WOW Expansion: Late 2006?

[TheLuminaire]

I've wondered about the expansion release timing in light of the news in Tal's post and their patch naming scheme. Usually 2.0 indicates a new edition or significant functionality upgrade- since the expansion is playable already, perhaps it'll be released after the 1.9 patch? If so that would put it somewhere around Christmas, which is a good time to release software. It would also be a HUGE suprise since everyone expects Blizzard to take a long time to release stuff like expansions.
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Considering their usual patch scheduling(6-8 weeks between patches), it's unlikely they'd hit 2.0 by Christmas, even though 1.8 is already on the test realms.

I'd bet sometime in the spring, probably before E3, or maybe right after.