or AFTER the release of the respective expansion? And if so, how long before?

If the MoP strategy guide had a date of September 25th by late June/early July, we have a pattern.
If the Cata strategy guide had a date of December 7th by September, we have a pattern.
If the Wrath strategy guide had a date of November 13th by August, we have a pattern.
etc. etc.

If ANY of these are untrue, they could have been lucky guesses. If these dates were added AFTER the announcement of the expansion's release date, then obviously they aren't secret release dates. But if all are true and the release dates weren't available, we may have a lead.

Otherwise it's just hopeful thinking.

Yeah this is my opinion aswell. I think the difference is this time, the new expansion can be buy since march and we know, it will be available sometime in fall. That is why needed a placeholder time.

[chase123]

Dont get your hopes you. Blizz recent track record with releasing expansions is terrible.