Yep, they start working on the next expansion before the current one releases.
So Dragonflight was already being worked on, in a concept stage, before Shadowlands launched. After all the assets for 9.2 were finished (which happened before 9.2 hit the PTR), they were free to move most of the creative development team over to Dragonflight as well, which no doubt helped considerably.
Perhaps, and yet is it just coincidence that Blizzard always has something to release at nearly the same time as competing games? The idea that they time releases to maximize profit feels far from unlikely.
Yeah. There are “hot” weeks throughout the year for every industry. The announcements are planned to happen that way.
That’s not the same thing as thinking blizzard accidentally locked themselves out of an international market and then turned around and prematurely ejected the Dragonflight expansion.
So, as with the six month mounts being added at strategic times to bolster quarterly reports, content and other news releases make sense also being released with the reports in mind.
To be blunt, I don’t think they’re prematurely releasing Dragonflight. I think the end of the year was always their targeted date. What I’m suggesting is that news of Diablo Immortal being indefinitely delayed in China may have resulted in them releasing news and Pre-Orders for Dragonflight ahead of schedule, because again, we are VERY close to the start of a new quarter where they won’t have much to market, a quarter that would NEED those Pre-Orders to fluff the numbers for the quarterly reports.
I doubt it.
It takes weeks to create those assets, the pages, the art, the mailers, etc. They definitely had been planning it for a long time.
Which I’m not disagreeing with. I’d be shocked if it all wasn’t ready a month ago. Which makes it easy to release yesterday, a week or two shy of the new quarter.
Yeah they plan these things literally months in advance.
When the Dreadwake mount released a few years ago, people accused Blizzard of ‘releasing something to shore up numbers for quarterly reports etc’ and a Blizzard employee actually got snarky and said: “Or maybe it’s because we plan these things in advance for months, but what do I know? I’m only the person that creates this stuff…”
both wotlk classic AND dragonflght are being rushed.
Imagine, imagining that the comment you’ve quoted was truly meant to be taken literal and not seen as me being facetious. IMAGINE!
People keep saying it’s being rushed. HOW is it being rushed? It’s been almost 2 years since SL launched.
In the past an alpha tended to indicate anywhere from 6 months to a year away, and we’re about 6 months away from the proposed launch without even a hint of alpha.
I think that’s why people are saying its rushed. Personally, I don’t see it. Just like Legion didn’t take too long because they ended WoD early, I think Dragonflight is sooner than expected because Shadowlands ended early.
My apologies…it’s hard to tell sometimes 
Or maybe I’m just too cynical.
It actually got delayed in China because the game got reported to their government because it was so egregious.
They’re having to change their monetization in order to do so. 
It’s not rushed, it’ll come out 11 months into 9.2. That is an entirely normal final patch runtime.
It was announced late, since no blizzcon in November, and that’s why you think this is too soon.
Since we’re about 6 months away i expect alpha is very imminent.
DI was actually made by a chinese game company, Netease, and DI is basically a reskin of one of their other games in china, just done with Diablo assets instead of thier own. its called Champions of the Light. you can look em up and they look pretty identical. So no the Chinese Govt has no issues with these P2W games.
Yeah, it’s far more likely there was something unacceptable with the skeletons or the corpses or something like that. They are pretty strict on dead bodies and such being in their games. WoW had to chain the skeleton stuff for China as well.
you ever see a vid about that? like all the loaves of bread laying around Scholomance instead of piles of flesh. its pretty funny.
Apparently, it was for technical reasons as China has more diverse phones/tablets as well as better internet.
ISTR they passed a law against certain mobile games that were essentially gambling – something to do with loot boxes? D: I could fall under that.
In china?!
And we don’t? what upside down world am I living in