Release date for WoW given.

[Guest]

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/10/commentary.../column_gaming/


Phil O'Neil, president of North American operations for Vivendi Universal Games
' "World of Warcraft," he said, will launch in North America in November and in Korea the following month. '


My guess is his date is fairly accurate.

[Assur]

Well, where does that leave Europe? :angry:

[Refrigerator]

Wow, I look forward to being able to play World of Warcraft in February then! :D

[Guest]

That guy doesnt work for Blizz. Blizz works for him.

If he wants it released in November, it probably will be released in November.

[Cryptic]

Hopefully the game will be balanced and fun on release.

Hey, I'm an optimist.
:lol:

[Bolty]

That seems to me a VERY ambitious release date. Judging by its current state and the amount of effort required to reach the Blizzard "polished" state, I doubt it...unless, as theorized, we're currently playing on a build that's a few versions old.

-Bolty

[Guest]

It might be the first time Blizz was pushed to release a game to soon.


Hopefully like you said you are not playing the newest version in beta.

[--Pete]

Hi,

That guy doesnt work for Blizz. Blizz works for him.

Not really. Blizzard and Phil O'Neil both work for Vivendi. At least for now. And Vivendi has long given Blizzard the time they felt they needed to "finish" their games. Besides, by November, Blizzard may not even be owned by Vivendi any more -- Vivendi's been trying to sell off their entertainment assets (including Blizzard and Sierra) for quite some time.

As for being ready by November (of this year :) ), I doubt it. The game isn't anywhere near complete, with talents, resistances, hunters, PvP servers, houses, mounts, and big bits of the map yet to be implemented. And even after most of that is in place, a fair bit of tweaking to make everything fun and balanced will need to take place.

But thanks for the link -- we'll see what happens and arguing about it here will not influence that.

--Pete

[Drasca]

As for being ready by November (of this year :) ), I doubt it.  The game isn't anywhere near complete, with talents, resistances, hunters, PvP servers, houses, mounts, and big bits of the map yet to be implemented.  And even after most of that is in place, a fair bit of tweaking to make everything fun and balanced will need to take place.

That's great but the track record MMoRPGs for high promises and missing implementations is worse than any other gaming. There's always 'broken promises' and 'vaporware' features in every game that are never implemented, but mmorpgs have the worst. The "carrot dangling" logic is, why add it now when it can be a promised feature for a later patch for "added content"?

I do hope WoW does better, but the history doesn't look good.

[nobbie]

Phil O'Neil, president of North American operations for Vivendi Universal Games
' "World of Warcraft," he said, will launch in North America in November and in Korea the following month. '

November 2004 or 2005? ;)

[Walkiry]

Well, where does that leave Europe? :angry:

And this surprises you how? :lol:

[TheDragoon]

Exactly. :lol:

[Cryptic]

Europe will get a November release, too.

(2005)

<_<

[NuurAbSaal]

Optimist!

;)

[jondifool]

To say that any release date is fairly accurate when blizzard is involved...
is pretty close to my defination on when fewer fantasy takes the place of healthy optimism.

besides that i would like to point at the warhammer onlinemovie released now ( at E3 ofcause).
Simply because i am a fan with fewer fantasy about what that game could be like. ;)

and to justify that i am interrupting this forum , i would have to say that the movie if anything does have the feeling of some really early diablo like! i was really felling some flashback to when wathching the in game movies for diablo 2. But maybe thats just me

[MongoJerry]

It might be the first time Blizz was pushed to release a game to soon.

*cough* Diablo 2: Lord of "We only have one runeword ready on shipment, most of the uniques haven't been designed or polished, sorceresses can destroy the Bloody Foothills at no risk and reach lvl 99 in two days, people can upload their own designed items to our 'secure' server,..." Destruction

[Ruvanal]

*cough* Diablo 2: Lord of "We only have one runeword ready on shipment, most of the uniques haven't been designed or polished, sorceresses can destroy the Bloody Foothills at no risk and reach lvl 99 in two days, people can upload their own designed items to our 'secure' server,..." Destruction

Second that.

Problem is that the date may be accurate due to marketing and business concerns that override wither thegame is actually done or not. The D2:LoD was just such a case in point.

[MongoJerry]

As for being ready by November (of this year [smile.gif]&nbsp; ), I doubt it. The game isn't anywhere near complete, with talents, resistances, hunters, PvP servers, houses, mounts, and big bits of the map yet to be implemented. And even after most of that is in place, a fair bit of tweaking to make everything fun and balanced will need to take place.

I think that some of what you said relates to an earlier comment that we don't know what version of the game we're playing. It's clear even from the current version of the beta that they had some elements of mounts and hunters already developed, and that they disabled those features in the current beta release, because they weren't quite polished enough for general playtesting. I understand that the next push/patch will include hunters, mounts, and the first PvP servers, so it's clear that they're not just starting from scratch on these items. Also, it's obvious that they've given a lot of thought to the talent and resistance systems, so even though they weren't quite ready for this patch/push, I don't think it would take much time to implement them if the design has been nailed down. They will problably require quite a bit of tweeking along the way, but if they are included in the next push/patch as I expect, then there will be plenty of time to do that. Also, Blizzard has already announced that "housing" and other fetures like that will be part of an expansion or later implementation, so that isn't expected to be ready by release time anyway.

The one part that does concern me is how "big bits of the map are yet to be implemented." Some of that is to be expected, since Blizzard will want to hold some things back for release and will want to have room to add things later. However, so many areas and quests need to be developed that I do worry about whether the game world will be complete and well playtested prior to release. Again, however, there are hints that Blizzard has some more pieces designed than we see in our release. The Shimmering Flats racetrack, for example, isn't quite finished. Harvesters are standing in for racecars and one can't yet bet on the races, as examples, even though the appropriate vendors are there. However, the racetrack seems close to being finished, and I expect it to be by the next patch/push.

Also, on the flight from the Undercity to the Arathi Highlands and the Badlands, you can get a good look at the Western Plaguelands. I used to think that this area was undeveloped, because you'd pretty much die the instant you walked into the area (I recently tried it with my level 39 priestess and she still got instantly killed). However, flying over the area, I see some very detailed cities, landscapes, and even a diverse population of monsters. So, either this area is fully ready for level 50+ characters or it's an area that's almost done but wasn't quite ready for playtesting, yet.

Perhaps less well developed is the Hinterlands, which are guarded by Guardians of Blizzard in many areas. However, when the server started going haywire and removed all mobs for about 10 minutes, including the GoB's, I ran up into the Hinterlands to check out the scenery. Scenery-wise, the area looked well-developed with several towns, a city, and several cave complexes. When the mobs returned, I saw many "tribes" of mobs in some of the towns and some new beast mobs like gryphons. The humanoid mobs used Troll graphic stand-ins and were labeled "needs graphic," but again it was clear that they had given quite a lot of thought to the area and although it may not have been ready for playtesting (and the mobs were level mid-40's and above, so it would've been difficult for <lvl 39 characters to adventure there anyway), a lot of work has been done there.

So, even though there there is clearly a lot to be done on the game, it's also clear that there is a lot of stuff that Blizzard has already developed that we haven't seen. I think with the next patch/push, which will probably raise the level cap, add some new areas, and implement resistances, talents, and hunters, we'll get a much better idea of how far along Blizzard really is with WoW.

[--Pete]

Hi,

However, as we all know, each item added has a good chance to break a number of items already implemented. Thus my reluctance to believe a November ship date.

Of course, Vivendi (or Blizzard management) might get stubborn and push it out the door, ready or not. Blizzard (or rather Buzzard) survived one such debacle already -- how many blunders does it take to kill a reputation?

I hope that Blizzard sticks to its "we'll ship it when it is finished" policy. For the good of us all. For the players, because we need a good game, it's been a long drought. For Blizzard, 'cause if the game isn't finished when it ships, Blizz might get the initial sales on rep, but will probably lose droves to better games.

But, we'll see what we see. I'm cynically optimistic -- the game has promise. Let's hope that, unlike a politician, that's not all it has :)

--Pete

[DeeBye]

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/showthread....15&pagenumber=3

it will be a *simultaneous* release in korea and the us

as for ship, end of the year

europe to follow