Hello everyone, in the previous blue post where they spoke about a new XP buff coming to TBC and fresh WoTLK serers, they leaked possible dates for WoTLK classic. Below I managed to give us a rough possible release date:
First things first, they said:
“In the coming weeks, we will implement a global buff that we’re calling “Joyous Journeys”.”
This means that the buff is coming in 2-3 weeks, aka 6-13 July. Next, they are hinting at the Pre-Patch release date which is few weeks after this buff drops:
“but we expect it to last for at least 6-8 weeks; beginning a few weeks before the 3.4.0 Pre-Patch and persisting right up until the day that Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches.”
If the buff drops few weeks before the WoTLK pre-patch, this means that the pre-patch will drop 2-3 weeks after 6-13 July, giving an estimation, this would be 20-27 July and last for 6-8 weeks, leaving us with a possible release of WoTLK between 31st of August and 21st of September.
This is all based on what they are implying with this blue post which is pretty ambiguous, a Blizzard’s speciality.
All things aside, it feels pretty rushed to me. The beta isn’t out yet and they are hinting at a possible release date already. I was expecting it to come in early/mid October, but I guess a new SoM is starting mid November so they wanted to give some time for people to play Wrath before that.
I don’t want to bring retail here, but they’ve announce that the latest expansion, Dragonflight will be released this year before 31st of December which is a really rushed date. Most of the people were expecting the new expansion to hit live servers around March/April 2023, giving everyone who wanted to play Wrath and Retail simultaneously some time to get things sorted in Wotlk. I won’t be surprised if they postpone the release date of Dragonflgith by 1-2 months as they previously did with Shadowlands and for the love of God I hope they do so.
It seems to me that they could have had a solid release plan for Wrath, SoM and Retail, but they decied to cramp all of them up within few months of each other which is bad for their business as they will compete with themselves for players between each version of the game.
In my opinion, it would have seemed more logical to release Wrath in early/mid October, SoM in mid Novemeber as this attracts mostly Classic Andys that don’t wanna play anything else, and give some time for people to enjoy Wrath until some of them decide to play Dragonflight concurrently or switch for good. But what do I know, I’m not working for Blizzard having experience with such things.strong text
If those bonuses have a cap (supposedly), it would be illogical to have everything in the last quarter