Blizzard, do the unthinkable

This is blasphemy, I know. I'm messing with the natural order of things when I suggest something like this. But here's what I think: Blizzard should give us a release date.

Excuse me while I duck all those tomatoes. Check out this forum thread, in which Neth voices her feelings about having to deal with players asking about a release date all the time. She gets as far as saying "later, but sooner than much later," which basically means next week or the week after.

Fine then. But, in cases like this, why doesn't Blizzard just go ahead and say a release date? That would shut everybody up, we could all move on with our lives, and Neth wouldn't have to deal with that stuff. And it doesn't even need to be accurate-- if Blizzard said "2.2 is coming on September 18th," and then it dropped on the 11th (which is when Blizzard really planned to release it), then everyone would actually be happy that it came out early. And yes, Blizzard doesn't want to have to explain delays to us, but delays are delays-- surely videogame fans have gotten used to it by now.

I'm not saying they need to change their whole company-- they're not going to give us a date for Wrath of the Lich King, and I'm fine with that: I'd rather see it "when it's finished" (and we will see a release date for it anyway, eventually) But for something like 2.2, where testing is almost complete and they must have some clear idea of when it will drop, why not give us a target, however off it might be? Even "before November," in my mind, is better than all the question ducking that Neth and the other CMs are doing.