So you want them to release in six months and have another expansion ruined? Sounds like a nice plan. Changes such as cross-server instances or the class changes may come sooner, and I won't be surprised if they do. But the meat of the expansion won't come until next year because let's face it, it doesn't take 6 months to make a game. Not a good one. And not one to the scale they've showed us.

Chances are all the expansions started development immediately after the last one was released. So we can probably bet safely that Cataclysm was in development since the start of this year. But do note that people like Ghostcrawler, who also work on the expansion, also work on patches for the live game as well. Making updates to the current version of the game takes time and they lose expansion development time for doing that.

Within the next 6-months we will probably see Icecrown Citadel, which is a feat in and of itself since it's going to be big and hopefully have a damn good cinematic at the end. IC isn't some petty boss we farm after a week. This is the LICH KING, who has had multiple games made after him!

SO WE WILL FIGHT HIM. AND FARM HIM AFTER TWO WEEKS.