Patch 2.3 launched relatively recently, 2.3.2 is on the PTR, and 2.4 is presumably pretty far from PTR still. As it turns out, that is expected to be about it in the way of pre-
Wrath patches,
according to Eyonix. 2.4 will introduce the Sunwell Plateau, an outdoor zone, including a 5-man dungeon and a 25-man raid at a harder-than-T6 difficulty level. There will probably be the now-usual assortment of class balance changes, new crafted items, and new daily quests as well, and being an outdoor zone, Sunwell Plateau will probably have some regular quests and a faction of its own as well.
Does the fact that there's no patch 2.5 planned mean anything about how close
Wrath is? I'd say there's probably not much connection. If Blizzard knew that it was going to be, say, a year before the expansion, then yeah, they'd probably plan for another content patch. But seeing as how Eyonix saw fit to add "Time will tell, however" on to his post, I'd say we can't infer much more than that they don't expect the expansion to take a ridiculously long time. My prediction is next March, because that's when my birthday is and it'd be a nice present.
Tags: blue, eyonix, patch-2.3, patch-2.3.2, patch-2.4, patch-2.5, patches, ptr, wotlk, wrath-of-the-lich-king
Filed under: Patches
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
rick gregory Dec 13th 2007 9:03PM
I don't think they'd do 2.4 if WotLK was March.. they repeatedly said at Blizzcon that they learned from the Naxx timing that releasing a patch so close to an expansion is a waste. If 2.4 is February (roughly 70-90 days post 2.3) and they don't want to do the Naxx thing again they're probably several months from LK.. i'd guess about 10 months from now or roughly October 2008.
If they felt it was a lot further than that you'd see 2.5... but 2.5 in May would be pretty close to LK in October.
VincentMagius Dec 13th 2007 9:22PM
I don't see them waiting 7-8 months between the last patch and the expansion. That is a serious amount of down time between content. If they release 2.4 end of February, we could estimate 2-6 months for the expansion. That would put us around end of April to August. May seems likely from a marketing standpoint.
Banana Kid Dec 13th 2007 9:07PM
March, huh? That's some wishful thinking. It's gonna be summer at the earliest.
Dave Dec 13th 2007 9:24PM
After 2.4, clearly is 3.0 which will be the pre-expansion patch just like 2.0 was.
they only increment the post-dot number for major content additions, and 2.4 is the last major content addition. We'll basically see nothing and get nothing until the expansion after 2.4 drops, which is exactly what people have been expecting right?
2.4 hits, then 3 months of delay, then a 2-3 month beta period for lich king and then it'll go live. It'll give guilds 3 months before they get all emo and quit the game before the expansion quits, once they realize (again) that their phat purpz are totally worthless again in less than 6 months. Anyone still working on Sunwell gets a few months to finish, all the hardcore guilds will get plenty of beta time to practice on the new raid(s) in the expansion presumably.
I don't think 2.4 is "far" off. It's just being distracted with other bug fixes and balance changes that need to happen. It's also not like the game NEEDS another post BT raid, when the vast majority of raiders (%90+) haven't even finished BT. Regardless of when they release it, the same vast majority won't ever see the raid.
Naxx didn't come out too late before the expansion. It, like most of the top-end raids are just plain designed to be out of reach of the majority of the populace. %75 of the raiders STILL won't see the last raids. period! It doesn't matter when they throw out the 2.4 patch and the mysterious new raid that most people will only read about and watch on YouTube. It'll still be conquered by a very small amount of guilds, and the majority will bitch that they didn't get enough time, even if they have a whole year. (which keep in mind that you've had roughly 10 months to get through the existing content.... and if you're not at least ON BT by now, i've gotta think that the next 6 months won't dramatically change your situation...)
theRaptor Dec 13th 2007 10:34PM
Yes, Naxx was to close to TBC. Kel'thuzad went down in early Septemper, most people expected TBC to come out in November and there was massive raid lethargy. That means if you were only a few months behind the bleeding edge that you most likely where not going to see Kel, because so many people just stopped raiding. Many of the guilds on BT now wouldn't be there if 2.3 had of been an expansion.
Dave Dec 13th 2007 9:29PM
September. Trust me. I'm a Rogue. If you can't trust a Rogue, who can you trust? *Maniacal laughter*
Green Armadillo Dec 13th 2007 9:32PM
This could simply be "we're not ready to announce information on that yet, and even confirming its existence would be an announcement." I think Blizzard may be feeling a little bit burned from having announced the schedule for 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 only to have 2.2 be very poorly received because people felt it was holding up the stuff they actually wanted in the later patches (which, in fairness, it was).
Realistically, the earliest release date for the expansion can't be before summertime (about 80% of last week's poll agreed, voting June or later) given that the beta test has yet to begin. If they actually did make it for a late May/early June release, I could see them skipping 2.5 and jumping straight to the 3.0 "buy the expansion" patch (including whatever UI improvements etc the expansion is going to have, like 2.0 did). Then again, game sales are traditionally down during the summer, Blizzard might not be done by May, and they probably don't want the headline to be "worse expansion than TBC sells fewer copies", so September is probably the mostly likely guess (and again, over 50% of the poll agreed).
I'd be surprised if there wasn't some world event for the launch (think Scourge Invasion 2.0 to explain why the Alliance and Horde are suddenly marching on Arthas now), and that could easily get moved up to a patch 2.5 if the expansion is delayed.
rick gregory Dec 13th 2007 10:18PM
But it's not just the 25 man raid in 2.4... there's a 5 man too. And there are a fair number of guilds in SSC/The Eye that could reasonably expcet to clear thru BT over the next 3-4 months and be ready of SUnwell.
They simply will not release 2.4 and ship 3.0 2-3 months later... it would be a wasted expansion.
theRaptor Dec 13th 2007 10:25PM
He could mean 2.4.X series, so we might see several further point release patches but no major ones. I have long been suspecting that Blizzard will release WotLK around April to mid-year, and this lends credence to that theory, but it is Naxx all over again. Unless Blizzard have designed the zone to turn into a 70+ zone with 80+ raids for when WotLK comes out.
I don't think Blizz are going to have such a huge gap of no-content right around the time when WAR comes out.
Rene Dec 14th 2007 1:49AM
Why is everyone so upset about WAR? This is a completely different game (aside from the fact that both WoW and WAR are MMOGs) and the target audiences are different as well. WAR is more or less a pure PvP game, with barely any PvE content, while WoW is exactly the other way around. For people like me, who really don't see any point in PvP at all, WAR is certainly the wrong choice, while other people may have a different opinion about that. As far as we know at the moment, WotLK doesn't have - apart from the new "battleground" (PvP zone) - any PvP oriented content other than the one already in the game. People who wish to focus on PvP will take a look at WAR anyway, regardless of whether WotLK comes before WAR or after it.
IMO the release date of WAR doesn't influence Blizzards decisions on the release date of WotLK at all.
Kyrra Dec 13th 2007 11:11PM
I'm the one that actually started that thread on the forums. :-D It was mainly to get some backup information for the post I wroteup on my guild forums:
It's that time of the... something... again! I'm here to make some crazy guesses that will be completely wrong!
2.3.2 is still on the PTR and still receiving patches weekly. They are trying to fix up a lot of outstanding bugs with 2.3.0, my guess in preparation for a long PTR cycle for 2.4.0. I haven't been following the PTR closely, but I'm hopeing for 2.3.2 next week Tuesday (12/18). But with some recent exploits that have been found on the live servers, they need to get those patched in 2.3.2. UPDATE: Looks like the PTR got pre-made characters yesterday in an attempt to stress-test the servers. You know what, we probably won't see 2.3.2 for a while, the next 2 Tuesdays are 12/25 and 1/1/2008. Uhg.
Then there should be hope that they can get the 2.4.0 PTR up before the end of the year, as I understood it, the patch is basically ready to go on the PTR (from some posts a month ago). But at the same time, with the wording Blues have been using recently, we may not see 2.4.0 PTR till mid or late January. But it's advantageous for Blizzard to always have the PTR up as it gives them free testing. We'll have to wait and see...
Then we have the story of WotLK. They began a class-feedback campaign about a week ago, trying to get players feedback about their class. I figure that class balance is an on-going endeavour, but it's something they will focus on more towards the end of development. So they are probably doing Talent Tree and Spell additions/tweaking right now. Rumors have it that much of the content is complete for WotLK, but they are working on the last 20% or so (but that last 20% is always the longest).
I could never find the press release, but word from a MVP on the forums was Vivendi announced WotLK would release Q2 (Apr-Jun) 2008. But with what I'm currently seeing, I'm guessing more summer (Jun - Aug) as the release date. That will allow 2.4.0 (Sunwell, the last 25-man instance in BC) to be live for 4-6 months before the release of WotLK. At which point, we won't see another major patch (2.5.0), only minor patches (2.4.1, etc) before the release of 3.0.1. If you look at BC, 1.12.0 was released Aug 22, 2006, then 2 minor patches were in there. We then saw 2.0.1 on Dec 5th 2006, which is about a 4-month window between the last 1.x.x patch and 2.0.1.
Rene Dec 14th 2007 1:38AM
March, yes. March 2009.
Seriously, I highly doubt WotLK will be released in 2008. As far as I can tell, the thing is in full development at the moment, which means they haven't even started to think about the beta phase, which itself will take half a year or so. And they will put a lot of time between the release of 2.4 (with the new 25 man dungeon) and the expansion, simple to prevent another Naxx disaster (few people had the chance to see the thing, which is one reason why it's coming back in the expansion).
Everything but 2009 or very late 2008 is wishful thinking.
Green Armadillo Dec 14th 2007 11:21AM
FWIW, TBC entered alpha testing about two months after the last real content patch (Naxx in June '06, yes, I'm aware that patch 1.12 happened later with PVP balance stuff, but there were no new zones etc in that patch, so the zone designers were free to work on TBC) and TBC ultimately launched a mere five months thereafter. Seven months from a hypothetical late Jan/early Feb patch 2.4 puts you in September.
I'll agree that March '08 is out of the question, and they MIGHT opt to take the summer to keep working instead of trying to push for May/June since companies often don't like to release major titles in the summertime anyway. There is absolutely no way they're going to let this thing slip to 2009, especially not if they're actually telling the truth and have zero plans for more content patches past 2.4.
datmeenjeniet Dec 14th 2007 2:21AM
I sure hope WOLTK won't be released as fast as next march.. man I'm finally beginning to get me some epic's ..by the time I'm kinda ready for the real raids WOLTK will be there and I can start all over again to 80 prfffffffffffff ..please let me enjoy my 70 for a while ..pleassse
Super Guest Man 9000 Dec 14th 2007 2:45AM
My guess is between Nov 08 and Feb 09
alex Dec 14th 2007 4:51AM
About the time thing, our guild and plenty of others are pushing kael and vashj so hard to get into MH + BT, I imagine most of these guilds will see MH + BT before expansion whilst the truely "pro" guilds will go to sunwell. Not before summer I hope to be honest as want to see more content for then. Btw I don't think sunwell will have an attunement, so I imagine most guilds will go there even if it is tuned for guilds > illidan
bub Dec 14th 2007 6:20AM
There was a huge delay for the 2.2 sound patch that meant a lot of the ground work for 2.3 and 2.4 could be done in the background. Thats why 2.3 was so quick and why I think 2.4 will be out before Christmas. But WotLK (not WoLTK whatever that may be) is still in post develpment so Q3 next year.
doug Dec 14th 2007 9:24AM
2.4 in 11 days...wow...so much for the PTR testing.
Randall Dec 14th 2007 8:59AM
My connections at Vivendi have also told me that it will be early 2009. I really hate that it's going to take so long. So much for the 1 expansion per year goal that Blizzard set.
Todd Dec 14th 2007 10:34AM
There will, undoubtedly, be a patch after 2.4 in order to fix all the bugs that crop up from 2.4.