BFA officially overstays its welcome in about two weeks.

[Omedon]

Yes, I know, it could easily be argued that BFA has long since overstayed its welcome, but since adopting its "near quarterly" cadence with legion, WoW has set a loose precedent of wanting something newish for players to look forward to every three months, raid tiers (or "seasons") lasting about six months, and expansions pretty close to two years.

And just over one week after the shadowlands stream set for this coming thursday, BFA's pre-patch has its two year anniversary. As of that point, every week without something new (like say, the pre patch) will be "felt" in the cadence established with Legion and generally kept in BFA.

I think it's a reasonable expectation that the pre-patch of shadowlands, if not the full-on pre-patch event, will have the longest run of any of its kind in a long time.

Think about it, if you count the various monthly buffs of XP, rep and now the timewalking event as the Q2 "events," and with Timewalking expiring in July, they currently have this long, dry Q3 of "literally nothing" between us and Shadowlands. I don't think that holds. I think we get a LONG pre-patch period, and a potentially extended pre-patch event. The only thing preventing myself personally from flat out predicting an early pre patch event is it's made no appearance on any testing servers that I'm aware of. But as Blizzard have shown, the "testing" they let us do is largely stress testing and marketing access, and the pre-patch event doesn't need months to bake on the PTR. The stream on thursday could very well be "aaand here we go, prepatch event on the PTR next week, patch drops early august, event shortly after!"

Also, the real test of the only thing really needing extensive testing that would come with the pre-patch, that being the leveling squish, would benefit from a longer lead-up to the expansion... because it's going to be broken, and it's going to get nip and tucked over the course of weeks once it's live. Everything pre-patch-relevant has been "tested" out by players for months now. They don't need our feedback on anything else coming with the pre-patch, aside from the adaptive mileage of the leveling squish on live servers.

So yeah, I thought that two year anniversary was worth pointing out, and how it fits with the cadence we've come to expect as of legion, and continued in BFA. This actual "drought" has been handled rather relatively well, blind hate aside, and as bad as BFA has been narratively, at least they seemingly got the expansion tail right... IF they don't let Q3 be just a bunch of "pray for beta invite."

[Video Games]

Cloak isnt even finished till september. Why do you all keep forgetting this? Expect it mid october at the earliest

[Omedon]

Cloak isnt even finished till september. Why do you all keep forgetting this? Expect it mid october at the earliest

There's nothing saying that the pre-patch can't come with the cloak still growing, if the event is staggered, which I presume will "expire" all of our rental powers from BFA, cloak included.

[Nightstalker]

Anyone that has been following release schedules and announcements for the last decade should not be expecting a 9.0 pre patch within the next 2.5-3 months.

[LordVargK]

Cloak isnt even finished till september. Why do you all keep forgetting this? Expect it mid october at the earliest

BfA release was 14. August 2018. So for a two year expansion cycle prepatch must hit in two weeks.

BfA overstayed it's welcome if you follow Blizzard's patch plan (that only worked in Legion, but still).

[Video Games]

There's nothing saying that the pre-patch can't come with the cloak still growing, if the event is staggered, which I presume will "expire" all of our rental powers from BFA, cloak included.

Literally no precedent for this with the wod ring and legion trinkets. There is no “b-b-bUt maybe this time though!” Mid october at the earliest.

[Video Games]

BfA release was 14. August 18. So for a two year expansion cycle prepatch must hit in two weeks.

BfA overstayed it's welcome if you follow Blizzard's patch plan (that only worked in Legion, but still).

Ha ha, expecting blizzard to hold to their goals. Sl is still in alpha after 3 months when alpha is usually 1

[LordVargK]

Ha ha, expecting blizzard to hold to their goals

Yeah, silly me

[Demsi]

Ha ha, expecting blizzard to hold to their goals. Sl is still in alpha after 3 months when alpha is usually 1

We saw what happened when alpha/beta testing is too short, the result was BFA.

[Omedon]

Mid october at the earliest.

Sadly I cannot see you being absolutely wrong, but at the same time I have a hard time envisioning them coming out with a presentation in June (when originally scheduled) to show their faces and say "nothing for 4 months."

I could be dead wrong, but that just doesn't feel like something they should be ok with in this day and age.

[Video Games]

Sadly I cannot see you being absolutely wrong, but at the same time I have a hard time envisioning them coming out with a presentation in June (when originally scheduled) to show their faces and say "nothing for 4 months."

I could be dead wrong, but that just doesn't feel like something they should be ok with in this day and age.

We’ve gone 14 months with nothing twice.

[Kyphael]

Still enjoying BfA. It's in my top 3.

Wrath
Legion
BfA

[Omedon]

We’ve gone 14 months with nothing twice.

Again, you're not wrong, but it just feels like WoW had soundly put itself past those days. Part of Legion's pitch was the "one more chance" of acknowledging that those droughts were not working as intended.

There's nothing wrong in your pragmatic pessimism, but man, it just feels so counter to their intent.

[Video Games]

Again, you're not wrong, but it just feels like WoW had soundly put itself past those days. Part of Legion's pitch was the "one more chance" of acknwoledging that those droughts were not working as intended.

There's nothing wrong in your pragmatic pessimism, but man, it just feels so counter to their intent.

Their intent has gone wrong almost every time. Remember when they said they wanted yearly expansions? They were also affected by corona. Id rather they take their time anyway

[Laqweeta]

We saw what happened when alpha/beta testing is too short, the result was BFA.

My favorite part was when they ignored over 4,500 replies on the feedback forum ^-^

[Demsi]

My favorite part was when they ignored over 4,500 replies on the feedback forum ^-^

There wasn't really any time to implement any of the suggested feedback anyway, they should've held back the launch.

[klaps_05]

Cloak is capped in September.
3 months for realm connections from now is October.
Prepatch with Halloween in October.
Launch date the Tuesday right after the Day of the Dead.

Seems like both BFA and Shadowlands are right on time.

Waaah, drought/i have nothing to do from the miniscule content i deem worthy/imbalanced/etc.
Waah, alpha/beta was too short now there are bugs and game is shit.

Good things take time.

[Verdugo]

There wasn't really any time to implement any of the suggested feedback anyway, they should've held back the launch.

There was no will to change anything. Ion and his cronies decided for something and by god it will be that way. Only when numbers were final did they finaly decide to change something.

[Demsi]

There was no will to change anything. Ion and his cronies decided for something and by god it will be that way. Only when numbers were final did they finaly decide to change something.

They were set on launching the game at it's intended date no matter what, so there was nothing that could've been done regardless, also you're delusional if you think the devs weren't aware of the flaws that the game had/were going to have

[Laqweeta]

There was no will to change anything. Ion and his cronies decided for something and by god it will be that way. Only when numbers were final did they finaly decide to change something.

All I can say is shareholders/investors first, player base second. It's pretty evident.