No Patch 2.5?
Eyonix over on the official WoW Forums commented on a thread asking if there’ll be a patch 2.5, his answer was a straightforward, No. At least they aren’t considering one at the moment.
To me this suggests they are happy with progress on Wrath of the Lich King, which suggests it may be closer than people think.
Patch 2.3.2 is currently on the PTR and we may see it next week on Live. Potentially this means we “could” see 2.4 on the PTR before the New Year but realistically it’ll probably be the first week or two of 2008.
Patch 2.4 is a fairly large content patch with at least one major change to the core engine. The Combat Log has been completely reworked, now sending an “event” containing lots of information instead of a simple text string, this will enable many addons to be much more versatile. For example, threat meters will be able to track multiple enemies with the same name as they’ll be able to distinguish them via their IDs instead of just having the name to work with.
As well as the combat log, there is of course, the Sunwell Plateau, featuring both a 5-man and a 25-man instance, the 25-man following on progression-wise from Black Temple and Mount Hyjal (meaning very few people will actually get to see it) although I’m sure the 5-man will get some hammer.
Along with the instances there is a new “public” area, Sunwell Isle. Sunwell Isle will feature new daily quests, perhaps for other professions?
All this will take a fair bit of testing, say 1-2 months. Presuming 2.4 goes onto the PTR on the first week of January that would make an optimistic live launch in mid-February. Giving 2.4 a few months of play on live would take us to around May-June as a possible launch time for Wrath of the Lich King.
If Blizzard aren’t planning a 2.5 I’d say that is a good timescale. I’d imagine if at some point Wrath hits a speed bump due to issues they’d start a 2.5 and aim it for the May-June slot pushing Wrath to an August-September launch.
For sales reasons I’d imagine Blizzard are aiming for a Summer launch for Wrath. I personally can’t wait, lots of cool stuff ahead for WoW.
