Quote:IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

Quote:Keep in mind, we do plan to push a content patch prior to release, which could occupy your holiday time quite well.

Quote:Oh, you know, just a few small things such as a brand new honor system, as well as new talents and abilities along with dozens of other changes and improvements.;)

Quote:Remember, we were planning on patching in many things along with the release of the Burning Crusade so that those who chose not to purchase the expansion could still enjoy many new features.

With the delay of the game, we'll be patching prior to its release.

Quote:Yeah I'm surprised that Vivendi let it slip past the Christmas sale zone. But as Luminon mentioned it will seel anyway. Actually with a push back to January, I'm not expecting to see it till Feb or March now. I always assumed it would come out before Christmas come hell or high water.

I don't care much one way or the other on when it gets here though.

Quote:As others have noted this will give us more time to complete the present game (4 H, Sapphiron and KT) but Christmas holidays are just not going to be the same with no new game content. O well at least i know the expansion should be in better shape in January.

Quote:Whoa, now for another big news part of it. Sounds like TBC is getting delayed for only the content, and not necessarily anything else ...
Source, as always, is BlueTracker ...
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/38233956.htm

Quote:EDIT: Check out the results for searching thott's beta database for "Grand Marshal": http://www.thottbot.com/beta?s=grand+marshal

Quote:Beta testers are sayin it takes 10k or so (if I remember correctly) honor on top of those marks. Honor comes in roughly 10 times as slow. So best guess is a couple hours a night for a week to get one of those.

Quote:Yeah, I'm thinking: GM Weapons for everyone!

Quote:So I cannot speak with any conviction but my impression from working in games for half a dozen years is that this game is still more beta than it is a releasable product. It is lots of fun but there is lots of broken stuff, lots of stuff that is not broken but really awkward and lots of stuff that is totally untested by the public. All of that said, I think a November launch is extremely unlikely.

Some stuff you would not know unless you worked in the games industry. Shelf space at the mall stores like gamestop etc is purchased. They do not put hot sellers at the front of the store, that space is bought by the publishers and their products are put there exclusively. If you are going to miss a ship date you have to give them a months notice to resell the space or you lose that money. Thanksgiving is Nov 23 and the currently posted release dates are between 24-27 that I have seen so I would pretty much expect for a delay to be announced today or tomorrow unless they dont mind junking that cash.

Quote:It is lots of fun but there is lots of broken stuff, lots of stuff that is not broken but really awkward and lots of stuff that is totally untested by the public.

Quote:a) there is going to be an event leading up to the opening of the gates

and

B)the gate to outland will be open on day 1 when TBC goes retail

Quote:Speaking of "awkward": I'm playing a Blood Elf huntress in the BC beta, and what I noticed is that I get a lot of weird target placement errors in areas with uneven ground/topology. I get either "target too close" or "out of range" errors, and the target bashes me although it's displayed far away. Luckily my pet, which is always on the "real" target, saves me here.

This is my first hunter, so I can't say if these errors were already common in WoW. The frequency of the errors however, makes me think that it's a BC beta bug.

Quote:Happens to me all the time on Stormrage. It has some major desync issues. Can't remember it ever happening on Tich though. They probably aren't running the beta on the best hardware.

Quote:From a business perspective, the announcement must have killed Blizzard and their corporate overlords at Vivendi Universal.

Quote:Hm well Kazzak IS in outlands now. He's in that confined area in the north, east of the agromar area. You can't get there (yet) but a hunter with the correct tracker (daemon) can see him behind and there's supposedly a zonewide yell he can do, though I have never seen that. But Kazzak is now in Outlands.