Either they plan to stick to their announced date of 31/12 and the next expansion will be by far the least prepared an polished expansion ever released. Because their is no way that they can do in 6 months what usually takes 8+ months.
Or they will delay it later this year, blaming it on the resurgence of COVID / the war in Ukraine / other global excuse.
Either way, players will not get what they want.
Delete season 4, extend season 3 and release DF in April/May. #HappyDays
The general reaction seems to be one of dismay that it’s happening this year.
Seen the odd thing having faith but on the whole seen more surprise.
They don’t need a 8 month long beta phase this time, because they don’t have tons of bloated borrowed power systems. Ion said in an interview that he’s happy with the development progress of the expansion. And it seems their development speed is a lot faster at the moment than it was about 2 years ago when Covid hit - just look at how fast Blizz has been in the last 6 months. They’re probably more used to and efficient at remote working than at the beginning of the pandemic.
I’m generally a pessimist, but I think Dragonflight will solid at release. And it will definitely get released this year. There’s no way they will delay it.
You don’t know this. Period.
You have no clue how far along they are. None of us do.
You know what I want?
People who only whine and complain and spread their negativity to take a nice long break and stop sharing their doom and gloom. That’s what I want. You’re right though… I will not get what I want.
So I choose to counter the negativity with positivity.
I think it’s going to be great. Back to basics. No weird new systems to develop.
I’m hoping that means a whole boatload of content. 
And sure; I’m just as clueless as the naysayers, because I don’t know how far along they are either. Once external alpha, or better yet closed beta starts we’ll have a better understanding of the state of the expansion.
The only thing we saw so far is this Unlock and Upgradeable gliding system.
I hope the new pre-order dragon is included, but I don’t think so since it’s a classic fly mount.
What, if they prepared this expansion early during shadowlands, when they gave up on it, and also decided to not make another raid tier
There might be similar customization options. We’ll see.
No.
Due to eu laws, that would cost them quite a bit to do at this point.
i’m always amazed that people have any faith left to give to blizzard this point how many times does blizzard have to stab you in the back before you get the point 
For me it’s not even about that. It’s about being negative all the time; it breeds more negativity. It’s not something I want to do.
So I choose to remain positive in my general outlook on the game. If it turns out not to be so; the worst thing that could happen for me, is me quitting the game (or taking a long break). That’s not so bad in the grand scheme of things.
It is pretty likely they will deliver. They started developing far far before this announcement. After all they scrapped whole major patch and raid tier in SL. DF was reason why.
This pretty much. Imagine how Shadowlands would turn out if they didn’t waste so many resources on covenant / soulbind systems. We would for sure get another patch with content, aswell as there would be so less negativity if it wasn’t for these.
And now they waste a lot of time on new talent trees that should give us ~the same as we have now 
I’m a copium addict and I genuinely think Dragonflight is going to be amazing. That isn’t the copium talking.
I’ll go on record, I think it’ll definitely be worth the money. I’m not worried at all.
They also need to realise they’re talking about THIER opinion no one elses
Option 3 is they really did trash SL before 9.1 ever made it to live and have been working on it since the halfway mark of patch 9.0
Option 4 is everyone was right about borrowed power really taking up the majority of development while leaving room for nothing else
New content before I die of boredom?
That’s what I want.
I think option 4 is the winner honestly
Or C, they are much further along than we think because they gave up on SL really early.
Admittedly not the impression i got from the reveal, but it cannot be discounted.