Cataclysm HINT

[alcattle]

From Gamestop ad 12-3-09


World of WarCraft: Cataclysm

Pre-order Ships 11/1/2010

[Fursphere]

lol

I find that hard to believe. 3.3 is going live next week, and we've been "told" its the last content patch of Wrath. So A YEAR with no more patches? Ya.. they'd lose a ton of subscriptions.

I'm guessing Q2, 2010.

When does Star Wars MMO is scheduled for "2010" - so I'd bet whenever its released, you'll see Catacylsm at the roughly the same time. (Blizzard did the exact same thing with BC and Wrath... )

[Svpernova09]

Retailers have NEVER had accurate ship dates this far in advance, why would they start now?

Incoming Speculation:

With the drawn out gated release of ICC. the date is kinda later than what I was thinking, they'll bug fix until the first cataclysm patch (4.0.x). But there will be an entire Beta process that I imagine will start near march / april. If everything goes "well", ICC will be opened over 4 weeks, maybe longer. That puts no one downing Arthas until Dec 29th at the VERY earliest (assuming 3.3 is /this tuesday) The last BC patch (2.4.3) was released on 7/15/08, we didn't see 3.x until 10/14/08. So 3 months from last BC patch to first Wrath. Ulduar was released 5/14/09 and we got ToC on 8/4/09 so 3 months for an entire content tier. Assuming Dec 8th for 3.3 ICC, that puts 4 months for the ToC content tier. Kinda long for such a small amount of content, probably because it was nearly a month before anyone saw Anub. I'd say with the ICC gating their going to stretch 3.3 to 5-6 months. This would put the first Cataclysm patch (updated talents, not actual release) around May / June 2010. Any longer than that, and they're going to seriously risk subscriptions because of lack of content / stale content.

[Fursphere]

Didn't I just say that? lol

(and check your dates - you goofed some years)

[Bot]

gamestop did the same thing with wrath. it made a small stink and turns out it was just a guess on their part (actualy a pretty good one at that). im assuming this is the same thing. just a way for them to get their hands on some cash that they can get some interest on for a while. essentially a free money for them.


http://www.nerfbat.com/2007/08/08/wr...-release-date/
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/07/ga...ng-pre-orders/

[Ridere]

Wasn't Black Temple the scheduled final patch for BC, though? And they threw in Isle of Daily quests as a filler, because they needed more time?

I'm in no rush, to be honest. I created my space goats a few months before WotLK rolled out, so there's still a lot of old world/BC content that I'd like to take care of before Cata is released. I'd really like to focus on Cata only once it's released.

[Svpernova09]

Didn't I just say that? lol

(and check your dates - you goofed some years)

I was just providing support to your date in generalizing time between patches. even if I'm time challenged


where did I park the delorian....

[Lyonheart]

Wasn't Black Temple the scheduled final patch for BC, though? And they threw in Isle of Daily quests as a filler, because they needed more time?

I'm in no rush, to be honest. I created my space goats a few months before WotLK rolled out, so there's still a lot of old world/BC content that I'd like to take care of before Cata is released. I'd really like to focus on Cata only once it's released.

No.. BT was supposed to go in at BC launch. They decided to save it for later so they could fine tune it, and they did not want people burning through 3 tiers of content too fast. Sunwell was planned from the start and was always going to be the end of BC.

[Bovidae]

Retailers are required to attach a deliver date to presale items, even if it is just an estimation. Their guess is as good as yours.

[heffner]

My guess:

Patch 3.3 - ICC - Dec 2009
Patch 3.31 to 3.5 - Bug Fixes for ICC - Jan/Feb 2010
Patch 3.9 - ICC dumbed down - Mar/Apr 2010
Patch 4.0 to 4.2 - Cataclysm World Events - Aug to Oct 2010
Cataclysm - Nov 2010