1621

It won’t be that late. The end of the arena season looks to be mid october (just before blizzcon) and you will see the patch for 4.0.1 roll out that week or the week after. From there you’re looking at about 3-4 weeks until Cata is released.

1622

I ordered the CE for Wrath last time around and Amazon told me it had a release date of a couple weeks after the regular one. Figuring this was because of my place in the order queue, I canceled and just got the regular one, only to find out that the CE then jumped back to the actual release date. I was sad.

So, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this email quite yet.

1623

My Amazon email said it was shipping 1/6/11, eta 1/10/11.

1624

Most raiding guilds have stopped doing other than achievement and alt runs on my server. I can’t imagine Blizzard leaving that much dead time before the new content arrives (I know the talent patch will put some people back into ICC, but that never lasts). Back when I was a raider, I remember some people wandering back into the sunlight during the pre-expansion hiatus and not turning back, which is bad for business.

1625

I don’t think that can be stopped in any meaningful way. Change causes people to rethink their involvement with things. At least one person I know has split the game just because he’s decided he’s done with levelling/raiding/socializing in WoW and wants to try something new in his life. He said it helped that he was getting out at the end of LK, kinda like finishing a good book.

1626

Well, speaking for myself the lack of anything new to do has led me to drastically cut back my playtime over the past couple of months. I’m getting my Brewmaster title now, but otherwise…I did an AN heroic yesterday and realized I’d have as much fun if I just turned my monitor off and stared at a blank screen for the time it took to clear the place. Probably more fun, actually.

Perhaps WoW is finally petering out for me.

1627

I never got into raids or the high end gaming much…didn’t care for it. But I did burn out on WoW. That’s why I’m resisting the urge to sign back up until Cataclysm comes out. My, on the other hand, is attempting bribes to convince me to sign back up sooner. I don’t think it’ll work, but I like her style.

1628

I think all I’ve done in WoW this year is mop up the “Long Strange Trip” achievements. I keep flirting with the idea of grabbing the 3000 quests achievement, but…meh. Too much other stuff to play, books to read, etc.

1629

I may reinstall when 4.01 goes live to check out the new mechanics. As I said earlier upthread, you can test all this out for free on the PTRs even without an active subscription.

The new streaming download lets you play almost immediately without DL the entire game, it just streams the bits you need.

1630

This is called Expansionitis.

1631

You can now turn off RealID altogether, as well as just the “friends of friends” and “facebook friends” options.

Announcement here

1632

Honestly it’s called Blizzard Is Fat And Lazy. The main raid zone has been the same for the past 10 months with the addition of 1 new boss and 3 mini bosses that require no skill to kill ( the trash packs offer more of a challenge than the mini-bosses). You haven’t seen any new 5 mans in the past 10 months.

This game is downright fucking boring at this point in regards to things to do and has been dead for a while. As I said before, they need to seriously fix their content release schedule because it’s atrocious.

Although the expansion doesn’t help matters and expansionitis is a valid problem I really think the majority of the issues at this point is this game has offered nothing new in such a long time frame.

1633

So it looks like 4.01 will go live soon like in the next couple of weeks. If they really don’t ship until January, that’s three months of unbalanced classes?? I find that hard to believe, but if it’s true, I’ll just wait it out.

1634

They really paced themselves poorly with Wrath. Naxx and the rest of the tier 7 stuff was too easy (with the exception of Sarth 3D), which meant players ran out of content too fast early in the expansion. Even then, 3.0 -> 3.1 was the longest gap between major content patches in Wrath at 5 months. 3.2 came out only 3 1/2 months later, and then 3.3 4 months after that. If they thought they’d release Cataclysm in summer 2010 (which I think is about what they were planning) that’s still a 8-9 month gap between 3.3 and the expansion. They could have milked all that content longer, but instead they threw it all out there and then had nothing for a solid year.

1635

It doesn’t matter when Blizzard releases their expansions because they are guaranteed sales, regardless if it’s Christmas or not WoW players will buy it.

1636

I thought Blizzard paced the first year of the expansion pretty well. Ulduar came out, what, 4 months after WotLK released? Then ToC 4 months later, and ICC 4 months after that. That’s not too bad.

It’s been this second year that’s been pretty slow. I can only assume they originally wanted to target summer for Cata, but now it’s going to be close to a year between major content releases. On the plus side, there’s a backlog of at-level hardmodes from ICC, Ulduar, etc, to finish up while waiting for the expansion.

1637

Well, it’s a matter of perspective. It’s bad in the sense that they ended up with almost no new content for a year is what I mean. How the release timing effects the game per se is a different matter, but I think they could have gotten more time out of Ulduar in particular, and could have released it later had the initial content been tuned harder. I figure a longer gap between expansion release -> first major content patch and last major content patch -> next expansion release is to be expected.

TOC was sort of destined to be shorter lived, since it’s mostly one room and only has 5 boss encounters plus their respective hard modes. But even if they’d just delayed everything a month they would have ended up in a better position for a late summer 2010 release of Cata if that was the plan. I donno, maybe they really thought they could get Cata out by May or June, in which case the release timing looks better.

1638

It’s almost official, 12/7 Cata release. A day that will live in infamy. Tacky?

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/27026472909/arena-season-8-ending-soon/

Arena Season 8 Ending Soon
We are currently planning to end Arena Season 8 as early as October 12. At that point we will go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the Arena-specific titles and/or the Relentless Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 8 ends.

The next Arena Season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the official launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. During the break between seasons, all rated matches will be turned off and only skirmishes will be available. All Team Ratings, Personal Rating, and Arena Points will be wiped when Arena Season 9 begins, but Matchmaking Rating and Honor Points converted to the new currency system will remain.

Season 9 is scheduled to start 12/14 according to this that was taken from a patch.

“Arena battles and Rated Battlegrounds are only available during an active player versus player combat season. Season nine will begin on December 14th, so be prepared at that time to take your shot at glory!”

http://www.wowhead.com/blog=169597

1639

If that’s the case, then I wonder if they’ll drop 4.0.3 a 2-3 weeks before that to give folks something to do?

1640

The main WoW webpage even says 4.0.3 will be out a ‘short time’ before Cata, so I’d say that is likely.