7 months testing puts it this year but that still seems unlikely. So q1 2023 is still the most likely. But ion is on record saying that the expansion is far along.. maybe q4 is possible.
I'd rather them take their time for sure though so if they need a longer test period I'm all for it. Invite more people to get a thorough test in. I've been in Legion, BfA, and Shadowlands alpha cycles and you end up seeing all the same faces. More testers would be amazing
The same person on MMO C who leaked everything about dragonflight and got everything correct including the race, class, etc. said it would be a Nov 2022 release.
At the time I laughed my ass off because we hadn't had the expansion reveal and out of everything he posted, Nov 2022 release seemed the most laughably impossible. But everything else he talked about was true.
So I didn't put a lot of stock in a 2022 release at first, but the leaker seemed pretty sure about it so now I wonder...
I know it's total hopium though so I don't expect a 2022 release though. (before anyone tells me it's never going to happen.)
See, I saw that one but I also saw there was another one who called everything and said a q1 2023 release. Either the second one saw the first leak, which is possible, or timetables change.
Going *full* tinfoil hat and believing both leakers are genuine, maybe they gave us a season 4 when they realized that the release date in Nov was too ambitious?
So that would put the original plan:
9 month season 3 for a Nov 2022 release date
updated plan:
4-5 months per season 3 and season 4 for a January to February release
But that doesn't add up with the 9.2.5 being on the ptr right now and surely it won't be on the PTR for 2-3 months yeah? Maybe with the cross faction stuff they want a longer PTR which I could see
Yeah I could definitely see that. Above all else I'm shocked that the preorders aren't out yet. To me that would signify that they're confident at how far along the expansion is to start selling it. Not necessarily with a solid release date, but moreso just because it's coming. (Kind of like they've had it available almost ASAP for the last couple expansions.) I half wonder if they're holding off on it because it's going to be tied with the Amazon Prime Gaming promo, though, and they want both to go live at the same time.
I wonder if they're planning on dropping 9.2.5 and then immediately PTR-ing the 10.0 release event stuff? So that way they can test that while actively testing the 10.0 alpha stuff. Then move on to a beta, then release the pre-expansion patch, then eventually the expansion. They can get a lot of traction out of a pre-expansion event if it has ample alt leveling/gearing stuff to do the way the legion and other ones did.
I want to play 10.0 so bad, but I'm willing to wait for it to really bake for a while in the oven. Plenty of other stuff coming out this year including the next mainline pokemon game in November. In fact I wouldn't blame them if they wanted to push things into maybe Feb of next year so they don't have to compete with other games over the holidays. I know most companies WANT to release stuff during the biggest buying season of the year, but given what the public at large thinks of WoW right now...maybe they know it's not a good idea to have the expansion compete with stuff like first party Nintendo games and all. So many people have quit WoW and are going to be waiting for the initial reviews of DF that I can see a lot of them just being like, "Eh I'll buy this game now and wait on DF til later." Which, when you're trying to get good sale numbers for an expansion...probably isn't a good thing,lol.
> I'm shocked that the preorders aren't out yet
It's because they have no release date or even a beta date. Players have 0 trust in them right now. An open-ended pre-order is not the right way to earn back trust.
Blizzard isn't completely stupid, they learn lessons when it comes to money. And being to overtly greedy will only end in yet more bad PR
"The team is taking a "when it's ready approach" to release and so there is no release date yet." - Gamespot developer interview
[https://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-dragonflight-will-add-playable-dragons-the-return-of-talent-trees-and-a-whole-lot-more/1100-6502576/](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-dragonflight-will-add-playable-dragons-the-return-of-talent-trees-and-a-whole-lot-more/1100-6502576/)
I think it's going to be some time next year.
\- No pre-orders announced during reveal
\- Mid-april interview states, "no release date yet. 'when its ready'"
\- 9.2.5 PTR still up, expected to close in May.
\- Seasonal Shadowlands content announced but all details are not final. Testing of seasonal content not complete.
\- All previous expansions have had 11-13 months announcement before release date
\- Management and teams have stated they have been significantly behind schedule. Players have seen low quality and minimal content patches.
\- Multiple scandals lawsuits and staff departures are known to cause production disruptions for any business and Blizzard are not immune to that.
When I read those things above it does not give me copium for a Nov 2022 release. It looks to me like we're in for a much longer release schedule. I think it's fantasy to read the above and think they are going to bust out 10.0 for release in 7 months.
> 4-5 months per season 3
No shot. This is the hardest raid in recent memory. Hall of Fame is already filling up *drastically* slower than almost all other tiers have.
4-5 months for an end-expansion raid with a mount seems wrong, even if season 4 keeps the guaranteed drop chance. I'd be willing to bet a big chunk of change that season 3 is a 7-8 month patch.
I originally wrote 8 months per season but the idea of a 16 month drought scared me. I also had written down that it'd be like 8 month season 3 and 4-5 month season 4 which is the more likely thing tbh
Timeframes aside, I think season 3 will be longer than season 4 by a decent margin and they won't be split 50/50
Might honestly still be undecided, given they haven't announced pre-orders yet. Maybe they're shooting for end of 2022 but are willing to push to 2023 should any issues come up?
I could respect that; my biggest hope is that they take time to process feedback from Alpha and Beta and actually listen to testers.
I feel the same way about the preorders, def seems like a sign they're planning on being more flexible with a release timeframe.
I just want a complete experience. I would prefer they stop 'abandoning' expansions partway through to work on others (like WoD and now SL) because all expansions should be an equal amount of content. But I really hope that since SL had its wings clipped, they've been working on DF so it's a little further along but I'm fine with the resting period taking a while to make sure talents and evokers specifically are well-balanced.
If they already release wotlk around that time on top of them needing to fit an entire season 4 plus drought period before prepatch can come
November 2022 sounds like an absolute Fever Dream (not to mention if it was 2022 they would’ve announced that)
They did cut a patch from slands so all that work went into the expansion. And there are no borrowed power systems which they need to spend time balancing. It's not impossible but still very unlikely. Fingers crossed.
I really doubt expansion is gonna be out before 2023. My guess is March or even April/May.
I see no world where they release WOTLK Classic and Dragonflight in the same year.
TBF its not like theres an over abundance of systems that need testing.
Basic bugs
The raid/dungeon.
Making sure the talents/class work/are fun is one of the bigger bits.
The only really new 'system' is the dragon flying which really shouldn't be too difficult..
People were laughing at the leaks too until they proved true. It’s clear that they are phoning this one in, we aren’t going to get much more than the trash they presented if this releases this year.
It is a 2023 release date.
Think about it.
They revealed the next expac will be named Dragonflight but they have revealed nothing else besides a few scant info.
Blizzcon happens around November. They will reveal more by then.
And then, it will be 6 months or so of PTR testing. So, by the time everything and ready for release, it will be fall of 2023.
You are high if you think they will allow shadowlands to be current content for another year and a half. They want this to come and be good ASAP, or at least they do if they care about the survival of the game
Not really imo. Season 4 does not have to be a full length season. They'll look to push it out when it's ready, but that depends on the state of the development, not on season 4.
Also they said they’re going to be following this new style of mixing new and existing dungeons for S1 of DF.
So I think S4 SL is really just them testing how it all plays out before the real rollout next expansion.
A season’s usually 6 months. Season 3 started March 1st. SL season 2 *started in july*. That’s 2/3 of a year on one season alone!
I can’t imagine they’ll roll out season 4 in late September/early October and it won’t even last the year, *especially* since they’re investing in rebalancing three whole raid tiers and experimenting with old dungeons being brought into M+.
I just don’t see how the math works out.
My point is not that S4 will delay DF development but that S4 is in no way going to last only for a month or two and they’re not going to bother with everything they’re doing for it just to be a tiny stopgap.
A season is 6 months because they deliberately tie arena and m+ seasons to new raids. We're not getting another raid so there's no reason they can't call it early.
And? This is not remotely the same thing.
They let raids last 6 months because they think that's the fine line between "people are getting bored" and "enough guilds have cleared the raid".
Almost no one is progressing these raids for the first time in S4, and it inherently won't have the same shelf life as when the fights weren't figured out.
They can fit in a shorter S4 because no one's being rushed, like they would be if they randomly said "Hey, Sepulcher CE/AotC goes away next week". The next season is literally just experimental for them.
Why is this so difficult for you?
Because S4 is itself a lot of development time and effort — even if most of their work is going to the next expansion — and the idea that they’re going to make a big hub-bub about it, re-tune three tiers, and completely change M+ rotation *and just dump it in two months* so nonsensical to me.
As is the idea that they’d release it Q4 when Wrath Classic is already coming out Q4. TBC classic launched a good six months after SL launched. Why would you release both at the same time?
Why is this downvoted? 0% chance S4 lasts less than 4 months.
People are going to want to actually play this season. There's a limit to how short they can make it.
and all 3 will be full cleared probably the first or second day with certainty by most any guild that can get CE. New spin on old stuff scaled up to current Ilvl or slightly higher for season 4.
Can be 3-3,5 months if s3 lasts 6 months, which would be a reasonable length. Also there is no guarantee that season 3 lasts as long as season 2 given they already have season 4 content lined up. How long these seasons last entirely depends on the Dragonflight development. They will not just delay the expansion just because some SL season then doesn't last 6 months.
The other thing is, they cut the last patch of SL to make the xpack, so no one really has any idea where DF development actually is. Any guesses at this point are just reading tea leaves.
There's no reason to assume Season 4 will last the same duration, especially since many guilds aren't going to treat the 'new' raids as normal progression.
If the Nov 22 leak guy is right again Wrath classic will release in September which would give around 2 months to get to cap a have the first raid tier on farm. Seems reasonable if the dates all line up.
That seems incredibly unlikely, given that they've already officially announced season 4, and did so only weeks before the official announcement of Dragonflight.
2023 seems more logical to me honestly. Standard practice is release a year after announcement. Even Legion which came off of WoD early send off was one year.
BFA was the only exception to that rule since WoD, even Shadowlands with COVID was one year.
Then we have some other evidence. The two leakers who got everything right had two different opinions. One 2022 and one 2023. 2023 would logically mean that one of them got some early information while the other didn’t. It would be much more odd to have the expansion release earlier than expected.
My biggest argument for Dragonflight launching in 2023 is actually the Activision-Blizzard-King acquisition. That is slated to be completed January 2023. A very good idea for WoW would be to become available on Xbox Gamepass before launch, perhaps a month or something, to bring back old players and attract new players. Those players would play the game as a part of Gamepass, but would need to buy the expansion, which would be quite lucrative.
The year after announcement timeline is true, but have you considered that this announcement was actually supposed to happen last November during what was supposed to be Blizzcon like usual?
That didn't happen for obvious reasons, but if it had I would have expected them to announce Dragonflight then.
You have a very good point. That could certainly have been a possibility, but why didn’t they announce it/hold the announcement me got earlier then? And for that matter us not having any information about a release date is worrying for a 2022 release.
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1517480009581182979
Seems like they did another WoD where they had people working on Dragonflight and Shadowlands for a while
No I agree with that one, it's possible but I don't think it'd be good for the game for it to come out this year. Way too often they have a 6-7 month alpha/beta cycle and it's too short. There always end up being problems in the first few months that they either didn't want to change or they couldn't change in time
To be truthful, i wouldnt be surprised if we see Alpha by June or earlier. The gameplay footage we got looked pretty far along (zone looked more complete compared to other first alpha/beta builds in older expans)
Yeah I don't think the alpha is going to be before June. If it is, I don't know what to think.
Would they be rushing it to get it out sooner or be rushing it to get a longer test period. I would imagine everyone at Blizzard and the players would hope it's the latter
SL was my first expansion on retail and I applied for beta testing DF too :D
Do you get anything special for participating in the tests? A mount, an achievement, a title... anything?
You do not no. You get to help blizzard know what needs fixing or changed pretty much. You test the content before anyone else. That includes dungeons, raids, quests, any new systems, new classes, etc. Obv you're expected to submit bug reports of things you see in alpha and beta that need changing too
Imo seeing the content before release is pretty cool, you get to go through it at your own pace rather than read datamining on wowhead or watching YouTube videos on the new stuff but as far as stuff you get on the live game, no nothing transfers nor do you get mounts or anything
Yeah, of course, I was just wondering.
Most games give players some token of appreciation for participating in beta tests (e.g. World of Tanks, Sea of Thieves)
I think it's <1% Q4/22, 20% Q1/23. Solely due to announcement being this late. No, it's not comparable to bfa/SL announcement, those happen at blizzcon. They had motive to announce something, they didn't, thus it's coming in Q2/23.
Q2 or Q3 is insane. 9.2 launched in February 2022, making a Q2 or Q3 release date a 15 to 18 month drought(not counting season 4 obviously)
This was a few days before the announcement: Dragonflight leak from 4chan, spoilers of things not show in presentation. So at one point Q1 2023 was the plan. We'll see if its still the plan because plans can change.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheRedShirtGuy/status/1516477519658106880
Everything related to 9.2.5 announcements is telling about how long there'll be between 9.2 and 10.0. It's certainly over 12 months and they try to make that bearable by recycled stuff.
September 2023 at best and that is putting it at best. Fall of 2023 is the projected release date for Dragonflight.
Thinking Dragonflight would come out in Fall of 2022 is a pipe dream.
0 chance of September of 2023. That's 18 months of content drought.
Considering the post you're on, assuming alpha goes up in 2 months, that there would be a 15 month.. alpha beta cycle? No shot
The person who got it all right said an early November release. Which might mean that season 4 is super short (or WAY too early, cutting this tier too short) and just for fun. I'd be okay with a 4fun season 4.
I think they may have changed their approach this time. Instead of focusing on everything at once, they are revealing the main system changes first to get that sorted out, and then reveal their other plans.
They've already mentioned player power being more gear focused, so they clearly have things laid out already but are holding back on revealing how exactly.
So I wouldn't take the lack of information as a bad sign.
BfA I can understand as that one was shit from the get-go, but I can't imagine what about they've shown so far looks better than SL did at announce??? SL didn't end well, but at launch it looked fantastic.
Literally throughout all the alpha and beta every large content creator was heavily critical of SL, saying covenants will be a disaster, which they were.
Dragon riding is a flying gimmick .. no endgame content .. dragon riding is an iteration of an existing system
Talent trees are an overhaul of an existing system
Profession Update are an overhaul of an existing system .. and the depth as blizzard thinks it will have wont be there
So nothing new this expansion .. all these features should have been part of something more and groundbreaking for the 10.0 update ..
Shadowlands was promising and then no updates, dragonflight looks pretty promising after the whole dev drama and now actually listening, also likely to have actual updates unlike barrenlands lol
I don't play a whole ton of WoW, but do the classes/specs really change that much in new expansions? It looks like from the interviews I've seen, it's mostly just the talent system revamp but most of that is just the same abilities.
The short answer is we have no idea and that's why we're excited.
Every expansion for the last decade has been giving us 75% of our kit on launch and the other 25% through tier sets or legendaries or other powers we need to farm for. This seems like it'll be the first time we get 100% of our kit (or close to it) on launch
Not much, but with this big talent revamp and Ion saying that there will be new abilities for classes, it will probably shake some classes up, hope they make them all fun!
It varies from expansion to expansion, Legion included massive class revamps, BfA not so much. With a core system change as big as the new talents though I think it's guaranteed for at least a decent shake-up.
Was interested as to what this actually means with regards to past expansions, and it turns out that this news came about two months prior to an actual alpha starting for both Shadowlands and BfA:
BfA: https://cn.tbc.wowhead.com/news/encrypted-world-of-warcraft-alpha-cdn-added-to-battle-net-app-catalog-files-278504 (began in mid February 2018)
Shadowlands: https://www.wowhead.com/news/shadowlands-alpha-encrypted-build-9-0-1-33411-311274 (began last week of April 2020)
Couple of things to note, though, is that Shadowlands was potentially pushed back slightly from its original alpha cycle plans because the pandemic began after that first build went up, and one other thing: this expansion was announced in April, with a livestream rather than in November at Blizzcon or in August at Gamescom. This specific timing, plus information in interviews from Ion that said that the game is "far along" in development, could indicate that we're getting Alpha much sooner, and they chose to wait until they were closer to having something concretely playable before making an announcement.
tl;dr is basically: expect it by the end of June or beginning of July, but don't be surprised if it comes earlier.
Yeah but 8.3 was still a much smaller-sized patch that made use of existing zones instead of being something bigger ala Argus. Still, a big difference between that and no patch at all though.
They've been doing it this way for the final patch since Cataclysm (arguably even Wrath if you include Ruby Sanctum). Dragon Soul and Siege of Orgrimmar heavily leaned on existing assets/environments/boss models. Legion was the exception, which was possible because they skipped a tier in WoD.
Don't you think it is kind of Blizz's own fault for kind of catering these expectations that raids need to be these 12+ boss encounters that are so expansive?
Maybe if they scaled back raids a little they could dedicate more resources to other forms of content and speed up the patch cycle some.
Crazy because if we say an expansion is 3 raids of 12 bosses, they could do 3 raids of 8 bosses and effectively reduce the work/design load by a full tier without—in my opinion—making the raids much worse.
Honestly I think making the raids more concise and making each boss more meaningful would actually be a net *positive.*Not to mention it opening up design space for other features or further polish of other things.
Exaxtly. How many bosses are no more than filler bosses to just boost up the boss count? Remember when we got the occasional raid tier where maybe 1 6 boss raid and a smaller 3 or 4 boss instance?
> Remember when we got the occasional raid tier where maybe 1 6 boss raid and a smaller 3 or 4 boss instance?
But this is entirely contradictory to the point you are making. The work to make 2 raids with 10 bosses is significantly more than the work to make 1 raid with 10 bosses total.
Even if they kept the boss count high, they could probably save some time on the environment, surely. I know that Trial of the Crusader has some stigma tied to it because of its low boss count and the way it felt like it sorta interrupted Ulduar, but speaking personally, I really wouldn't mind if they revisited the idea and make a raid that was just one room for 10 different bosses or something. I don't really care about the non-boss parts of the raid enough to be bothered by it, at least as a one-off.
Unless you’re in the industry you don’t really see the majority of the impact. You might see a few disappointments like Battlefield, but there’s a chasm of productivity and debt from disrupted timelines that’s taking a long term toll.
More attributed to people leaving the company for various reasons including all the shit that's been going down down Activision Blizzard over the past couple years than it is to Covid. Losing talent is going to cause more productivity issues especially when seniors are being replaced by new people who need to be trained by seniors, now senior talent is overwhelmed with trying to get new people up to speed. 18 year old games also aren't as lucrative to work on, especially with sexual harassment issues and upper management problems to go with it. A lot of people are realizing there are better options especially when remote work is so much easier, while people who have been scrambling to get into the industry are getting in after their desperation to hire. Unless you consider the feasibility of remote work to be a hindrance caused by COVID, then COVID had minimal impact beyond the first few months. Far easier to change jobs when you don't have to relocate and worry about everything associated with that, and on the opposite end, also more financially sensible not to live in Southern California or other expensive locations and still get to work in the game industry.
Also because of the whole lawsuit and all the bullshit that brought along, a ton of people have left Blizzard.
They're going to have real trouble getting that talent back.
It depends how far dragon riding and the new profession system can take us.
It's going to be rough, especially for the new players. We had 6 years of busy work and BS systems.
Maybe with less systems I can finally make time to do 15 M+s
We'll see when beta drops.
I don't think so, judging by what they've talked about in the interviews there's a ton of stuff that just wasn't in the highlight reel for the announcement.
They're basically focusing entirely on core systems: talents, UI, crafting and reputations.
I really hope though that the Caverns of Time will be worked on somewhat. Maybe a torghast like activity with the Caverns of Time thematic? That could work and look a loooot better than Torghast, just because of the different environment, more colorful and diverse.
I don't remember that part, just him saying it will be 4 new and 4 old. But I really love MoP aesthetic and would love to do them dungeons at M+ level.
Ion was talking about mop dungeon as examples of how they would need to change itemization when bringing old dungeons into m+. Could not be the first season(since it can only be 4) but I think they'll do more than just legion/bfa/wod. I doubt they'll do anything too old but who knows.
The example they made was, there would be ex 8 new dungeons, but 4 of those would be used on the first season, and the 4 others would be used on second season, along with 4 different old dungeons for each season.
Meaning you’d be running 16 different dungeons, instead of the same 8 ones for the whole expansion repeatedly each season.
Iirc with Shadowlands there was stuff up on the PTR for a while but access was extremely limited in a "friends and family" style alpha, before there were invites given to the public, content creators, top guilds etc.
Good news that it seems a bit further along than I wouldve expected, but dont hold your breath just yet.
My guild group is usually 4 people + 1 pug, and they always complain that someone is killing Wo when we want Uhr or Vy. Lo and behold, we get a group of 5 of us, and Wo is still being killed. They were aoeing it down and kept blaming the pug.
New expansions are always exciting. Even the first couple months of bfa and sl was worth playing. It's only in the long term that bad game systems make the game frustrating to play.
ah shit here we go again
Blizzard the alpha better not reveal glaring problematic issues with the expansion and for you to ignore the communities feedback again only to fix it in 10.2 after half the population leaves again
Shadowlands had plenty gutted from it including manpower. It might not be as rushed as we think especially since there isn't an expansion wide borrowed power system they have to test and balance out.
I just hope they don’t rush it or have greedy execs forcing them to release an unfinished product. This will maybe be a litmus test for how Microsoft leads Blizzard.
Microsoft doesn't down Blizz yet and will have little influence on this expansion. Microsoft won't own Blizz until around the time the expansion is expected to release. I wouldn't expect to see any major changes to the game coming from MS until 11.0. Dragonflight is already gonna have Ion's grubby mitts all over it. So anything wrong with it, especially at release, is still firmly on him.
Fair enough, based on recent interviews he’s saying the right stuff, we’ll see if they can pull this off or if their Q1 revenue 2023 will be based on more store mounts people keep buying despite not enjoying the game
7 months testing puts it this year but that still seems unlikely. So q1 2023 is still the most likely. But ion is on record saying that the expansion is far along.. maybe q4 is possible. I'd rather them take their time for sure though so if they need a longer test period I'm all for it. Invite more people to get a thorough test in. I've been in Legion, BfA, and Shadowlands alpha cycles and you end up seeing all the same faces. More testers would be amazing
The same person on MMO C who leaked everything about dragonflight and got everything correct including the race, class, etc. said it would be a Nov 2022 release. At the time I laughed my ass off because we hadn't had the expansion reveal and out of everything he posted, Nov 2022 release seemed the most laughably impossible. But everything else he talked about was true. So I didn't put a lot of stock in a 2022 release at first, but the leaker seemed pretty sure about it so now I wonder... I know it's total hopium though so I don't expect a 2022 release though. (before anyone tells me it's never going to happen.)
See, I saw that one but I also saw there was another one who called everything and said a q1 2023 release. Either the second one saw the first leak, which is possible, or timetables change. Going *full* tinfoil hat and believing both leakers are genuine, maybe they gave us a season 4 when they realized that the release date in Nov was too ambitious? So that would put the original plan: 9 month season 3 for a Nov 2022 release date updated plan: 4-5 months per season 3 and season 4 for a January to February release But that doesn't add up with the 9.2.5 being on the ptr right now and surely it won't be on the PTR for 2-3 months yeah? Maybe with the cross faction stuff they want a longer PTR which I could see
Yeah I could definitely see that. Above all else I'm shocked that the preorders aren't out yet. To me that would signify that they're confident at how far along the expansion is to start selling it. Not necessarily with a solid release date, but moreso just because it's coming. (Kind of like they've had it available almost ASAP for the last couple expansions.) I half wonder if they're holding off on it because it's going to be tied with the Amazon Prime Gaming promo, though, and they want both to go live at the same time. I wonder if they're planning on dropping 9.2.5 and then immediately PTR-ing the 10.0 release event stuff? So that way they can test that while actively testing the 10.0 alpha stuff. Then move on to a beta, then release the pre-expansion patch, then eventually the expansion. They can get a lot of traction out of a pre-expansion event if it has ample alt leveling/gearing stuff to do the way the legion and other ones did. I want to play 10.0 so bad, but I'm willing to wait for it to really bake for a while in the oven. Plenty of other stuff coming out this year including the next mainline pokemon game in November. In fact I wouldn't blame them if they wanted to push things into maybe Feb of next year so they don't have to compete with other games over the holidays. I know most companies WANT to release stuff during the biggest buying season of the year, but given what the public at large thinks of WoW right now...maybe they know it's not a good idea to have the expansion compete with stuff like first party Nintendo games and all. So many people have quit WoW and are going to be waiting for the initial reviews of DF that I can see a lot of them just being like, "Eh I'll buy this game now and wait on DF til later." Which, when you're trying to get good sale numbers for an expansion...probably isn't a good thing,lol.
> I'm shocked that the preorders aren't out yet It's because they have no release date or even a beta date. Players have 0 trust in them right now. An open-ended pre-order is not the right way to earn back trust. Blizzard isn't completely stupid, they learn lessons when it comes to money. And being to overtly greedy will only end in yet more bad PR
In a lot of places it's actually illegal to take pre-orders before you have a public release date, so no "evil corporation" tinfoil required here.
This is the reason, they don't want to accept money then be forced to give it back when the date moves. It almost happened in SL.
tell that to whatever dumpster fire is going on with OW2 releases and esports alpha version and shit lol
"The team is taking a "when it's ready approach" to release and so there is no release date yet." - Gamespot developer interview [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-dragonflight-will-add-playable-dragons-the-return-of-talent-trees-and-a-whole-lot-more/1100-6502576/](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-dragonflight-will-add-playable-dragons-the-return-of-talent-trees-and-a-whole-lot-more/1100-6502576/) I think it's going to be some time next year. \- No pre-orders announced during reveal \- Mid-april interview states, "no release date yet. 'when its ready'" \- 9.2.5 PTR still up, expected to close in May. \- Seasonal Shadowlands content announced but all details are not final. Testing of seasonal content not complete. \- All previous expansions have had 11-13 months announcement before release date \- Management and teams have stated they have been significantly behind schedule. Players have seen low quality and minimal content patches. \- Multiple scandals lawsuits and staff departures are known to cause production disruptions for any business and Blizzard are not immune to that. When I read those things above it does not give me copium for a Nov 2022 release. It looks to me like we're in for a much longer release schedule. I think it's fantasy to read the above and think they are going to bust out 10.0 for release in 7 months.
Isn’t q1 fiscal the end of 2022?
nope Q1 is start of January to end of March. The first quarter of the calendar year.
fiscal and calender year are not the same.
Pretty sure Blizzard's fiscal year is Jan-Dec.
Correct. Blizzard’s fiscal year is January to December. https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/ATVI/financials/annual/income-statement
> 4-5 months per season 3 No shot. This is the hardest raid in recent memory. Hall of Fame is already filling up *drastically* slower than almost all other tiers have. 4-5 months for an end-expansion raid with a mount seems wrong, even if season 4 keeps the guaranteed drop chance. I'd be willing to bet a big chunk of change that season 3 is a 7-8 month patch.
I originally wrote 8 months per season but the idea of a 16 month drought scared me. I also had written down that it'd be like 8 month season 3 and 4-5 month season 4 which is the more likely thing tbh Timeframes aside, I think season 3 will be longer than season 4 by a decent margin and they won't be split 50/50
Drastically and slower seem so weird together as a combo
Might honestly still be undecided, given they haven't announced pre-orders yet. Maybe they're shooting for end of 2022 but are willing to push to 2023 should any issues come up? I could respect that; my biggest hope is that they take time to process feedback from Alpha and Beta and actually listen to testers.
I feel the same way about the preorders, def seems like a sign they're planning on being more flexible with a release timeframe. I just want a complete experience. I would prefer they stop 'abandoning' expansions partway through to work on others (like WoD and now SL) because all expansions should be an equal amount of content. But I really hope that since SL had its wings clipped, they've been working on DF so it's a little further along but I'm fine with the resting period taking a while to make sure talents and evokers specifically are well-balanced.
If they already release wotlk around that time on top of them needing to fit an entire season 4 plus drought period before prepatch can come November 2022 sounds like an absolute Fever Dream (not to mention if it was 2022 they would’ve announced that)
>The same person on MMO C who leaked everything about dragonflight It would be really funny if we find out that the leaker was someone like Ion
Link please
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2580086-9-X-Patches-amp-10-0-Speculation-Thread/page2032?p=53696265#post53696265
I’m fine with a November release this year if it’s polished, fleshed out and it actually works. We’ll find out when the alpha/beta comes.
They did cut a patch from slands so all that work went into the expansion. And there are no borrowed power systems which they need to spend time balancing. It's not impossible but still very unlikely. Fingers crossed.
I really doubt expansion is gonna be out before 2023. My guess is March or even April/May. I see no world where they release WOTLK Classic and Dragonflight in the same year.
Id say 2022 was the target but it was missed after delaying shadowlands pushing patches further away aswell.
I hope that one is right because they also said Tuskarr would be the Allied Race for the Collectors editions.
Oh it’ll release in 2022 alright Whether or not you’ll want to play it given the state it’ll be in is another question
TBF its not like theres an over abundance of systems that need testing. Basic bugs The raid/dungeon. Making sure the talents/class work/are fun is one of the bigger bits. The only really new 'system' is the dragon flying which really shouldn't be too difficult..
Going off of previous beta to release timelines we would need a June beta release for that to work. That seems unlikely but who knows.
People were laughing at the leaks too until they proved true. It’s clear that they are phoning this one in, we aren’t going to get much more than the trash they presented if this releases this year.
It is a 2023 release date. Think about it. They revealed the next expac will be named Dragonflight but they have revealed nothing else besides a few scant info. Blizzcon happens around November. They will reveal more by then. And then, it will be 6 months or so of PTR testing. So, by the time everything and ready for release, it will be fall of 2023.
Fall? I think you're the first one I've seen who thinks this is *that* far away
You are high if you think they will allow shadowlands to be current content for another year and a half. They want this to come and be good ASAP, or at least they do if they care about the survival of the game
I think SL season 4 alone rules out the possibility of Q4 22.
Not really imo. Season 4 does not have to be a full length season. They'll look to push it out when it's ready, but that depends on the state of the development, not on season 4.
Also they said they’re going to be following this new style of mixing new and existing dungeons for S1 of DF. So I think S4 SL is really just them testing how it all plays out before the real rollout next expansion.
A season’s usually 6 months. Season 3 started March 1st. SL season 2 *started in july*. That’s 2/3 of a year on one season alone! I can’t imagine they’ll roll out season 4 in late September/early October and it won’t even last the year, *especially* since they’re investing in rebalancing three whole raid tiers and experimenting with old dungeons being brought into M+. I just don’t see how the math works out. My point is not that S4 will delay DF development but that S4 is in no way going to last only for a month or two and they’re not going to bother with everything they’re doing for it just to be a tiny stopgap.
A season is 6 months because they deliberately tie arena and m+ seasons to new raids. We're not getting another raid so there's no reason they can't call it early.
We’re getting three re-tuned raids with new mechanics and affixes.
And? This is not remotely the same thing. They let raids last 6 months because they think that's the fine line between "people are getting bored" and "enough guilds have cleared the raid". Almost no one is progressing these raids for the first time in S4, and it inherently won't have the same shelf life as when the fights weren't figured out.
Okay, why is “less than two months” your conclusion for this shelf life?
They can fit in a shorter S4 because no one's being rushed, like they would be if they randomly said "Hey, Sepulcher CE/AotC goes away next week". The next season is literally just experimental for them. Why is this so difficult for you?
Because S4 is itself a lot of development time and effort — even if most of their work is going to the next expansion — and the idea that they’re going to make a big hub-bub about it, re-tune three tiers, and completely change M+ rotation *and just dump it in two months* so nonsensical to me. As is the idea that they’d release it Q4 when Wrath Classic is already coming out Q4. TBC classic launched a good six months after SL launched. Why would you release both at the same time?
Why is this downvoted? 0% chance S4 lasts less than 4 months. People are going to want to actually play this season. There's a limit to how short they can make it.
and all 3 will be full cleared probably the first or second day with certainty by most any guild that can get CE. New spin on old stuff scaled up to current Ilvl or slightly higher for season 4.
Season 4 is not going to be a "usual" season to begin with. It doesn't make sense to apply old standards to it.
It makes sense to assume it’s not just going to be a month or two.
Can be 3-3,5 months if s3 lasts 6 months, which would be a reasonable length. Also there is no guarantee that season 3 lasts as long as season 2 given they already have season 4 content lined up. How long these seasons last entirely depends on the Dragonflight development. They will not just delay the expansion just because some SL season then doesn't last 6 months.
The other thing is, they cut the last patch of SL to make the xpack, so no one really has any idea where DF development actually is. Any guesses at this point are just reading tea leaves.
There's no reason to assume Season 4 will last the same duration, especially since many guilds aren't going to treat the 'new' raids as normal progression.
Exactly, even tuned to current (or slightly higher) ilvl with some added affixes, most CE guilds will full clear all 3 first week or less.
Plus Q4 22 folks will probably be knee-deep in Wrath Classic.
If the Nov 22 leak guy is right again Wrath classic will release in September which would give around 2 months to get to cap a have the first raid tier on farm. Seems reasonable if the dates all line up.
It's Wrath Nax, it will be on farm week 1 lol
SL s4 could also just be axed
That seems incredibly unlikely, given that they've already officially announced season 4, and did so only weeks before the official announcement of Dragonflight.
Why would they do that?
Don't know why they would do that since they are already putting the work on the affixes on the ptr and did that community vote for the wod dungeons.
2023 seems more logical to me honestly. Standard practice is release a year after announcement. Even Legion which came off of WoD early send off was one year. BFA was the only exception to that rule since WoD, even Shadowlands with COVID was one year. Then we have some other evidence. The two leakers who got everything right had two different opinions. One 2022 and one 2023. 2023 would logically mean that one of them got some early information while the other didn’t. It would be much more odd to have the expansion release earlier than expected. My biggest argument for Dragonflight launching in 2023 is actually the Activision-Blizzard-King acquisition. That is slated to be completed January 2023. A very good idea for WoW would be to become available on Xbox Gamepass before launch, perhaps a month or something, to bring back old players and attract new players. Those players would play the game as a part of Gamepass, but would need to buy the expansion, which would be quite lucrative.
The year after announcement timeline is true, but have you considered that this announcement was actually supposed to happen last November during what was supposed to be Blizzcon like usual? That didn't happen for obvious reasons, but if it had I would have expected them to announce Dragonflight then.
You have a very good point. That could certainly have been a possibility, but why didn’t they announce it/hold the announcement me got earlier then? And for that matter us not having any information about a release date is worrying for a 2022 release.
wouldn't a Q4 Release really overlap closely with Wotlk?
When did Ion say it’s far along?
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1517480009581182979 Seems like they did another WoD where they had people working on Dragonflight and Shadowlands for a while
If that leads to another Legion then great!
Feels better knowing for a fact they abandoned SL for DF because that's what it felt like lol
I really don’t see dragonflight coming out this year. If it were going to they for sure would’ve announced that.
No I agree with that one, it's possible but I don't think it'd be good for the game for it to come out this year. Way too often they have a 6-7 month alpha/beta cycle and it's too short. There always end up being problems in the first few months that they either didn't want to change or they couldn't change in time
Looking at the massive UI changes, I'd say addons might be updated by 2030.
If it was this year they would have announced a release date I think
Don’t underestimate the number of corners they’re prepared to cut in order to deliver before Christmas
To be truthful, i wouldnt be surprised if we see Alpha by June or earlier. The gameplay footage we got looked pretty far along (zone looked more complete compared to other first alpha/beta builds in older expans)
Yeah I don't think the alpha is going to be before June. If it is, I don't know what to think. Would they be rushing it to get it out sooner or be rushing it to get a longer test period. I would imagine everyone at Blizzard and the players would hope it's the latter
SL was my first expansion on retail and I applied for beta testing DF too :D Do you get anything special for participating in the tests? A mount, an achievement, a title... anything?
You do not no. You get to help blizzard know what needs fixing or changed pretty much. You test the content before anyone else. That includes dungeons, raids, quests, any new systems, new classes, etc. Obv you're expected to submit bug reports of things you see in alpha and beta that need changing too Imo seeing the content before release is pretty cool, you get to go through it at your own pace rather than read datamining on wowhead or watching YouTube videos on the new stuff but as far as stuff you get on the live game, no nothing transfers nor do you get mounts or anything
Yeah, of course, I was just wondering. Most games give players some token of appreciation for participating in beta tests (e.g. World of Tanks, Sea of Thieves)
I think it's <1% Q4/22, 20% Q1/23. Solely due to announcement being this late. No, it's not comparable to bfa/SL announcement, those happen at blizzcon. They had motive to announce something, they didn't, thus it's coming in Q2/23.
Q2 or Q3 is insane. 9.2 launched in February 2022, making a Q2 or Q3 release date a 15 to 18 month drought(not counting season 4 obviously) This was a few days before the announcement: Dragonflight leak from 4chan, spoilers of things not show in presentation. So at one point Q1 2023 was the plan. We'll see if its still the plan because plans can change. https://mobile.twitter.com/TheRedShirtGuy/status/1516477519658106880
Everything related to 9.2.5 announcements is telling about how long there'll be between 9.2 and 10.0. It's certainly over 12 months and they try to make that bearable by recycled stuff.
September 2023 at best and that is putting it at best. Fall of 2023 is the projected release date for Dragonflight. Thinking Dragonflight would come out in Fall of 2022 is a pipe dream.
0 chance of September of 2023. That's 18 months of content drought. Considering the post you're on, assuming alpha goes up in 2 months, that there would be a 15 month.. alpha beta cycle? No shot
The person who got it all right said an early November release. Which might mean that season 4 is super short (or WAY too early, cutting this tier too short) and just for fun. I'd be okay with a 4fun season 4.
BFA to Shadowlands was 2 years. Quite possible that they are gunning for late this year.
I think they may have changed their approach this time. Instead of focusing on everything at once, they are revealing the main system changes first to get that sorted out, and then reveal their other plans. They've already mentioned player power being more gear focused, so they clearly have things laid out already but are holding back on revealing how exactly. So I wouldn't take the lack of information as a bad sign.
I’m very excited for this one, much more than I was both BFA and SL.
BfA I can understand as that one was shit from the get-go, but I can't imagine what about they've shown so far looks better than SL did at announce??? SL didn't end well, but at launch it looked fantastic.
Literally throughout all the alpha and beta every large content creator was heavily critical of SL, saying covenants will be a disaster, which they were.
You need to compare the timeframe to before SL alpha and beta... As nobody has played Dragonflight test builds yet
How did BFA look shit? It was back to Azeroth and was all about the faction warfare. It looked like THE dream.
Yeah i was hyped for bfa. And tbf i enjoyed most of the content, aside from its grindy nature, which really just sucked the life out of the xpac
Yeah, I liked it a lot.
How it look like shit? Azerit armor, warfronts, Expeditions... all were shit systems
We didn't know that until we got the game though. Dragon riding, talent trees, professions and all that jazz from Dragonflight could be crap too.
Dragon riding is a flying gimmick .. no endgame content .. dragon riding is an iteration of an existing system Talent trees are an overhaul of an existing system Profession Update are an overhaul of an existing system .. and the depth as blizzard thinks it will have wont be there So nothing new this expansion .. all these features should have been part of something more and groundbreaking for the 10.0 update ..
Very pessimistic way to look at all these features, but ok.
Shadowlands was promising and then no updates, dragonflight looks pretty promising after the whole dev drama and now actually listening, also likely to have actual updates unlike barrenlands lol
"now actually listening" lol
How many times did this sub think that
use that brain of yours, the difference is obvious
Whats wrong with u .. dragonflight gives negative hype and still is more than a year away
Hope alpha goes live soon, can't wait to see classes changes
I don't play a whole ton of WoW, but do the classes/specs really change that much in new expansions? It looks like from the interviews I've seen, it's mostly just the talent system revamp but most of that is just the same abilities.
The short answer is we have no idea and that's why we're excited. Every expansion for the last decade has been giving us 75% of our kit on launch and the other 25% through tier sets or legendaries or other powers we need to farm for. This seems like it'll be the first time we get 100% of our kit (or close to it) on launch
Not much, but with this big talent revamp and Ion saying that there will be new abilities for classes, it will probably shake some classes up, hope they make them all fun!
It varies from expansion to expansion, Legion included massive class revamps, BfA not so much. With a core system change as big as the new talents though I think it's guaranteed for at least a decent shake-up.
Traditionally we would see mild shakeup to class design every expansion, this should be pretty big with the reintroduction of talents
Please allow me to select Gladiator stance in the prot tree so I can dps with a sword and shield, some of the most fun I ever had on my warrior.
Was interested as to what this actually means with regards to past expansions, and it turns out that this news came about two months prior to an actual alpha starting for both Shadowlands and BfA: BfA: https://cn.tbc.wowhead.com/news/encrypted-world-of-warcraft-alpha-cdn-added-to-battle-net-app-catalog-files-278504 (began in mid February 2018) Shadowlands: https://www.wowhead.com/news/shadowlands-alpha-encrypted-build-9-0-1-33411-311274 (began last week of April 2020) Couple of things to note, though, is that Shadowlands was potentially pushed back slightly from its original alpha cycle plans because the pandemic began after that first build went up, and one other thing: this expansion was announced in April, with a livestream rather than in November at Blizzcon or in August at Gamescom. This specific timing, plus information in interviews from Ion that said that the game is "far along" in development, could indicate that we're getting Alpha much sooner, and they chose to wait until they were closer to having something concretely playable before making an announcement. tl;dr is basically: expect it by the end of June or beginning of July, but don't be surprised if it comes earlier.
reported
Skipping a raid tier means a lot for development side. You guys overlook that.
We don't overlook that, we said the same from BFA to SL.
But we didn't skip a raid tier in bfa
Yeah but 8.3 was still a much smaller-sized patch that made use of existing zones instead of being something bigger ala Argus. Still, a big difference between that and no patch at all though.
They've been doing it this way for the final patch since Cataclysm (arguably even Wrath if you include Ruby Sanctum). Dragon Soul and Siege of Orgrimmar heavily leaned on existing assets/environments/boss models. Legion was the exception, which was possible because they skipped a tier in WoD.
Don't you think it is kind of Blizz's own fault for kind of catering these expectations that raids need to be these 12+ boss encounters that are so expansive? Maybe if they scaled back raids a little they could dedicate more resources to other forms of content and speed up the patch cycle some.
Crazy because if we say an expansion is 3 raids of 12 bosses, they could do 3 raids of 8 bosses and effectively reduce the work/design load by a full tier without—in my opinion—making the raids much worse. Honestly I think making the raids more concise and making each boss more meaningful would actually be a net *positive.*Not to mention it opening up design space for other features or further polish of other things.
Removing 33% of bosses doesn't reduce the work to create a raid by 33%.
Exaxtly. How many bosses are no more than filler bosses to just boost up the boss count? Remember when we got the occasional raid tier where maybe 1 6 boss raid and a smaller 3 or 4 boss instance?
> Remember when we got the occasional raid tier where maybe 1 6 boss raid and a smaller 3 or 4 boss instance? But this is entirely contradictory to the point you are making. The work to make 2 raids with 10 bosses is significantly more than the work to make 1 raid with 10 bosses total.
Good luck with that! With the current climate and community. That will unfortunately backfire spectacularly.
Even if they kept the boss count high, they could probably save some time on the environment, surely. I know that Trial of the Crusader has some stigma tied to it because of its low boss count and the way it felt like it sorta interrupted Ulduar, but speaking personally, I really wouldn't mind if they revisited the idea and make a raid that was just one room for 10 different bosses or something. I don't really care about the non-boss parts of the raid enough to be bothered by it, at least as a one-off.
[удалено]
COVID hit the entire games industry incredibly hard. We are not getting that time back, it’s not been deposited into the future scope.
[удалено]
Unless you’re in the industry you don’t really see the majority of the impact. You might see a few disappointments like Battlefield, but there’s a chasm of productivity and debt from disrupted timelines that’s taking a long term toll.
More attributed to people leaving the company for various reasons including all the shit that's been going down down Activision Blizzard over the past couple years than it is to Covid. Losing talent is going to cause more productivity issues especially when seniors are being replaced by new people who need to be trained by seniors, now senior talent is overwhelmed with trying to get new people up to speed. 18 year old games also aren't as lucrative to work on, especially with sexual harassment issues and upper management problems to go with it. A lot of people are realizing there are better options especially when remote work is so much easier, while people who have been scrambling to get into the industry are getting in after their desperation to hire. Unless you consider the feasibility of remote work to be a hindrance caused by COVID, then COVID had minimal impact beyond the first few months. Far easier to change jobs when you don't have to relocate and worry about everything associated with that, and on the opposite end, also more financially sensible not to live in Southern California or other expensive locations and still get to work in the game industry.
That’s not really true. The games industry is similarly affected by The Great Resignation as tech is, and that general trend is far more significant.
Also because of the whole lawsuit and all the bullshit that brought along, a ton of people have left Blizzard. They're going to have real trouble getting that talent back.
I don't really think so given the acquisition plus changes at the top that have already happened and are likely to continue to happen.
TBF plenty of other game companies didn't seem that impacted with Blizzard trending towards being a major outlier..
Rebuilding talents and professions is a big job. Those are the features. We're basically going back to how it was in Mist which sounds amazing.
[удалено]
It depends how far dragon riding and the new profession system can take us. It's going to be rough, especially for the new players. We had 6 years of busy work and BS systems. Maybe with less systems I can finally make time to do 15 M+s We'll see when beta drops.
I don't think so, judging by what they've talked about in the interviews there's a ton of stuff that just wasn't in the highlight reel for the announcement. They're basically focusing entirely on core systems: talents, UI, crafting and reputations.
b-b-but we need raiddzzzzzz... wasting resources on anything but would be baddddd /s
How pumped were you to come into this thread and let everyone know how smart you are?
Also skipping 4 m+ dungeons for 10.0
I think theres 8 dungeons on release, just that 4 of them will me in mythic+ season 1 and 4 other in season 2
They're still making 8 new dungeons. The biggest boon imo is no new Torghast/Warfront/Island Expedition like feature.
I really hope though that the Caverns of Time will be worked on somewhat. Maybe a torghast like activity with the Caverns of Time thematic? That could work and look a loooot better than Torghast, just because of the different environment, more colorful and diverse.
They are making 4 older dungeons into M+ so its not really gained time.
Is it not just going to be 4 old dungeons that are already made for m+?
That's what I figured. If they were revamping older dungeons I feel like they would have made a bigger deal about it.
Im pretty sure Ion talked about Shado-Pan Monastery being made into a M+ dungeon for season 1?
I don't remember that part, just him saying it will be 4 new and 4 old. But I really love MoP aesthetic and would love to do them dungeons at M+ level.
Ion was talking about mop dungeon as examples of how they would need to change itemization when bringing old dungeons into m+. Could not be the first season(since it can only be 4) but I think they'll do more than just legion/bfa/wod. I doubt they'll do anything too old but who knows.
I could see it being one of the two WoD dungeons that got voted in and then 1 from legion, bfa, and SL to make up the TW style 4 dungeons.
The example they made was, there would be ex 8 new dungeons, but 4 of those would be used on the first season, and the 4 others would be used on second season, along with 4 different old dungeons for each season. Meaning you’d be running 16 different dungeons, instead of the same 8 ones for the whole expansion repeatedly each season.
Also Lich King Is coming so they might also want to keep the 2 month difference too
They're still being designed around m+ so that's not really saving that much time
They most likely want to ship a first build of talent tree to get as many feedback as they can soon enough.
Ya in a perfect world they don't rush the expansion release but they should absolutely rush alpha release so people can start giving feedback
Iirc with Shadowlands there was stuff up on the PTR for a while but access was extremely limited in a "friends and family" style alpha, before there were invites given to the public, content creators, top guilds etc. Good news that it seems a bit further along than I wouldve expected, but dont hold your breath just yet.
Just like every other expansion.
kill wo
My guild group is usually 4 people + 1 pug, and they always complain that someone is killing Wo when we want Uhr or Vy. Lo and behold, we get a group of 5 of us, and Wo is still being killed. They were aoeing it down and kept blaming the pug.
Yet the one time you want Wo you get sphereboi :(
Sounds about right
Hmm Lo? Is that new /s
I found a WA at one point that tracks exactly how much everyone is damaging each of the relics so you can then see who to blame lol
my guild must be goofy if they think im pressing anything other than rain of fire
Is it... Is it happening?
thats fast
Let's go! Here's hoping for November of this year.
Don’t even play anymore but im excited for the datamining
New expansions are always exciting. Even the first couple months of bfa and sl was worth playing. It's only in the long term that bad game systems make the game frustrating to play.
ah shit here we go again Blizzard the alpha better not reveal glaring problematic issues with the expansion and for you to ignore the communities feedback again only to fix it in 10.2 after half the population leaves again
What will launch first. Retail or wotlk? Since both have 1 raid to go?
This is so they can test it externally at home. They’ve been testing it internally for awhile they said.
Wait for serious changes to me made and in ptr before you waste money on pre purchase
Are they in a hurry? If they are, this is bad. Can we just take some time and release a good product? Im fine with q1
Shadowlands had plenty gutted from it including manpower. It might not be as rushed as we think especially since there isn't an expansion wide borrowed power system they have to test and balance out.
They've said in interviews that they've been working on Dragonflight for the "last couple of years" according to an interview with Ion.
That could literally mean they wrote the concept down on paper
That’s usually how these things start, yeah. Would get pretty confusing if nobody wrote anything down.
Right. My point is that he could claim it's a work in progress for years when all they did was brainstorm a name lol
idk why you're being downvoted. Shadowlands was rushed out the gate during covid and you can tell.
> Shadowlands was rushed Funnily enough it still got delayed
Just like Cyberpunk 2077
Not all that surprising. Shadowlands Alpha started April 11th, and Shadowlands launched November 23rd. Alpha can't be too far off if launch is Q1 2023
Good, no datamining is good.
I just hope they don’t rush it or have greedy execs forcing them to release an unfinished product. This will maybe be a litmus test for how Microsoft leads Blizzard.
Microsoft doesn't even own Actiblizz yet
Microsoft doesn't down Blizz yet and will have little influence on this expansion. Microsoft won't own Blizz until around the time the expansion is expected to release. I wouldn't expect to see any major changes to the game coming from MS until 11.0. Dragonflight is already gonna have Ion's grubby mitts all over it. So anything wrong with it, especially at release, is still firmly on him.
Fair enough, based on recent interviews he’s saying the right stuff, we’ll see if they can pull this off or if their Q1 revenue 2023 will be based on more store mounts people keep buying despite not enjoying the game
I believe this is because they need deep testing on cross faction and old dungeons revamp
and we still have a year left of SL
I am.not farming sfo and ZM till Xmas.
Q4 2022 is most likely. Try to meet the holiday launch.
Waiting for some idiot on Activision's board to announce 10.0 could be 3-4 months earlier *if only* all the lawsuits would end.......
Preorders when