Posts with tag predictions

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

Listening Music: Bush with Glycerine. I had a hard time picking a Bush song, so I went with a tried and true.

I just got done searching for a past article I apparently never wrote. I could have sworn I predicted something about how Season 8 would pan out, but apparently, I just talked about it with my teammates instead of putting my thoughts into internet words. Oh well. I guess I get to make some fun predictions about Season 9 and then recap them later when Season 10 rolls around. That's the plan, anyway.

It's a new year and that means another opportunity to play oracle and figure out what Blizzard's plans are for 2010. BlizzPlanet has gone ahead and tossed out some of their ideas on what will happen for BlizzCon this year, laying out their predictions and even speculating on the event date. As you might know, there was a bit of confusion stemming from supposed leaked information that pointed to BlizzCon 2010 happening in Las Vegas in July. That didn't go down so well with Blizzard, and the Las Vegas convention center later retracted its statements.

BlizzPlanet points out, quite logically, that Blizzard probably wasn't too thrilled with that. Even if they had planned to do it in Las Vegas, that kind of public relations misstep is a deal breaker. Besides, Eldorian from BlizzPlanet applies simple, sound logic to his sleuthing work and explains that examining the Anaheim Convention Center's Calendar of Events reveals an odd, blank date on the weekend of August 20-21, yet almost all the weekends of the venue are already booked. With Blizzard being the secretive bunch that they are, he figures those blank dates actually correspond with this year's BlizzCon event. It's a pretty cool theory. Read the rest of their predictions as well as a few of our own guesses after the jump.

EU Blue Wryxian is once again patrolling the forums, dropping hints that patch 3.1 "is coming ... soo ... er ... promptly."

Through crystal-ball gazing, the application of logic and, in some cases, sheer desperation, the general consensus has been that the Secrets of Ulduar patch will be dropping this week.

Europe's favourite Blue appeared on the forums this morning and left a carefully worded comment:

"The patch is definitely coming ... shortly.

"The 'severe lack of info' might simply be because we announced it, gave further details about it, put it up on the PTR for testing and now we are basically on the verge of releasing it.

"We certainly haven't been quiet about it. It is coming. And it is coming ... soo ... er ... promptly."

Regardless, we should know one way or another in less than twenty four hours. So cross your fingers (and toes) for some extended downtime tomorrow!

bridges_squares wants to know, and we're getting really, really close, so let's finally go out on that limb, shaky as it may be: when's the patch coming out? Turpster predicted it would be this past Tuesday on the WoW Insider Show last week (since Noblegarden and the equipment manager got delayed, he figured they wanted to hurry for a release), but obviously no dice on that one. And on the other end of things, April 26th is the date we're told Noblegarden will start, so it's a pretty good guess we'll see the patch by then.

If you follow that line of reasoning, that just leaves the next two Tuesdays, April 14th and 21st. And since we had rolling restarts last week, it seems like maintenance this week will bring us the patch on Tuesday, the 14th. But of course there are other factors in here: the PTR should go down before the patch comes up, and since the PTR it still up, we be waiting until the 21st. Also, just because Blizzard said Noblegarden on the 26th doesn't mean they won't delay it again, so we may still see the patch on the 28th or after that. And Tuesdays are usually when the live realms get patched (Fridays are usually when the patch the PTR, in my experience), but technically they could do it anytime, right?

So let's do a poll. I'm going to go with Tuesday the 21st (since there's no sign of the PTR going down yet), but when do you think patch 3.1 will drop? And no, "when it's ready" is not an option -- we'll just assume (hopefully correctly) Blizzard will make sure of that anyway.

The 2008 Worldwide Invitational is going down this weekend in Paris, and everyone is abuzz about what might happen. Will we see a release date for Wrath of the Lich King? What is that teaser on the Blizzard page all about? And will we finally, almost eight years to the day since the last game was released, see a new Diablo game?

You've got questions, we've got predictions. We here at WoW Insider have put our collective heads together to predict exactly what we'll see at the press conferences and ceremonies this weekend, and each blogger's predictions are after the jump. We're putting it all up front now, so that afterwards, we can see if we were right or wrong. And you're welcome to join us -- put your prediction (or just agree or disagree with ours) in the comments below.

Of course, we're all guessing based on rumors and hearsay at this point -- we won't know for sure what's going on until Blizzard confirms it this weekend, and of course WoW Insider will be there to let you know right away. But in the meantime, here's what we think we're going to hear about from Paris in the next few days.

I have to admit, I was a little bit astonished by news of patch 2.4.3. We know that Blizzard is ramping up for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, as they did for the Burning Crusade. The two things that stand out most to me are the Cheat Death nerf and the reduction of riding skill level requirement to 30. Even as a Cosmo Girl, I don't really care much about Harris Piltion's new line of designer bags. (Unless those bags have 24 slots and don't have tacky, brand-name logos on them.)

I think we can expect more changes in the not-too-distant future. We've already seen the death of most raid attunements. I expect to see the cost of epic flying skill reduced considerably in future patches. The same thing happened with epic land mounts, and long ago Drysc hinted that such a change may be in the works. I'd also like to see an additional character slot or two added to each realm.

What changes do you predict will occur prior to Wrath's release?

Unless something crazy happens, it seems that the Activision-Blizzard merger (which is really the Activision-Vivendi merger, actually) will go down without a problem -- shareholders are voting on it this week, so by next week we should see confirmation that Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft are under the same umbrella.

Gamasutra has posted a nice long feature about what exactly that means, for both companies and for the rest of the industry. As we predicted, there probably won't be huge repercussions for either of the biggest companies involved -- both Activision and Blizzard will continue to go their own separate ways for now, sharing only a name among investors (Gamasutra even says the names on the game boxes won't change at all). The biggest impact will be on the little guys in between -- Activision's previous shareholders now have to answer to Vivendi (who will hold a majority stock in the company), and Viviendi's smaller division, the former glory of Sierra Games, will have to answer to Activision before publishing any of their titles.

And of course the other big consequence we've seen so far is that Bobby Kotick apparently feels he knows everything there is to know about the MMO game. Sure. For now, though, it's business as usual for both Activision and Blizzard -- if there will be any change in either company because of the merger, we likely won't see it for a while.

[via Blizzplanet]

Tipster Felwrathe forwarded an article to us the other day by Forbes.com writer Michael Noer entitled "The Future of Video Games." He puts Warcraft in this category as well - despite the fact that some would still call it a Computer game rather than a video game (or the more elegant term, vidcon). And while he does manage not to take potshots at the game as others have, he still makes a few somewhat surprising predictions about what the future holds.

Don't forget that we're asking for your guesses on when patch 2.4 will hit the live realms. To enter our contest, just head over to the original post (don't leave a comment on this post, because you can't) and leave a comment with your guess of when the patch will go live using the XX/XX date format (as in, 03/12 for a guess of March 12th).

Personally, I think it will be during March, but later, so Adam's mathematical guess of March 25th is pretty good. Then again, I always predict things to come later than they do, so knowing Blizzard, they might drop it earlier in March. But your actual guess is up to you, of course.

Enter your comment on that post (not this one) before March 3rd, and be a US resident and 18 years of age or older to enter to win a game card if you pick the correct date (or are closest, or are one of four random people who picked the date, if there are more than four). Good luck everybody, and we'll find out the winner when Blizzard finally drops the new content patch!

Every week, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.

The year of the Rat is upon us and while this column usually relies on cold hard numbers and shies away from wild speculation and baseless assertions, I shall indulge my Lunar New Year festive mood to venture into some strictly amateur crystal ball gazing for the classes. As with any prediction - astrology, fortune cookies or otherwise - read this with a large pinch of deeprock salt, and understand that a positive attitude is always a good way to overcome defeats and disappointments.

This year is the beginning of a new 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac and is a better year than the last. However, many changes are still afoot, especially with Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon. The Rat's resourcefulness and enterprising nature gives rise to many opportunities along the way, and you'll have to be as nimble and smart as the Rat to take full advantage of them. Mobility and haste ratings become differentiating factors in winning Arena matches, as Resilience becomes increasingly ubiquitous when more and more players get their Arena gear.

Unfortunately, the Rat's intelligence has a dark side and manipulating the system for individual gain is certainly not above the Rat. Good examples are players selling entire Arena teams and other manipulation of the ladder system. There will also be more betrayals and confrontations - also known as drama, whether at the guild or Arena team level - as people grow increasingly restless during this period leading up to the expansion.

Let's look at what the year of the Rat means for the various classes in the Arenas, in no particular order.

So it's time for WoW Insider to do you all a favor. It seems like whenever we attempt to predict the timing of a certain patch, Blizzard ignores whatever we say, and drops it right away. With patch 2.2, we predicted in early September that it would take "weeks" longer, maybe even last November, and instead they had it out within the month. And with patch 2.3, we guessed that Blizzard wouldn't drop it before Thanksgiving, and just hours later they proved us wrong, and released it before the holiday.

So here you go: with everything we've seen on the forums lately, including the CMs a little giddy with excitement, and all of the news that dropped last week, we're going to officially predict that patch 2.4 will drop on the PTRs this coming Tuesday, and that it will hit the live realms sometime in early March (probably before Noblegarden, which starts on March 23rd).

There. Now, Blizzard has plenty of chances to prove us wrong by releasing the PTR sometime this week, and getting the patch out to live realms before March 1st. That's our favor to you-- if Blizzard follows their past pattern, they'll make us completely wrong again, and get you on the PTR and in the patch even sooner than we thought.