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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Let's guess the Mists of Pandaria release date
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 25th 2011 at 11:00AM
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky), senior editor at WoW Insider, will be your host today.
Let's talk about this for a bit ... We know that Blizzard wants to accelerate patch and expansion release timelines. It's feeling competition from other games, and that's good, and it's in agreement with all of us devoted fans that the game needs more awesome content to play. That's also good.
Let's talk about this for a bit ... We know that Blizzard wants to accelerate patch and expansion release timelines. It's feeling competition from other games, and that's good, and it's in agreement with all of us devoted fans that the game needs more awesome content to play. That's also good.
Given that, I'd like to get the ball rolling on some good old-fashioned release date guesses. My personal guess is May or June of 2012. It'll happen in the summertime, the initial awesomeness of Star Wars and Diablo III will have worn off, and Blizzard will be in a prime position to drop a major expansion to the tried-and-true World of Warcraft.
A quick, late-night WoW Insider staff poll suggests that Mike Sacco, Anne Stickney, and Mat McCurley think July 2012. Daniel Whitcomb and Allie Robert say August or September of 2012. (Allie thinks November/December might also be possible, even though she wants her [expletive deleted] pandas before the world ends.)
But when do you think? Yes, that means a reader poll:
| April 2012 and earlier | |
|---|---|
| May 2012 | |
| June 2012 | |
| July 2012 | |
| August 2012 | |
| September 2012 | |
| October 2012 | |
| November 2012 | |
| December 2012 and later |
BCMan asked:
When do you guys think the Mists of Pandaria beta is coming out?
We haven't a clue (and I'm serious). But if I have to wager a guess, I'd say that a target date of sometime around Dec. 20, 2011.
RFPd quipped:
We don't have anything in-game that closely resembles Pandarens or their style. How does this architecture even fit in?
Take a very close look at the Night Elf buildings. Then go and take a look at eastern (Asian) buildings. Well, wait, let me just illustrate:
The Pandaren architecture, pictured below, fits Asian themes even more.
SCristie asked:
With the introduction of the Monk class, do you think Blizz will extend the 10 Character per server limit to accomodate the extra class? Seeing as many people may already have a character of each class at some stage or another.
Ghostcrawler responded in a panel at BlizzCon that Blizzard's thinking of ways to solve this, and it doesn't have anything yet. One idea that's been thrown around is to remove the individual realm restriction of 10 characters per realm but keep the account restriction of 50 characters per account. That'd certainly solve things.
But again, this was just an idea being thrown around, so don't get mad if it doesn't happen. Greg shares things like that to let us know Blizzard is working on it, not to get our hopes up for that exact solution.
My guess? We'll see the 10 character per realm limit lifted somehow in MoP.
The Dewd asked:
Do we have any idea what itemization will be for the Monks? Did Blizzard reveal anything about it or does anyone have any theories?
We already know they'll share their itemization with rogues and druids. As for exactly how the stats will be weighted slightly differently, that remains to be seen. Small weighting changes are just the type of thing Blizzard likes to play with in betas.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 22)
icepyro Oct 25th 2011 4:00PM
It was mentioned (in the liveblogs here on WoWI anyways) that Blizzard said training of abilities will happen in the field now and that you will only be going to trainers for respeccing and dual spec
Allan Oct 25th 2011 11:02AM
It will come out when they tell me if i can transmog my pandaren monks into valor points or if thats catering to the casuals.
Culhag Oct 25th 2011 11:41AM
I think quite a few people didn't get it. :D
Jamie Oct 25th 2011 11:50AM
And that's why you stay away from the punch.
SR Oct 25th 2011 11:56AM
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
David Oct 25th 2011 12:21PM
Don't you mean "pandaren" to the casuals?
Didax Oct 25th 2011 12:25PM
In time what Ghostcrawler for panda when slice of Philadelphia do Sunday?
epicboyz Oct 25th 2011 12:26PM
@ Jamie
Keep it up ^_^
@ SR
Whaaa?..... 0_o
Amaxe Oct 25th 2011 1:27PM
I see the polls are all over the boards right now.
My question for those who didn't vote Nov or Dec 2012: Is there any reason to think that the next xpac won't be the same time frame as the last few?
I don't mean this sarcastically. Rather I'm wondering if I missed any announcement which would have led me to a different vote than Dec 2012.
PocketFox Oct 25th 2011 3:38PM
@Amaxe
Blizzard has said they want to bump up their schedule for releasing big patches and expacs, like releasing a new expansion once every year or year and a half, rather than every two years. Plus there was already a playable demo of MoP at Blizzcon this year which, I understand, wasn't true for Cata during its announcement year.
john verry Oct 25th 2011 11:04AM
I'm hoping for an early release. April sounds awesome but I highly doubt it
Jamie Oct 25th 2011 11:12AM
I think we're 6 months away so April sounds about right to me. They have to get this expansion under way before the summer lull. So at the latest end of May.
Perhaps then we'll see a renewed interest over summer, but releasing an expansion in summer is going to be tough. No matter how much support/people want it.
crsh Oct 25th 2011 11:40AM
Agreed.
A couple of things:
- Blizz indirectly comfirmed Cataclysm was a small-scale disaster, they will want players to forget about it ASAP;
- SWTOR comes out at the end of the year; if they can't match that date, they will want to launch as soon as they can in early 2012 to catch up because it will hurt WoW;
- It looks advanced enough, but then again we didn't see everything and there's likely a whole lot left to do and test;
- New talent builds aren't as extensive as the Great Big Change that Cataclysm put forth, it's refinement rather than starting over;
- If patch 4.3 comes out before the end of the year (as it's supposed to, prolly to dether SWTOR), that gives them more or less 5-6 months before they either need to release additional Cata-centric content or the new expansion, so Q2 2012 looks like the likely target.
The Dewd Oct 25th 2011 11:58AM
It would seem that a lot of folks (myself included) are voting for June. That is, if I'm remembering the 4.0 launch correctly, 18 months from the start of Cata - which matches what they've said about wanting to do an expansion every 1.5 years instead of every 24 months. That having been said, unless the you-commited-to-a-year beta invites start going out soon, it's hard to tell, especially since no one on the outside really knows what the state of the internal alpha/beta is right now. Given that they're pushing back the D3 release because it's not ready yet and the 4.3 (much less 4.4) patch isn't out yet, that also throws a monkey wrench into guessing the timeline.
I'm thinking they're either going to want to drop MoP just before next summer (to try to keep people playing over the summer who otherwise might take a few months off) or they'll drop it just after the summer when folks get back to school and family vacations are ending.
Killik Oct 25th 2011 12:04PM
Late 2012 - Patch 4.3 and the 12-month contract thing are supposed to mitigate against Star Wars launch in late 2011. Early 2012 will see a ton of people playing the new MMO, whatever Blizzard does. Summer would be a bad time to launch, as it's historically a low point for MMOs. So late 2012.
btw: Where did Blizzard say that Cataclysm was a disaster? All I've seen is the usual "we weren't too happy with how feature X turned out". That's typical reflective analysis from the designers.
Jack Spicer Oct 25th 2011 12:22PM
Didn't that leaked timeline that has so far been correct in predicting launch dates, including Wow Brazil, place MoP in April 2012?
Goarther Oct 25th 2011 12:38PM
My guess is sometime between July and Nov depending on when Blizzcon 2012 is. They will want to have some good WoW news for Blizzcon not, "yeah beta is going well, out in a month"
Moanique Oct 25th 2011 12:50PM
April seems to be too soon. That's only a little more than four months after 4.3 drops plus there will be pre-expansion events and a patch before MoP actually goes live. That's an awful lot to be jamming into four months.
I voted for August in the poll. But a month either side of that wouldn't surprise me at all. The advantage to late August is that the summer doldrums would be just about over and students could head back to school with a new expansion to fill their free time.
Zenotho Oct 25th 2011 12:53PM
@crsh
"cataclysm was a small-scale disaster". I lol'd.
V Magius Oct 25th 2011 12:56PM
It's hard to say. Previously, the expansions have come out November-January. I'd have to check on exact dates. I think BC was January. Wrath was November. Cata was December.
I'm hoping for that time frame so I can take a week's vacation. Blizz has polished things up so that it's no longer a bad idea.
We also have to take into consideration 4.3. How long until that drops and how long can we expect it to last. Six months is probably the longest without another patch to tide us over. We may see a patch 4.3.2 to get that transition dungeon/lore, which can extend the time frame.