9.2 ETA? Another 8 months?

Community General Discussion
103

12+. they gotta do 9.1.5 and then delay 9.2 for a tbc patch

104

This. Blizzard (because of Activision) is focused on money rather than content. They’re going to do what they want to make money and like heck they would miss a holiday season.

Statistics has new expansions coming out every 2.15 years, ± a couple of months.

If we get 9.2 in 6 months that would be December/January. That would give them 8-10 months to prep for the next expansion. And that doesn’t even include Prepatches for 10.0 a month in advance. So, we have a couple of scenarios

  1. If there is a 9.3, they would be forced commercially to push 10.0 to Holiday 2023, which would give Shadowlands 3 years (which would be unheard of) and NOBODY would be happy about it.

  2. They put the Dev team in hyper-crunch and put 9.2, and 9.3 every 3-4 months. This would (hypothetically) be placed around Nov, Feb/Mar, May/Jun in order to have 10.0 be released Nov 2022. The Dev gets overworked, therefore the content will be shoddy, and EVERYBODY would be upset about it.

  3. Scrap 9.3. We go from no victories against Jailer to curb-stomping him in 1 expansion. He see the Jailer’s covenant realm, which I assume is where he scuttled off to at the end of the cinematic, and nuke it from orbit. We band the covenants together and defeat him with the power of friendship or some other Deux Ex Machina. Sylvanas and Bolvar will fight side-by-side to defeat the Jailer before He can snap his fingers. Which is just like Yrel and Grom banding together to defeat Archimond. Majority of people gripe, but they can at least prep for the next expansion and put this behind it.

It’s looking like WoD all over again. Things will have to be cut. Villains will become Allies (I’m still salty about Grom). People will die (Anduin). People will live (Sylvanas) and there will be bad conclusions to conflicts (Thrall and Garrosh’s Mok’rah [Thrall cheated like a coward]).

But yeah, I REALLY don’t see how they could fit in a 9.3 when the Execs will be breathing down their necks.

1 Like
105

Blizzard has never been in this bad of a position before internally. They just don’t have the team or talent to make a new expansion.

1 Like
106

I imagine you’re forgetting that there’s a significant portion of the population that doesn’t really care about group content and instead focuses on other things. Such as reputations, professions, collections, open-world gear progression, and so on.

For those people this is a pretty anemic patch.

The fact that, historically, that number has always been higher than most people think is the issue. During MoP MMO-C reported that upwards of 60-70% of players had done LFR, but less than 50% had done normal, and even less had done Heroic. This wasn’t a single raid tier, though, it was consistent across the expansion.

Despite what some think, I doubt the demographics have changed much. Outside of WoD, which saw massive die off (and coincidentally had almost nothing for players who didn’t raid/dungeon/pvp), and Shadowlands which has content but nothing meaningful from it, the game has only gotten better over the years for casuals.

Ergo I posit that at least 1/3rd of WoW players aren’t interested in raids and dungeons as longform content. Outside of queueable content it could be as much as half. Which is too large a number to say “you’re playing the wrong game” and also too large a number to just say “well there’s content if you want to do it” when they clearly don’t want to.

Sounds to me like this patch just doesn’t provide for a large portion of the player base.

2 Likes
107

They need to cut their losses and just work on 10.0. Put Systemlands on life support (even moreso than it is) and put all resources into making 10.0 not garbage.

6 Likes
108

New zone is actually pretty likely. (Or at least something along the lines of the N’zoth invasions)

New raid is a given. Raids plural is probably not, unless they do a mini raid.

Torghast changes of some form are probably going to happen just because of how much of the expansion is concentrated on it.

All major patches are going to include a bunch of stuff. We’re never getting another Selfie Cam patch.

Whether it should take 8 months to do it on the other hand

It might, but it shouldn’t.

109

When we get to 9.1.5 I wonder how large the fish tale for how long of a wait it was for 9.1 will have grown.

110

i honestly wouldn’t care as long as its got tons to do but you know how that goes. 8 months ain’t that long you guys act like it’s a limetime. you get bored there is other things in life or maybe do all the content available currently if you get bored easily idk 8 months is not that long it’s a wow player problem of i play the game way to much and rush to do what i want then i’m bored. not blizz’s problem to fix player addiction.

111

For reals! I love how balanced it feels! And there is so much to do and see! I have a Mesmer, Guardian and Elementalist so far!

112

We’re in our second week of 9.1 and people are already demanding 9.2

I’m gonna just jump the gun.

12.3 when?

113

That’s the thing though. Can they get back on track? Personally, I don’t think they can.

114

To be fair, the only content which has remained regular is the release of repeatable content like Raids and Dungeons.

Other things like story content or unique content are heavily time gated or drip fed.

Plus this re-used assaults and added a extremely tiny zone. The zone is good but the content isn’t enough at all.

115

Does anyone remember how small Timeless Isle is?

Or the Isle of Quel’danas?

I swear Argus spoiled everyone. (Granted, I’d like to be spoiled like that again.)

116

Uhh does anyone remember that ALL these examples came at the end of expansions filled to the brim with content?

Of course not. That would counter the post :wink:

117

BC was not filled with new zone every patch.
You got a raid and a new PVP season, and you got to have a dungeon along with Quel’danas.

BC only felt like it was brimming with stuff to do because we weren’t as optimized as we are now.

Also, it’s even worse in the last patch, because you sit in the last patch for a year at a time.

118

So what about Timeless Isle and MoP? BC came off the back of a new game release and yes as you said, people didn’t know better.

And what about your “spoilt brat” argument about Argus? Are you going to tell us a joke that Legion didn’t have content filled to bursting? :smiley:

119

You completely reversed the point about Argus.

Yes, Legion spoiled us. Yes, that was awesome and I’d like to go back to that.
But most of the game’s history hasn’t been like Legion, and Legion came off the back of the lowest content expansion ever.

(Why does it keep breaking quotes?)

120

Explain what is “fraudulent” about it?? There has never been ANY promise of new content on a specific time basis in this game. Don’t throw around words you don’t understand.

121

No Legion did not spoil us.

It was par for the course and should be a example to be followed for every expansion.

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122

Aside from raids, they literally added ONE island that wasn’t even planned to begin with, but was tacked on because Wrath was taking longer than anticipated. There was NO added casual content in patches AT ALL until the Trial of the Crusader patch in Wrath aside from Isle of Quel’danas. The “glory days”, so to speak, featured absolutely nothing that wasn’t available on launch day for non-raiders, with minor exceptions like Dire Maul and Mauradon. New raids were essentially all patches were until very late Wrath, and only in Cataclysm and Mists did the idea of what we consider an “acceptable content patch” today even begin to materialize, but even Cata only had the Molten Front and some rehashed troll heroics and dungeons. The “whole new zone every patch” thing didn’t start until Isle of Thunder.