Oh wow guys....the game will be released much later than most expected.

[xanzul]

I wouldn't be so smug about it. It can happen. Ultimately nobody knows anything for sure, but my gut is telling me Mid October - End November release window. Just like your gut is telling you what you believe in.

Yes Blizzard is going to run raid testing for another FOUR months. Yes that is real likely. Like I have said before the people ignoring all the actual evidence right in front of us are blatantly trolling at this point.

---------- Post added 2012-07-17 at 09:25 PM ----------

Remember, there are a lot of players out there that have the Annual Pass until late October. They are going to milk that.

A little CGI cinematic a week before GW2 to raise hype, then drop the final patch a month later in October...I expect no more than that.

There is nothing to milk. Blizzard isn't going to delay Mop because of 1 million subscribers when they have already lost 2 million in the past few years alone. They are more interested in keeping the other 9 million who don't have an annual pass. Also keep in mind many people didn't sign up for the annual pass when it was first announced. The promotion ran until May 1st of this year. So with your logic Blizzard would delay Mop until next summer. Yeah right that is going to happen.

[lordjust]

Remember, there are a lot of players out there that have the Annual Pass until late October. They are going to milk that.

A little CGI cinematic a week before GW2 to raise hype, then drop the final patch a month later in October...I expect no more than that.

That are about 1.2 mio players out of about 4 mio players (the 6 mio Chinese player don't count). That's about one quarter of the playerbase but the other players are bored and some are already leaving the game (you can see that by the appearance of all these threads about "Is game XY good?") and a lot of other people are waiting for a new game. Back in WotLK Blizzard lost 2 mio people and only 1 mio came back. Since the release of patch 4.3 Blizzard already lost 1 mio and I think they will loose even more than 1 mio people because ICC+RS was more content than DS.

I know a lot of people that switched over to The Secret World and I know even more people that are waiting for MoP or GW2 and will buy which one will get released first.

If they release after GW2 they already lost some people that won't come back a month later but maybe 2-3 months later (just what happened when all other MMOs were released). Another thing is the report for the Q3/2012. Blizzard has nothing for Q3 (July to September) except falling sub numbers. In Q2 subs went down to 10.2mio (with about 6mio Chinese) players and I bet that if MoP gets released in Q4 subs will be down to under 9mio. Investors and share holders are already displeased that WoW isn't growing anymore and Vivendi wants to sell Activision Blizzard and it wouldn't be helpful if in the latest report they show everyone that WoW is still shrinking and Diablo 3 wasn't the big success they believed. Investing in Activision Blizzard is still a profit deal but it's not growing the way it was and Vivendi won't get the 8 billion $ they want (and they need 12 billion) and I think they won't even get 6 bio.

Also the question is if they release MoP in October what will they test in beta? 10 man normal raids are finished (except the last boss) and heroic 10 man started I think yesterday and as Blizzard stated they probably won't test 25 man at all because all they do in beta is test mechanics and not balancing and as 25 man normal and heroic don't have something special there's no need to test them. Quests are finished (except Jade Forrest), Challenge modes are being tested, dungeons are finished, heroic dungeons are finished, class balance already started, pet battles work and just need some numbers tweaking and that's it.

So raid testing took about 3-4 weeks and if they do the same with heroic raid testing that's another 3-4 weeks and would be finished the week before GamesCom. At that point everything Blizzard announced is already tested. Until October that are another 6 weeks and all that would be left would be 25 man raiding but Blizzard already said they probably won't test them.

When the beta is finished in the second week of August and we take the other betas from the past it will only last for another 2 weeks and then 1-2 weeks later it gets released which would be August 28th or September 4th.

[Deleted]

If we don't get a release announcement this week...i guess that sept 18th will be out of the window

[Deleted]

If we don't get a release announcement this week...i guess that sept 18th will be out of the window

Yeah, I hope they come out with a release date soon. I'm kind of fed up with waiting, when they've really delivered nothing worthwhile this expansion.

And I can't believe so many people still think the Annual Pass has anything to do with when they'll release Mists. The Annual Pass probably got around 1.5m people tops, which means the majority of subscribers don't have it.

If they wait until too long after GW2 release, a lot of the people who just wanted to play GW2 as something to fill in the time while not Raiding or whatever, might not bother coming back.

[Nekovivie]

Cant get time off work at the end of October.. knowing my luck it'll release around then T_T

[Speedy92286]

If we don't get a release announcement this week...i guess that sept 18th will be out of the window

Not necessarily. As others have said in this thread and a few other ones, they do not have to publicly announce a game 60 days in advance. I am hoping the patch before the MoP release comes out this week or latest next week so we can have a late August early September release. As long as 5.0.3 hits ptr this week or next, I can't imagine the game coming out past September 18th.

[lanerios]

Seriously people. Stop with that 9/11 delusion. Only the Americans, and even then a small part cares about it. It happened, get over it. What's next? Don't realease anything between 2039/2044 because of WW2?

[Deleted]

Not necessarily. As others have said in this thread and a few other ones, they do not have to publicly announce a game 60 days in advance. I am hoping the patch before the MoP release comes out this week or latest next week so we can have a late August early September release. As long as 5.0.3 hits ptr this week or next, I can't imagine the game coming out past September 18th.

This is indeed true BUT, since they always respected the 2 months window of time between announcement and release i think it is more likely that they will respect it this time too..rather then hoping that they informed the shops internally (which is more unlikely imo)...
Ofc i hope that it comes out earlier too...but i am not vey optimistic..

[goombatommy]

Yes Blizzard is going to run raid testing for another FOUR months. Yes that is real likely. Like I have said before the people ignoring all the actual evidence right in front of us are blatantly trolling at this point.

So in a thread revolved around asking what everyone's opinion is as to when the release date is, I give my honest opinion because that is what I truly feel and I'm being called a troll because our opinions aren't alike? Your a sad person, really. You don't know anymore than I know. Yet you don't see me calling you a troll based upon your own opinion do you?

The evidence that you are seeing in front of you is what you and everyone is making it out to be. I could be wrong and everyone else could be right. But then again you could all be wrong as well and may be looking a little too much into it and taking it to heart. We ultimately do not know what Blizzard has planned. So just chill out and stop labeling those who oppose your opinion as a troll.

[Speedy92286]

This is indeed true BUT, since they always respected the 2 months window of time between announcement and release i think it is more likely that they will respect it this time too..rather then hoping that they informed the shops internally (which is more unlikely imo)...
Ofc i hope that it comes out earlier too...but i am not vey optimistic..

Sadly we have to wait and see. I am not too optimistic myself, but everything really depends on when 5.0.3 goes onto the PTR. If it doesn't go up by next week, I am going to change my guess from late August, early September to mid-September/early October.

[Deleted]

Sadly we have to wait and see. I am not too optimistic myself, but everything really depends on when 5.0.3 goes onto the PTR. If it doesn't go up by next week, I am going to change my guess from late August, early September to mid-September/early October.

I'm still hoping for a release date today/friday, probably go cry in a corner if we have nothing by Saturday.

[Pann]

Seriously people. Stop with that 9/11 delusion. Only the Americans, and even then a small part cares about it. It happened, get over it. What's next? Don't realease anything between 2039/2044 because of WW2?

There is no way in hell they will release on 11th September, nothing as big a WoW expansion has been released on this date and I doubt Blizzard will want to be the first to do so. Even if Blizzard decided to release on 11th there will many stores that they will be relying on to open a midnight to fuel the hype that will simply be unwilling to do so.

[Deleted]

I predict:
Release Date: September 18th
Release Date Announcement: July 18th (2 Month Mark), July 20th (60 Day Mark)

Your signature pretty much summarize my ideas...

[Deleted]

Your signature pretty much summarize my ideas...

Let's get something to eat and spam our F5 keys

Edit: Damn you for quoting means I can't change it next week

[Kashim]

I'm thinkin september 25th or october 2nd, voted 25th. Though even after the boxes were uploaded ahead of time for D3 it still took some time for it to be announced and such.

[smegdawg]

Assuming that the 60 day notice for distributors hasn't happened.

If there is no announcement before Saturday, any date for the two weeks afterwards would have the 60 day mark landing in during Brewfest.

How likely does everyone think they would release it during Brewfest?

[Daetur]

Assuming that the 60 day notice for distributors hasn't happened.

If there is no announcement before Saturday, any date for the two weeks afterwards would have the 60 day mark landing in during Brewfest.

How likely does everyone think they would release it during Brewfest?

Assuming the notice for distributors hasn't already gone out... Brewfest is a fairly long holiday, so it's possible for them to release it during Brewfest and still have a window for players to access the new items.

I admit that, at this point, I'm getting a little nervous about my own predictions-- the "2 months advance warning" is getting very, very tight-- my other data still supports an early September release, and it's not impossible for us to have a window of less than 60 days if retailers are informed privately in advance, so I can't completely write off any dates.

I really expect an announcement very soon-- we're testing heroic raid content, pet battles are in, and the number of class changes per build are slowing down. There's not a ton more they have to test, it could easily be finished by September.

[Fearish]

Diablo's III release date was announced on or couple days before Q1 2012 Conference Call, next that kind of thing will be on 2nd of August. I know I'm looking at Diablo not WoW's other exp-packs, but i think there might be a connection, because couple days ago on battle.net we saw change regarding WoW. So maybe we will soon find out. It's just my opinion, peace guys.

[brothernads]

Assuming the notice for distributors hasn't already gone out... Brewfest is a fairly long holiday, so it's possible for them to release it during Brewfest and still have a window for players to access the new items.

Also, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Blizzard could extend Brewfest if Mists releases during the holiday. They did this with Love is in the Air a few years back when bugs caused achievement headaches for a lot of people.

I admit that, at this point, I'm getting a little nervous about my own predictions-- the "2 months advance warning" is getting very, very tight-- my other data still supports an early September release, and it's not impossible for us to have a window of less than 60 days if retailers are informed privately in advance, so I can't completely write off any dates.

I agree - the two-month window seems like such a standard for Blizzard (BC, Wrath, Cata, D3, SC2) and even others in the game industry (e.g., GW2 (2 mos.), SWTOR (3 mos.), Madden 13 (6 mos.), MW3 (6 mos.), etc.). I'm sure there are examples that buck this trend but they seem to be in the minority. Just seems puzzling why Blizzard would opt to use Mists as the release to change what they've done before. If it ain't broke...?

[smegdawg]

Also, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Blizzard could extend Brewfest if Mists releases during the holiday. They did this with Love is in the Air a few years back when bugs caused achievement headaches for a lot of people.

That was something on their end that effected us not getting achievements. If bugs happen again that coincide with MoP, I could see them extending Brewfest. But just because the release and the holiday may overlap I do not see them moving the holiday.

Fun Prediction: 5.0 will be released September 18th and during Brewfest Pandarens will contact Azeroth and start the Pre Mist release Event. After brewfest ends, Azeroth wants more beer so they force the Pandas to to take them to Pandaria.

/end scene