This is not a new strategy. MANY big game companies are in competition with each other, and need to market themselves to bring in new players or keep players. Being able to release games around other games releases/expansions keep the market in competition and allows a certain “hype” for the consumers.
It’s not a new practice because sHaDowLandS BAAD.
What you said would be a definition of competition…
What you saw was primarily a huge amount of people influenced by streamers and youtubers. Lot’s of what people call “band wagon” behavior. In fact, many of those youtubers and streamers returned to WoW shortly after, including most of those that follow them. It was/is “Trendy” to hate on shadowlands and it made peoples decisions about the game volatile.
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Still don’t have a Dawntrail release date lol. They’ll be at Pax next month though so maybe we’ll finally hear something.
Still no pre-order either, meanwhile TWW has been up for pre-order for months already trying to lock in those box sales. Can’t wait to see this barebones as heck expansion lol.
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Mistress Xuilian is selling a whole bunch of expensive cosmetics for 2.1 million (total for everything) that goes away “sometime in August” according to Blizzard.
Ostensibly the trigger for this is likely The War Within releasing.
I’m guessing August 27th, the last Tuesday of the month.
And I’ll bet we’ll have alpha before March ends.
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The setting isn’t my issue. It is SE as a whole that I am tired of.
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Just business.
Same reason that marvel and DC used to spar way back when, coming up with new characters about the same time, making huge moves in storylines, etc.
Just trying to do what you say…keep their base where theyre at.
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I actually miss the days a wow expansion would release long after an FF14 expansion, so I could do my FF14 quests first, get all up to date, then do wow as a side thing after.
The only problem I have with the why not both approach is what we saw in DF and the extreme rise of login all the time or it’s FOMO.
Professions, trading post, renown … all the grinds are ruled by this mechanism now and I hate it.
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And TWW looks to be just as nothingburger.
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Probably immediately after thanksgiving.
They could both be filler. 
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Summer ends September 21/22. So if it’s released Sept 29th it’s still technically a summer release …
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Probably not. Dawntrail, if I had to guess, is probably going to be either in May or June, TWW will probably be in August. I’m guessing based on the fact the FF16 crossover is supposed to be in April and they’ll probably use it as a little something to do just before the expansion drops.
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And thats exactly why shadowlands sucked. A LOT of feedback ignored to push it out when it wasnt ready.
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New to wow are you, because they have been doing that since the beginning. Oh and TWW is releasing mid August. Think FF will be before that
Yeah but let’s be honest, Wow had no real competition until FF14
WoD player here, seen blizz repeat this habit and release buggy products as a result.
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Ship it out. Fix it later. That’s not even just a Blizzard issue. That is industry wide.
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Only a few more months and we will be playing war within! I hope they have a cool pre patch event.