^ just some possible guesses
Honestly as long as whatever the story is takes place “on Azeroth” I’ll be happy 
The “cosmic space fatigue” is real 
Y’all do realize they don’t just leave those jobs vacant, right? They either promote from inside or hire from outside. They have more than enough applicants to fill a swimming pool. They’ll have people to complete the work. The only real thing that will hurt development time will be a strike of most existing employees. I did a search for how many WoW developers the recent strike included, but only found numbers for ABK in general, which was about 200 people, so I don’t think they’ll take a huge hit on that for now. Time will tell, though.
I doubt it I can see wrath classic coming out this year but as for a new current retail my guess is fall of 2023. Also didn’t Blizzard say they were canceling Blizz-con this year also.
I hope so, but I also know that’s very optimistic
4th quarter is huge for AAA games, so I imagine they’d definitely want to release it somewhere around November at the latest, but sadly based in how the expansion has been handled so far, I really doubt they can.
Above everything else, they need to make damn sure the next expansion is a good one. People already had a very sour taste in their mouths coming from BfA, so Shadowlands just added insult to injury to most of the player base. I imagine they’ll want to take their time to ensure it doesn’t repeat for the 3rd time in a row.
And if I were them, I’d definitely get a new writing team too, because out of everything that Shadowlands has done wrong, I believe the story is way up there in the list.
Blizzard would lose so much money, they would almost certainly go bankrupt. WoW is Blizzard’s cash cow. Every list I’ve found says Overwatch is the top seller at 30 million, but you only buy that once, and have some microtransactions. Same with Diablo III. The lists I’ve seen put WoW at 12 million, but that was peak subscribers, not total sales and subscriptions. WoW is a constant stream of cash, and every two years there’s a boost in sales.
The investors expect returns every couple of years, and extending an expansion an extra year will cut into their profits. It won’t happen. It’ll come out this holiday season, or at the very latest, January of 2023.
I could see Wrath Classic coming out and no doubt it’ll bring in numbers but as for late this year early January I really don’t think it’ll happen with all the commotion going on at blizzard now it’s just hard to believe an early 2023 release.
Will it come with a mount I’ll rarely use, or a cosmetic Tmog option I’ll never use? If so, SOLD!
So, you think they’d put out a classic version of the game before retail? I could only see that if there was any indication we were getting a new classic, which we haven’t seen being hinted at yet. Retail brings in the money. No matter how bad people think the expansions are, they’re new and they want to experience them. Yes, classic WotLK will be cool, but it’s not going to pull as many people to the game as is already here waiting for new retail content. TBCC is a great example of that.
It’ll be a flying mount that won’t be able to be used until the expansion after. So, you can have it, just can’t use it.
Yes. The expansion that they haven’t announced, hinted at, or talked about in any capacity is 100% launching this year.
I think Classic Wrath will be the last of the classics. It’ll be getting to the point where the classic community will be even more fractured than they already are. Cata was the shift to the modern era and while I personally would like to relive a classic Cata and/or MoP, I doubt it’ll happen or even if they’ll live up to things…much like Classic Vanilla and TBC can in no way live up to the actual expansions themselves.
Because they’re waiting for people to see what the final patch has, storywise. I’d imagine the next expansion contains a lot of Shadowlands spoilers. But 9.2 will be the final content patch. It has been verified. They’re not going to let 9.2 drag on for well over a year.
" It (Shadowlands) was announced and made available for preorder at BlizzCon on November 1, 2019 ."
" The WoW Shadowlands release date is November 23, 2020."
So no. If it was going to come out January of 2023, a year from now, they would be announcing it now.
Oops, at least one person already posted this above 
Also:
Original Wow, plus a lot of expansions, were around November? My guess would be they’d be announcing an expansion around November 2022, at the earliest, for a year later.
I don’t see how it COULD be before fall 2023, at this point. Remember that you have to use addition and add whatever the regular time frame would be with a “COVID Cushion.”
I doubt if Covid played into Shadowlands release heavily, since a lot of the work would have already been done. Meanwhile, this would be the opposite. This will be the first expansion that will have been totally worked on in this “forever pandemic.”
Blizzard normally releases an expansion trailer and announcement before the X.3 patch comes out. So imo, we would see an expansion announcement now, even without knowing the wrap-up of our 9.2 patch coming out. The issue here is that the X.2 usually has enough spoiler content for us to really guess how the X.3 patch will play out. Like 8.2 and 7.2 really showing us a lot of what’s coming next.
Since we’re not getting an X.3 and it’s being combined with 9.2 with it’s lore, I think there’s a new issue. We don’t have the X.2 lore in it’s entirety to be able to release an expansion trailer.
So the release window for the 10.0 trailer, which is already made by now, is probably coming out either after the 9.2 release date is fully announced and/or after Anduin dies and the lore is revealed. Then they’ll go ahead and release the 10.0 trailer off schedule.
There are 3 eras really in WoW and you can see it in design.
The Classic Era- Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath.
The Metzen Era- Cata and Mists
The Modern Era- WoD, Legion, BFA, and Shadowlands
So you honestly think they’re going to wait ANOTHER year before giving us a new expansion?! 
You must really want them to go bust.
How’s that Dunning-Kruger working out for you?
That is not an excuse! That hasn’t been an excuse for a year now! They’re cutting scheduled Shadowlands patches. They have already said 9.2 will be the final content patch of Shadowlands. We have 10 months until November, and that’s plenty of time to finish the expansion that was started two years ago.
I’d wager there will be an announcement within the next month, no later than the end of February.
They raids haven’t suffered in quality though, everything outside them has.
you think Thrall and Bolvar will ever help Jaina fight Anduin in the future?
or will they just keep watching
No. doubtful. There is a near 100% chance that they will be coming out with a WoTLK Classic and knowing their track record they will further try to kill Classic by splitting it into 3 parts.
I hope they will wait to release the next one. Dont rush it. make it super good.
professions are at the center of upgradeable legendary items, an integral part of player progress again.