Is this leak to be trusted?

[Calabera]

I am hopeful the pre-patch date is correct.

[Lochton]

I am hopeful the pre-patch date is correct.

Would love it but a Dragonflight release at end of November feels a bit weird. Would've thought mid-December, with raid tiers starting in January.

[Voidwielder]

I do not like the idea of M+ing and raiding in December. Unless they draw out the start of DF S1 to January 3rd/4th.

[Linkedblade]

I do not like the idea of M+ing and raiding in December. Unless they draw out the start of DF S1 to January 3rd/4th.

A bit over a month to let people level and what not. How long after the launch of an expansion do they open the raids?

[Calabera]

Would love it but a Dragonflight release at end of November feels a bit weird. Would've thought mid-December, with raid tiers starting in January.

Would not be the first time an expansion is released in that timeframe.
@Void, they would probably start raids in January and let people gear up and get ready for M+ and raids.

[Sentynel]

A bit over a month to let people level and what not. How long after the launch of an expansion do they open the raids?

It's usually 1 or 2 weeks.

[Khaza-R]

I suppose it could be. But isn't Activision-Blizzard still not invited by The Game Awards?

[Pregnant Orc]

Seems reasonable but any decent fake leak also looks reasonable.
It might be fake but hit the dates anyway with a mix of good assumptions and luck.
What it comes down to with any leak is if the source has had a good track record, sadly we don't have one so I'd not put much stock into this.

[Magistrate]

Is there a source for this?

[Xauro]

yes 30 aug.
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/news/t...gust-30-328367

[Venara]

Would love it but a Dragonflight release at end of November feels a bit weird. Would've thought mid-December, with raid tiers starting in January.

It's not the first expansion to have a November release, doesn't seem that weird at all. Shadowlands also released end of November in 2020 (though one week earlier than what is listed on this leak) and raids launched the second week of December.

If this release date is accurate and you assume they would use a similar raid release schedule to SL, this would push a raid release into mid-December. Given it's the holiday season, I could well see the devs pushing the raids to beginning of January in that scenario.

[Biglog]

That would be about right for dates. The catch is that is easy to photoshop, and literally every expansion release people have put out photoshopped stuff like this that turns out to be false more often than not. But, even without any inside knowledge or trusting this leak a late Oct/early Nov pre-patch would be needed in order to meet the scheduled release date of this calendar year. So it's not difficult to work back to that rough date. Companies know very well how spending drops off after Christmas and they do everything they can to get product out before Dec 25th. It at least passes the sniff test.

The million dollar question has always been a potential delay since the release date has always seemed a little aggressive. But it's slowly firming up to stay on track for late 22.

[exochaft]

Would love it but a Dragonflight release at end of November feels a bit weird. Would've thought mid-December, with raid tiers starting in January.

This isn't out of the ordinary for Blizz to launch in this time window. Heck, Shadowlands even roughly launched at this time... granted it wasn't the original launch date announced, but it also had more testing time. If anything, I'd be inclined to believe the internal release date has changed over time due to the game's updates windows this expansion and axing content that Blizz still claims was 'all planned'. This release date would be almost exactly 2 years since Shadowlands final release date occurred, I wouldn't be shocked if this release date was decided with that in mind.

The irony is that I agree that this release window is pretty bad from a progression standpoint, and Blizz thought the exact same thing about this exact release window... in the past. No one likes progression raids during Christmas/New Years break because it wrecks havoc with rosters, and it probably hurts RWF-oriented guilds the most. Best Blizz can likely do is delay the raid release as long as possible, maybe even a couple weeks to "allow for leveling without the pressure of progression," or whatever they stated the last time they did such a thing. While that's certainly a concern, the reason it's a concern at all is due to the nature of the game's design philosophy, but that's another discussion.

Short version: I could easily see this as legit.

[Hctaz]

You sound just like the guys that swore it would be a 2023 release.

Yes, because he probably also thinks that 2022 is too early to release the expansion.

I mean, they're shooting for November or December, and we don't even have Demon Hunter or Monk Talents on the ALPHA? It's not even in BETA yet. Normally the beta for these expansions goes on for a few months. I mean, they're still making dramatic updates to class design at this stage in the Alpha.

Not only that, but Wrath Classic comes out in September. I would have figured they'd have wanted to stagger that a bit more. But oh well.

[saixilein]

I really dont care about first raidwerks happening before/around christmas. So i hope this is true and we can start raiding early december

[Biomega]

I really dont care about first raidwerks happening before/around christmas. So i hope this is true and we can start raiding early december

It would be pretty much identical to Castel Nathria IF they open the raid immediately the next week. On SL release they had two weeks between launch and normal mode raid, and the raid race still cut it dangerously close to Christmas.

So DF would need to not only release the raid 1 week earlier, but also make DAMN SURE that the race doesn't go even a day or two over time or people will be majorly pissed (not to mention that WoW devs working on Xmas to fix inevitable final-encounter bugs is a big problem, too).

They'd have to either shift launch forward by at least a week, or push the entire raid tier/season1 to the new year, which means a whole MONTH (more likely 5 weeks) without raids or M+.

Or I guess it could be an Emerald Nightmare tier, and the raid just falls over in two days.

Yikes either way.

[Soisoisoi]

I had Nov 28th as my guess as it fits well, I hope it's true.

e: Adding my reasoning copy/paste to what I sent to a friend a bit back - if anyone wants to correct anything (from the UK so not 100% on American dates) or suggest otherwise feel free as I want to book it off work at some point.

• November 7th is too early, and Veteran's Day is on the 11th (US Day off)
• November 14th is a maybe, but still early and Thanks Giving would be the week after which means staff will be off
• November 21st not as likely; Thanksgiving is like 3 days later which could be awful (although SL launched 3 days prior to TG, so maybe)
• November 28th is after the holidays and a full month before Christmas
• December 5th would make mythic opening Christmas week
• December 12th would make normal/heroic raid opening Christmas week
• December 19th would be Christmas week
• Decemember 25th is literally Christmas day

e2: Worth noting these dates are for UK release (11pm Monday night) if following the previous few launches.

e3: Just for info:
Shadowlands launched Nov 23rd/24th 2020, with Castle Nathria N/HC launching on the 8th/9th Dec (2 weeks after release), and Mythic 15/16th Dec (3 weeks after release).

[Hamburger]

A guild mate and myself have been predicting that end of November would be launch. It lines up with the Anniversary and people in the US just coming back from holiday plus it gives them the Tuesday after launch for maintenance if needed.

They will likely drop raids mid January to give time for holidays and final tune passes on raids. This is very similar to a few other xpacs.

[Donald Hellscream]

Hmm.. Its not outside the realm of possibility, it would make sense for it to be released before Christmas so that they can ensure that it is all hands on deck without encroaching on the christmas holidays, even if American work culture isn't nearly as lenient when it comes to actual time off in the holiday seasons.

I do however believe that season 1 of DF wont start until January, not so much as to not "force" WF raiders to skip out on spending time with their family and loved ones during Christmas, but more so that they are all back in full force to handle hotfixes and whatnot for when Mythic+ and Mythic difficulty becomes available.

[Lochton]

You sound just like the guys that swore it would be a 2023 release.

Except, that if you look up my previous comments. I'm the guy who swore it would be Q4 of 2022, in December with high hopes, but more likely to be Q1 of 2023, even with a mention that I was most likely wrong about Q4 but one could hope.