mists-of-pandaria-release-date
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Time to adjust to the pre-expansion home stretch
Whatever you have left to do in Cataclysm, get it done now -- you have two months. Are you working on heroic Dragon Soul? Figure out whatever your hurdle is and get it done, my friend. Mount farming? Working on arenas or rated BGs? You can expect the season to end within that two-month framework -- significantly before it, I would wager. Heck, you probably have less than two months, really. Once the pre-release patch hits, we're going to be looking at whole new game systems to adjust to. New hit and expertise, hunters' needing expertise, no more spell penetration, new PvP power and resilience stats, new talents ... Women and men of Azeroth, the tide has turned. The Cataclysm is no more. For people who've more or less done everything they wanted or needed to do and who were cooling their heels waiting for the new expansion, this is pretty much the unalloyed anticipation time. But for people who have things left -- bosses to kill, mounts to farm, that one piece of gear that just won't drop -- you now have an end point set out for you. After Sept. 25, you'll be leveling through Pandaria and the new dungeons, possibly PvPing in the new BGs, getting to 90 so you can run scenarios and get your own farm. You'll have things to do. Cataclysm will go the way of Wrath, The Burning Crusade and vanilla WoW -- stuff you may visit but that you're not likely to come back to very often.
Mists of Pandaria releases September 25
Hard to argue with the official announcement right on the EU battle.net page and the US Battle.net page: Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft, will be available in stores and online starting Tuesday, Sept. 25. Pre-orders are live now. Sept. 25 is a Tuesday, which is one of the preferred days for patching and other fun. The release date is a bit later than many expected, but Blizzard operates under the philosophy of "it's done when it's done," so a later date only means we're getting a product that's been through a lot of testing. You can upgrade to the standard edition and digital deluxe edition through your Battle.net account page now. Update 9:30 p.m. EDT: Added the official press release announcing the release date. You can view it after the break.
The Queue: I'm gonna light you up
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Sweet cheeks. darkpanda asked: Any confirmed sightings of Milhouse Manastorm in MoP? He only appeared to be knocked out of the way by Corborus in the Stonecore. As far as I know, his death isn't confirmed. I'd love to see him pop up again in the future.
The Queue: Release date's a-comin'
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I started playing Mount & Blade: Warband over the weekend. I've been playing it for an unhealthy number of hours. Despite that, after the entire weekend has come and gone, I'm still not sure I know what the heck I'm doing in that game. Where's my Mount & Blade Insider to tell how I play this!? midnightlurker asked: It seems likely that MoP's release date will be announced before next BlizzCon... so is there any upcoming event that would make a good time to announce the date?
The Queue: Run Boy Run
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Go to iTunes and buy Woodkid's new track, Run Boy Run. There is not a man alive who manages to get my adrenaline pumping via music better than he does. You will not regret your purchase. If you don't have Iron, get that one, too. naterybird317 asked: When do you think Mists of Pandaria will be released? What was being tested in the Cata beta at the time of the official announcement? I ask because I wonder if at the time of the announcement were beta testers testing 85 content or were they still level capped between 80-85? I feel like we're getting really close to the official announcement.
Predicting Mists of Pandaria's release date
We know a lot about the previous betas. Everything's been well documented as to their specific start and end dates, and we have a lot of information about the major patches leading up to the new expansion as well. When we take this data and look at it a bit, we can notice some trends that might help us get a better idea of when Mists could release. The tables below show each of the expansions and the length of the betas, which for the sake of clarity end the day before the expansion went live. We also show the X.0.1/2 patch release dates, which is when the mechanical aspects of the expansion are put in place. For Mists, we extend the curve outward and can predict (with who knows how much accuracy) when the expansion will release. We've done two predictions. The long prediction covers if you believe Mists will continue the trend and take longer than previous expansions to test. The short prediction applies if you believe Mists won't take as long as Cataclysm did. In our experience, Mists is very polished and has a lot of pieces already in place. There are obviously visible bugs and other problems, but the content appears to be in a good state. Please remember to take all this with a grain of salt and don't say we're promising anything -- because we're not. We're just taking a look at these numbers, and it's kind of cool to be able to use them to make predictions. Beta dates Length Burning Crusade October 12, 2006 to January 15, 2007 3 months, 3 days (95 days) Wrath July 7, 2008 to November 12, 2008 4 months, 5 days (128 days) Cataclysm June 30, 2010 to December 6, 2010 5 months, 6 days (159 days) Mists (long) *March 20, 2012 to Sept. 27 *6 mo., 7 days (191 days) Mists (short) *March 20, 2012 to July 20 *4 months (122 days) Patch Release Days before expansion Patch 2.0.1 December 5, 2006 1 month, 1 week, 5 days (43 days) Patch 3.0.2 October 14, 2008 1 month (31 days) Patch 4.0.1 October 12, 2010 1 month, 3 weeks, 5 days (57 days) Patch 5.0.1 (long) *August 15, 2012 *1 month, 2 weeks Patch 5.0.1 (short) *June 6, 2012 *1 month, 2 weeks *Predicted dates It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
