The part that doesn’t make sense here is Blizzard has done patches and such in the Holidays before…the easy solution that they’ve used before is that 8.3 launches, say 12/10 or 12/17…but the raid doesn’t unlock until around 1/07. That way the Blizzard employees are still there, noone’s deciding whether to raid the new stuff or spend time with family, etc. 8.3 aside from the raid is perfectly acceptable as a mid-december release.
Then there’s the other part: “*World of Warcraft®: Shadowlands expansion available on or before December 31, 2020” This is the language on the pre-purchase. Now, some might say they’re just covering their bases, but previous releases with such preorder dates have been pretty close to the actual release dates.
BFA as the most recent example was “on or before Sept 21st”…it released August 14th, so 5 weeks difference. Now to be fair we’ve had content droughts much longer than the 11ish months that this timing would imply…but not recently, and not with the game in it’s current state of the playerbase being divided between classic and retail and Blizzard’s apparent refusal to merge lower-pop realms anymore.
To be fair they released BFA early see how that turned out. I am fine with them taking longer as long as it is not a dumpster fire like this expansion.
Antorus was the final raid, released November 28th. We got BFA on August 14th. I can’t see how that’s “rushed”. Poorly designed, indisputably, but that was hard-wired the moment azerite armor and essences were in place. BFA’s actual levelling zones were fine.
You might be right about it being pretty close to the end of next year before we see 9.0. This isn’t thrilling to learn, as things are already kind of slow at the current moment and I can only imagine people slowing down even more after 8.3 has been exhausted.
Here’s hoping this means 9.0 will come out super polished and awesome, though!
I agree with the merging… I think with the rest, that’s fine. They have spaced out the patches release dates this expansion so that every patch has a mini drought, instead of one long drought.
Considering at what stage they revealed the expansion and how much they’ve taken on. I am not surprised and I would rather they delay it and deliver something of quality instead of BFA-rushed.
Don’t let me get that 15% bonus xp toward my heritage armor
There will be riots in the STREETS if that happens.
I’m actually incredibly disappointed with this news. I am already struggling to find things to do after not only rolling Horde from the ground up on a brand new server, but grinding out all my voldunai rep and finally hitting exalted just the other day… I’m like… Maybe “8.3 lite” at the end of November with non-raid stuff, right?
Nope.
So more nothing to do for 2 months.
You know that feeling you get when there’s a game coming out that you really like, but there’s nothing to do in the space between now and when it comes out? I call that gamer’s depression. That empty feeling every gamer knows and gets in that void between games/content releases when you’ve done all you can and nothing seems fun because the thing you are looking forward to is just out of your reach.
I know. I’m just a drop on a huge ocean of gamers and I’d feel bad stressing out a dev team… but… just give us our ARs. Some of us don’t go anywhere for the holidays and would like something to do… and since my shiny new foxy is going to be my new main, I’d really like to outfit her with all the achievements/transmogs I possibly can.
The guilds who start Mythic Azshara in the next couple weeks would most definitely have to do progression during the holidays to have a chance at CE. This is what they are trying to avoid and they said it in the post.
8.3 Delayed? Did they announce a launch date that I missed then pull it back?
What are you talking about?
Oh… I get it. You think had some strange idea that 8.3 would hit in the middle of the holidays and now you want to spread misinformation because they reiterated what we all really already knew… No new content at holiday time.
I mean, I was hoping that my Priest would be a cute little fox in the next few weeks. But I knew it wouldn’t be so even as I was hoping.
No matter what cutoff you use though, you’re going to be cutting people off from that achievement. I would argue that a clean cutoff mid-december (after Thanksgiving but before Christmas) is much less likely to cause “holiday stress raiding” than 1/07 (which is likely, and would force some people to raid Christmas/New Years.
Or, a much easier solution (which I believe they’ve used before?) is that CE and AOTC are available until the next raid launch, not the 8.3 patch itself.
Screw holidays, people will have time off to play the patch.
I see nothing wrong with a first week of December release.
I want a reason to log in. My guild went on break two weeks ago. Not raiding, most folks dont log in. Do a 10 or so once a week and there it is, done for the week.
AR DKs could keep me busy, but nope. Cant have those now either.
They’ve always given 7ish months to finish a raid tier. Your solution gives less than 6 months. Also the patch often gives some extra power for guilds to get over the hump to get CE. So putting the holidays between the patch and the raid release would most definitely incentivize guilds to raid during that time.
Agreed. I used to really respect blizzard because they weren’t afraid to push back a release day in order to finish polishing and fine tuning a game. Sure it was disappointing but it was better in the long run. To me that shows they care about the quality of their product and aren’t just banking on things being “good enough”
