They have been basing phase on PvE content releases. That is why Wrath has 5 phase. Why do I said that? Well, it isn’t by major patches. Wrath would have only had 4 phases then. Hell Vanilla Classic would have had 12. What do the two expansions that didn’t introduce battlegrounds later to replicate the original release of the game do… It is separated by raid release. No more no less, but you go ahead and believe what you want to believe for whatever side you want to push.
I’ll be here just not at all bothered when in less than a year from Cataclysm Classic launch we are already done with Deathwing and are in MoP if Blizzard sticks to their statement of speeding things up.
Yeah, don’t think Blizzard at all cares about pvp season anymore… or they are making them shorter. Either way the average phase length has been 16 weeks.
Doesn’t matter how long a retail expansion lasted for. The actual content of each one in less than the time they took. Each one had a huge gap where there were content droughts because they were still making the next expansion. On average this was about a year, but ranged from around .54 years to 1.25 years… and note the majority are in the 75-100% year mark. Vanilla to TBC and TBC to Warth being the lower outlier while MoP to WoD and WoD to Legion are the higher outlier.
Yeah… to bad they already stated they wanted to speed up content… and their own road map has us in Firelands around October. Which at that pace would put Dragonsoul to launch around January of 2025.
I guess we are arbitrarily going to stay in Dragon Soul for 6-month so that Cataclyms can take longer than a year so that we catch up to retail slower… You know so the people can stop playing and drop off. Gotta love losing money right?
No, we will be in MoP Classic May/June 2025
Every expansion isn’t going to take 18 months. Vanilla and TBC are outliers. Hell Wrath is an outlier. The majority of expansions are shaped like Cataclysm. Which finishes in under a year by their own roadmap.
I know that common sense, and using all the information available to you is hard. I know it won’t support your argument, but it would give you accurate numbers to go off instead of basing numbers of the longer version of the game… instead of you know what is to come… and what Blizzard themselves have told you is to come.
The issue with you… is that you think people are stupid… so you disregard them without reading their post… You assume you are right, and instead of second-guessing yourself. You double down.
Everyone knows retail is continuing. If you at all read my post. You would know that I included that continuation and that catch-up point would be around the 4th expansion after The Last Titan.
Retail is continuing at a slower rate than Classic. They aren’t equivalent. At the moment Retail comes out with 1 expansion per 2 years. Blizzard has stated they want to increase that to 1 expansion per 1.5 years. We do not know if Blizzard is going to stick to that 1.5 years estimate or is going to end up staying with their 2 year history. Classic going forward due to the streamline in expansion design is going to finish every expansion in about 48-51 Weeks(3 16-week phases give or take a week or two). That isn’t taking into account Blizzard’s statement of wanting Classic to go faster
This means in the middling scenario in which Classic doesn’t speed up, but Retail doesn’t either. Classic is doing 2 expansions in the time that Retail is doing 1. This means by the time The Worldsoul Saga ends. Classic would be finishing Shadowlands and Going into Dragonflight. Lets put another trilogy after The Worldsoul Saga (and this is major speculation as it is assuming The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan follow the same paradigm every expansion outside of BfA and WoD followed (3 Tiers of raiding). During that first expansion Classic would be doing Dragonflight and The War Within. During the Second expansion Classic would be doing Midnight and The Last Titan. During the Third expansion Classic would be doing the First and Second Expansion. During the expansion that happens after the second trilogy. Classsic would be both finishing the second trilogy and the expansion that came after it.
At that point Classic and Retail merge into one… Time taken to catch up about 13 years.
Now assuming the best case scenario for your argument. Retail speeds up to 1.5 years per expansion and Classic stays at its current pace of 16-week average phases or 1 expansion a year. This would put things are a pace of 2 retail expansion per 3 classic expansions. Also lets assume Blizzard likes the trilogy format and will just keep that going forward for naming purposes.
Cata, MoP, WoD = TWW, Midnight
Legion, BFA, SL = TLT, ST1
DF, TWW, Midnight = ST2, ST3
TLT, ST1, ST2 = TT1, TT2
ST3, TT1, TTR2 = TT3, FT1
TT3, FT1, FT2 = FT2. FT3
FT3, 5T1, 5T2 = 5T1, 5T2
Once again we are all caught up. Retail and Classic merge with the release of Fifth Trilogy 3. Total catch-up time 21 years. Still a decade shy of the 30+ years that you and another have been spouting.
Now for funsies. Let’s go with the worst-case scenario for your argument. One that is possible since the content is already made, but would be sad to see from retails management end. Maybe the devs couldn’t hack it, Maybe Microsoft decided they had a record-breaking year and needed to celebrate by firing half the staff. Who knows, but what holds true is that Retail did not speed up, but Classic did. Let’s say this speed-up is to go from 16 weeks a phase average to 12 weeks a phase average. As a speed up -1 month makes sense. This would put the ratio of 3 Classic expansions to 1 Retail expansions. Which would look like this
Cata, MoP, WoD = TWW
Legion, BfA, SL = Midnight
DF, TWW Midnight = TLT
TLT, ST1 = ST1
We have caught up and merged in 8 years for Second Trilogy 2.
and to be complete and do the final scenario based of Blizzard’s statements. What if both Retail and Classic hold true to their speed up? Well the ratio is tiny bit more difficult to find, but it is 9 Classic expansions for every 4 Retail expansions. This happens over the course of 6 years. Why those numbers. Well as mentioned earlier with the speed up Classic you have roughly 3 expansions in 2 years and with Retail you’d have roughly 2 expansions in 3 years. The closest matching year amount is 6. Which looks something like this
Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion, BfA, SL, DF, TWW, Midnight = TWW, Midnigt, TLT, ST1.
TLT, ST1, ST2, ST3 = ST2, ST3
Caught up we would merge for Third Trilogy 1. Time to catch up roughly 9 years.
TL:DR
Both Retail and Classic stay the same speed = Catches in 13~ years finishing expansion 17 together.
Retail speeds up, but Classic doesn’t = Catches in 21~ years finishing expansion 24 together.
Retail doesn’t speed up, but Classic does = Catches in 8~ years finishing expansion 15 together.
Both Retail and Classic speed up = Catches in 9~ years finishing expansion 16 together.