Maybe I need one of them fancy tin-foil hats for this analysis, but here goes:

Didn't they delay the release of Firelands because the community wasn't ready for it? I seem to recall that Firelands was supposed to be out about the same time that 4.1 hit.

Perhaps they're trying to get back to production schedule by accelerating the pace of Firelands progression? Generally the way Bliz has worked is that you need to be at the tier of the previous raid to be able to participate in the latest content.

But they probably should have waited till 4.3 was on the PTR to do these nerfs, but I have a feeling that they were holding back the PTR to keep the dataminers grubby paws off the data before they could control the PR. (As they did badly in some cases, re: "BRAND NEW (recycled) worgen mounts!".)


(Not to be painted as a Bliz fanboy. I'll say that I'm rather dissapointed in how they handled most of Cata, mistakes with class balance, what I see is a fall in production values from Wrath (any of the new T13 bosses have original models so-far?) , and a very disjointed unsatisfying storyline. )