Blizzard Production Schedule Leaked, World Unsurprised To Learn Of 12 More Expansion Packs For WoW

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 18 Comments

Every time you ask Blizzard community reps about this leak, God kills a murloc baby.

MMO Champion has what is probably the best analysis of this. Unsurprisingly, Activision Blizzard is in full license molestation mode.

Note no sign of the long rumored “new next-gen MMO property” Blizzard has been hiring for for a while now, unless it’s the “Titan” entry at the bottom – and a Q4 2013 release for a WoW-scale MMO is, to put it mildly, unlikely.

Other then that, no real surprises: Blizzard is preparing to turn Battle.net into a digital DLC distribution portal and eventual Steam competitor (apparently the whole turning it into Facebook thing didn’t quite work out), Diablo 3 and the first Starcraft 2 expansion pack are both due out late next year, and World of Warcraft will have expansion packs slammed into it, starting in 2012, on a yearly basis.

Still, this chart is very handy for every other gaming company on the planet to schedule when NOT to plan their MMO releases.

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  • Technogeek

    So, WoW expansions are planned to come out every one and a half years…or, after translating from Valve Time, every four years.

    Seems to fit so far.

  • http://www.independentcreator.com Matt

    “unless it’s the “Titan” entry at the bottom – and a Q4 2013 release for a WoW-scale MMO is, to put it mildly, unlikely.”

    Sure. But telling your board members that you’re going to release one then doesn’t seem unlikely. Gotta give yourself room to slip by two years.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ameggs Andrew Meggs

    Three years from now would be a short time to make such a beast, but I’m quite, quite sure they’re not just now starting work on it. The project has had publicly-posted job listings for several years now.

  • http://www.somebits.com/weblog/ Nelson Minar

    I found an independent rumour dating to 2009 that Project Titan is indeed the name of Blizzard’s new MMO. Details on my blog at http://www.somebits.com/weblog/culture/games/blizzard-project-titan.html

  • http://www.gamingtrend.com Jason Ballew

    Blizzard mentioned in their keynote at GDC Austin in 2009 that there was another MMO coming, so yeah. 4 years+ to make a MMO is plausible.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich

    Looks like Blizzard and Valve are in the same boat as being companies whose radical success does not necessitate they need release another game any time soon.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    I scoff at Battle.net competing with Steam for anything not Blizzard or CoD, but people scoffed at Steam, too.

    Still, if I’m going to hedge on a “trustworthy” company, it ain’t gonna be the guys who may or may not have sold my shit to Facebook.

  • http://Website Freakazoid

    Oh, you mean it’s real? Thought it was another lame troll on /v/.

    It’ll be interesting to see if people will still buy these games. I suspect as time goes on, blizzard is going to lose that quality they’ve been known for as they try to meet activision’s demands.

  • http://Website Boanerges

    Consider how lackluster EQ2 was compared to EQ1. And I think EQ2 is one of the better performing SOE games atm. Announcing (for lack of a better term) WoW2 would be fruitless for a game that might get into beta in 2015 (which is optimistic). I wouldn’t expect any real info for at least 2-3 years. And it had better be done right or you run the risk that players leave WoW for WoW2, get fed up and move to a competitor.

    I see the move against Steam as a net win. Steam is very good at doing Digital Distribution. They’ve cornered almost all the PC market that’s not Blizzard. So Blizzard has to be as good or better.

  • http://Website ethereal.wolf

    i don’t think battle.net can catch up to steam. steam has too much of a head start.

  • http://Website Ukerric

    I distinctly remember seeing offers in early 2009 for their upcoming MMO. At the time, the nature of the jobs posted made it clear they were NOT doing WoW2 (physics, collisions).

    The analysys about it being a MMOFPS sounds plausible.

  • http://Website Dblade

    Its going to be COD online. You know Kotick would love just to monetize it through MTs, and an MMO would get all the private servers out of the way.

    This chart annoys me. WoW really needs to die. It’s been strangling innovation for years now, and they are trying to push it well into 2015?

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog/ IainC


    Dblade:

    Its going to be COD online. You know Kotick would love just to monetize it through MTs, and an MMO would get all the private servers out of the way.
    This chart annoys me. WoW really needs to die. It’s been strangling innovation for years now, and they are trying to push it well into 2015?

    I guarantee that even if WoW closed down tomorrow, everyone would still try to copy it.

  • http://Website Gx1080

    WoW will never die. Ever. Make yourself confortable with the idea.

  • http://Website ToeJob


    Gx1080:

    WoW will never die. Ever. Make yourself confortable with the idea.

    It’s heartbreaking but this post and the one above it are all too true.

  • http://Website Bleaktea

    It’s not Blizzard’s fault that some other game companies are little more than cargo cults, creating fetishes in WoW’s image thinking that this will make the money come.

    WoW does not strangle innovation. The great dull copy-cat mentality of corporate culture does that just fine on its own.

  • http://Website John Smith

    And why should wow die? Ultima Online is still chugging along. Up until the last few years, I believed it was impossible to kill a mmorpg. People love to grind and be the hero, and 10-15 a month for that privilege no matter how bad the game is, is a pretty sweet deal. It’s really hard not to make a decent mmorpg. People just need to stop shooting themselves in the foot with their 200 million dollar projects that are considered failures if they dip below 1 million subscribers.

    I’m curious how blizzard thinks it can compete with steam. Valve is already distributing the vast majority of games available, and blizzard’s own selection is pretty limited.

  • http://arewenewatthis.wordpress.com/ Bronte

    I know I am late to this post, but “full license molestation mode” is the term of the year in my book.