We’ve had our “Are we reading too much into this?” radar cranked up to ten with this, and the consensus is, “We’re not…”
Did Tom Chilton make a slip of the tongue and give us additional insight as to when Blizzard’s target release date lies for WoW: Cataclysm? We think he did.
Read on… At this point, Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard, has already confirmed that the target release date is set for 2010 (as we figured).
However, during the first seminar, which was a discussion of Cataclysm, Tom Chilton mentioned something else. While discussing the new Goblin race, Chilton voiced an afterthought (to paraphrase), “I’m sure Alliance will be complaining about Goblin rogues at the next BlizzCon.”
…
Whoops.
It could have been nothing, but we have a pretty good gut when it comes to whether or not something was a slip. We’re convinced, in this case, it was.
This would place Cataclysm‘s target release date for sometime before the next BlizzCon. Since BlizzCon typically happens in August, we’re betting this means the target release date is no later than July. Why not August? Blizzard is swamped around BlizzCon. Targeting the release of a WoW Expansion and BlizzCon for the same month would be masochism.
Our current speculative guess regarding Catarclysm‘s release date is May of 2010… 18 months after the release of Wrath of Lich King.
With this new piece of information, we feel comfortable stating with certainty that Blizzard’s current target release date for Cataclysm is somewhere between May-July of 2010.
Could delays force it out of this time frame? Sure. The Burning Crusade was supposed to come out before Christmas; it hit the shelves in January. Wrath of Lich King, however, was released on time.
See you by July… hopefully sooner.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow nice ear 😛 this sounds convincing enough to me hope its true!
its a nice found indeed and I’d love it to be true but it seems that Cat will be the biggest expansion of all they have done. total revamp of 2 continents + extra zones, I know they started on CaT a month before wotlk shipped but thinking as it is a bigger expansion, wouldn’t it take longer to get the neccesary testing done?
Wrath of The Lich King – winter expansion released one month and 1 week before winter
The Cataclysm – water, sun, pirates, generally summer. release 1 month before summer. 10th May.
Yeah, nice to see some predicted dates, as Geforce mentioned they will have to revamp both continents, now as we all know there are many little escape spots to evade the regular map and enter into the unworked areas of Azeroth , now all these zones will have to be either removed or reworked to fit in with the whole ‘flying mounts in Azeroth’ thing, may take a while 🙂
I hope cata comes out in may-July!!!!!!!! Omg I wanna no wat every thing is gunna b like i’m so excited!!!!! Does anyone no if there is gunna b another patch after 3.3????
For all those people who dont know:
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is supposly coming out on June 28th.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you sir was wrong…lol