As I said, there was a give-away somewhere. I thought it extremely stupid as well. And no I’m not going to read through Forums, Wowhead and Announcements to re-find this tid-bit - which also can have been deleted since.
And if it goes wrong they just shake their head and say we were warned:
They gave the latest date for Wrath as December 31st didn’t they? so with 6 weeks of pre-patch that could put the buff at the start of November at the latest.
I would say the pre-patch will be early September so that makes the buff mid August.
But they cant launch it same time as Retail expansion, Dragonflight. Atleast 2 months before so i think october will be latest and since prepatch should last 1 month, Septembers last day will be the last day for prepatch.
So it means buff comes wednesday or next week.
Hey there, had to reply because you are stating so much wrong facts as truths.
Based on this info, i personnally expect a prepatch BEFORE or at the same time of the merger. Which makes xp buff soon in july depending how much time they want us the player to benefit from it. Also dont forget with are celebrating 3y of classic launch late august + TBC main phases (ie tier) lasted around 4 months each; which places sunwell “end” around late august/early september
Depends on location where did they post the Joyous buff announcement from. It’s called summer buff and doubt that countries Blizzard operates in have summer in November 
It also depends on which summer they use, ending on sept 21st or sept 1st.
They could also change the name to Autumn or Fall buff.
Either way I highly doubt the buff will be active before the consolidation. Aug 10th.
Why should they then say, the Buff will start BEFORE the Pre-Patch?
Lich will be most likely at the end of august. Blizzard wait till summer ends and school boys will not have all summer days free time all day to sell them boosts.
Well, maybe because pre patch will be after that.
Keep in mind they plan to do changes to original WOTLK, so that may exceed the beta duration, because the changes have to be tested.
I don’t think the XP buff will be released this week 
But it would be cool if it did. Realistically I expect it next week or the week after in the worst scenario
We know the dates of most of these and the relative dates are certain, so guesstimates can be made on the rest:
PvE to PvP transfer restrictions removed - already happened June 21
Wrath Classic closed beta test - already begun
Classic Era clone service retired - happens July 26
Summer XP event (the 50% buff) - (“coming weeks” from June 22) Duration 6-8 weeks - few weeks before pre-patch until lauch - Guess: July 13
Existing realms ‘consolidated’ - August 10
New Fresh Start Realms with Wrath Classic pre-patch - Guess: August 10, or more possible 17
Wrath of the Lich King launch - Guess: September 14/21/28. Even before SoM closes down on 16 November
Classic does not take much time of development. But it still requires testing.
Classic, the first one, requires more development because they needed to adapt the Retail server and client to work as Vanilla using Vanilla ported data.
From then on subsequent expansion should require less development because a client and server compatible with both Vanilla and Retail should be compatible with everything in between, because except for some systems added post-vanilla and removed before Legion, all expansion systems are present on Vanilla or Legion.
And porting of the data should be easy because the major development of the port process was required for Vanilla, the next expansions only need to expand the port algorithm for the changes happening on that expansion.
But that is development. Not testing. They still need to test all WOTLK content. They could be mistakes in the porting process, or mistakes while implementing Classic systems on Retail clients/servers. WotLK and Classic WOTLK should work the same because it is the same game, but it does not have the same code implementation, so it is not possible to affirm that both do the same without testing it. Sure, there is nothing new-made, but still, the whole expansion requires a complete set of regression testing, to confirm that those things that have not intentionally changed are still working.
The major difference between normal testing and regression testing is that the last one is made when the dev assumes nothing has changed, so the number of bugs present that will need to fix should be fewer, but they still need to test all to confirm that have not been unfortunate consequences that break something devs didn’t expect. Sometimes a change on a part of the code could break another part that has not been touched.
Underestimating regression testing and deploying something without full testing because “that hasn’t changed” is a Russian roulette that every dev in their career has done, and any dev he said such thing never has been blown on their face lie.
Without testing it could be like the Cyberpunk 2077 launch. Shudder
but it does? fact check before thank you!
September does not make sense. but the rest i agree
If the rest makes sense, and the Summer XP event (Guess July 13) has a duration of 6-8 weeks - from a few weeks before pre-patch until lauch - then September for launch is logical as well.
But as I say, It’s just me reading the posts, comparing and guessing. We’ll just have to wait and see.
When the Summer XP event starts, we know we have 6-8 weeks until lauch.
“I think” means it’s my opinion as only Blizzard know when it will happen. Just like the OP is guessing.
So how can I fact check it as no facts are available to check!
Excellent quesstimate, thanks for this!
In couple of hours well see about this week. If it happens, i expect Dottie to apologize in her own way. 
Update: Didnt seem to come this week, so we wait until next week →
It’s Wednesday and no buff. AWKWARD