Why Expac 6 can't, won't and shouldn't wait...

OK, so a bit of tinfoil hat theory time, what with the new expansion due to be announced in (checks watch....) just under 8 hours time.

I posted this on Twitter this morning:

Now to me, that makes perfect sense. It's how I believe Activision(?) are pumping out Call of Duty titles each and every year, and each game gets a full 2 years of development, which seems to be the minimum standard nowadays.

It would definitely explain how and why Warlords has been so unrelentingly shit, because essentially it was not actively being worked on 100% during its release cycle, other than the art team and raid team, both of whom did sterling work in Warlords, particularly the Art team. I've said all expansion that the art team have been carrying this expansion virtually on their own backs, and if it weren't for their efforts, this expansion probably would have completely killed the game.

In fact it very nearly has done, what with subs figures presently sitting at 5.6m players, including the token subs. And don't forget, we started WoD with nearly double that figure, at 10 million players. So a total drop of 4.4m players in 8 months.

Can you imagine how bad the figures would be if token numbers weren't included?

In addition, how else, other than lack of active development would ANYONE explain "patch" 6.1?

This new expansion pack I feel is either make or break time for World of Warcraft. Either it'll reinvigorate the game and alongside the movie regenerate the subs base similarly to how WoD did initially and brought 3m players back (still skeptical about that claim tbh), or we're looking at one of the game's final releases.

Obviously the game can't sustain another 4.4m subs loss over the next 8 months, which is why I think we are going to see this new expansion very soon, a lot sooner than most are betting.

Beta within a month, pre-patch in 4 months, release in 5? Xmas launch at the latest?

If they've split the Dev team as I  mentioned on Twitter, it's conceivable it's nearly ready to go right now for beta and get it out and released before Blizzcon even.

The only problem is an early release possibly cutting T18 and HFC pretty short, the opposite problem that Siege suffered from at the end of MoP.

But after the unmitigated disaster that WoD, by any reasonable standard, has been, would anyone really care? After all, the race for Mythic world 1st is over, and that's all anyone cares about.

AMIRITE GAIS?

Who knows, but I do know this:

This new expansion needs to be out soon and it needs to be fucking amazing if the game is to survive even another year.