MOP release date speculationFollow

Because of the breadth and depth of changes they are making, I see this as a much longer beta process than any of their previous ones.

I'd be surprised if the game launches before Q42012.

This would be EPIC.

Edited, Apr 24th 2012 5:40pm by Bigdaddyjug

It will have to be before Q4 blizz will not make the players wait another 6 or 7 months without any new content. normal beta testing usually (at least for the last 2 expacs) is around 3 months give or take a couple of weeks so at the very latest in my opinion it has to be coming out late July -mid August.
Im just saying from personal experience that with no new content coming out things are already becoming boring. I haven't done all the heroic mode DS bosses yet but iv done a few seen the content so im pretty happy with my personal progress.

So as i said blizz will not keep players with the current content for too much longer and as much fun as it would be for brewfest to lead off MoP i think we will start seeing pre-MoP intro within the next month to month and a half and the mope release another month or so after the pre-event to put it around the july/augest release.

I'm going to pick fall, based on how ****** the beta is right now. They're still randomly fiddling with abilities and crap, so...yeah.

I'm going with August 14th. Give or take a month.

If the beta I'm playing is any indication of how things are going I'd say to Blizzard.......... Maybe in the fall. Five or six months from now.

Edited, Apr 25th 2012 6:27pm by djhawkone

July would be good as many are out of school and even work during that time. If they release it in August they'll have a problem as college and grade schools will be starting backup and most people aren't going to have the time for it. So if not July I'm going to guess at the earliest sometime in late October.

So my dates are... July 30th or October 14th.

On the other hand, Blizzard may be betting on the world coming to an end before they actually have to release it. In which case, they are part of some government conspiracy to keep us all blissfully distracted instead of mass panic bringing civilization to a standstill...before civilization is brought to a standstill.

5.0 will go live a month before the actual expac.


Theo hit the nail on the head. Quests aren't up, dungeons aren't open and most importantly balance of abilities is still very early beta. At this point that isn't too much of a worry. However if we get to May 20th or so and we aren't seeing fine tuning (as opposed to massive changes) I would probably expect either a fall release or else a launch similar to cataclysm.

You forgot a new class as well... Just sayin'.

& stat rebalance again for both expacs. Even a (over)simplification of stats like what we will see in MoP presents a challenge.

Both WotLK & Cata the content was fairly polished for release (though end game cata was lacking due to low level rework). It was balance that hurt both early on. In wotlk the content was balanced to the players and in Cata the players weren't balanced at all.

I still don't understand the point of MOP.

TBC had Illidan.
Wrath had LK.

Cata was a departure from the real lore (Meaning - it really didn't have anyone that I remembered from WC, WC II or WC 3 - with the possible exception of Cho'Gal). This sort of lost something for me. Who is/was DW? Why, again, should I care?

Now comes MOP and I have absolutely no idea who the bad guy is. I've heard rumors that there "Isn't a bad guy" - and that the fight is actually against the other faction. This isn't exceptionally exciting... Watching the TBC trailers (You are not prepared) and the Wrath trailers (Our line has always ruled...) got you interested... Cata was a let down... Now MOP doesn't have anything interesting.

Prior to the end of Wrath - I'd never heard of DW.

Perhaps I'm wrong or I missed it... Wiki says WC2 was released December 9th, 1995.

Varian and Garrosh are currently roughly equal mixed-morality characters, Varian dealing with everything he went through as a slave and desire for revenge conflicting with the needs of his people and Garrosh trying to hang onto honor despite the bloodlust and the urging from members of the Horde who have not rejected the old demon-tainted ways as easily as orcs like Thrall and Saurfang have. By the end of the expansion (going to happen in-game rather than "read the novel," yay!) Varian will rise into a new Uther/Lothar-like nobility (hopefully seeing it happen in-game will help lessen the issues we had with Thrall) and Garrosh will fall to being the final Big Bad. It's not going to be that way at the start of the expansion though, as the Alliance and Horde escalate their war into Pandaria we'll see events there influence the characters. This isn't TBC's "Illidan and the Burning Legion are mean nasty folks, but they're brooding in fortresses for now", Wrath's "Arthas is a mean nasty guy, but he's brooding in a fortress for now" or Cata's "Deathwing's a mean nasty dragon, but he's flying out of arrow range setting people on fire for now." There is no official Bad Guy at the start of the expansion, even if we know who'll end up as one.

Time will tell if they manage to pull it off.

Edited, Apr 26th 2012 12:58pm by selebrin