The thing about the cross-faction instances dragon leak the other day gave me pause, but in general I've actually been losing confidence in a dragon expansion being next. Shadowlands has a few subplots not directly related to Zovaal's plan, but none of them relate to the dragons. We have a dragon in Exile's Reach and Ysera in Ardenwealed, but the former is resolved in its own zone and the latter is tied to the Winter Queen and Tyrande's arc, not its own thing.
I really am hoping for a lower stakes, Azeroth-centric expansion, ideally with a world revamp to just mostly bum around in old zones helping farmers remove gophers and whatnot.
Mostly though I am hoping we are returning to the Legion style of patch cadence. Not just the clockwork regularity of a new patch every 11 weeks, but also how the raids didnt open before the .5 patch, which meant we had a smoother release of content where the raid came once you were bored with the zones, and a new zone came when you were bored with the raid, and so on and so on.
Releasing both the zone and raid all at once just means you have two or three weeks of loads of content, then 4-5 months of very little new.
All that being said. Shadowlands has been hit so bad by the droughts that I think even a shitty expansion like BfA would be considered great if it at least managed a full 3 major patches and 4 minor patches spread mostly evenly over the expansions lifecycle.
The world revamp dream will never die!
#1 Hype-Thread Shitposter - Overlord of the Hypethread
It's funny you say that. So many people are saying, "10.0 will come out by the fall. 10.0 will be out by the end of the year. 10.0 won't release until early 2023, or summer 2023, or 2024." At the end of the day, we just don't know how far along they are in development. For all we know, they've been working their butts off and have a decent amount done, or could be the complete opposite.
Personally, I could care less how much they show us at this point. I wouldn't even mind a "teaser" and nothing more until they have more to show. Just tell us it's coming, give us something to look forward to, and most of all, it would create A TON of speculation/HYPE through the forums, twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Reddit, etc. 10.0 info will be on fire!
Yes I agree that it will be gradually phased, however if what I mentioned is the case the gradual releases could fit into a smaller window and not wait for weeks for development to finish on something to release it. 2-3 weeks of testing for 1 leveling zone seems too much, increase the number of beta access and have the leveling zones release over a 1-1.5 month period etc.
#1 Hype-Thread Shitposter - Overlord of the Hypethread
As anxious as I am for new content, somehow I was able to contain myself during SL beta and for all the PTR patches in SL. I knew almost nothing (lore wise) that was happening in SL before it launched (even though many people tested the beta and made videos/talked about them online) AND I still have almost no info on 9.2 in terms of the story. Feels good when I finally do all the content when it's new/fresh; however, it sucks having to wait, too!
The only argument for 10.0 not being too far back in development is that they probably cut the mid patch for SL for that.
And as Ion teased he can't discuss possible future SL patches before 9.2 story concludes hints that if there will be a third patch it will probably be a bridge using 10.0 stuff.
As for the alpha beta cycle being 7-8 months, theoretically a late march start of testing could still mean a late 2022 expansion.
Or maybe a longer prepatch. Release it before holiday season and end it after, lasting 1.5-2 months
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True, tho there were alphas with staggered content releases before betas
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I usually do this for movies (watch no trailers or read articles before hand)... however for WoW I just like the speculation and cant get myself to do taht
#1 Hype-Thread Shitposter - Overlord of the Hypethread
True. But there's alpha too. Also: Both of these were announced in the november of the previous year. Including those "What's next panels" showing a lot of stuff. If we take BFA's cycle (the shortest of the two). That would put us at a launch of 10.0 around december 2022, but 10.0 would be announced today. Mind you a less than 4 month beta is the shortest we have ever seen (I think). I just don't see them launching it this year.
10.0 releasing this year would presuppose a very quick turnover from announcement to Alpha opening.
It's not impossible, but it would be something that has not really happened before.
I could easily see a situation where Blizzard is on track for the Alpha, but decided to wait announcing 10.0 regardless.
The world revamp dream will never die!