Gamestop will make up dates if they have to get reserves on something. They'll take reserves as early as possible, since they count on a certain number of people to make reserves, and then forget about those reserves, giving Gamestop money for nothing.

If i remember correct, the first release date for TBC was end of november or early december.
I doubt we will see WotLK this year.

If this is true (friends friends rumors are always scary) it only adds to the likeliness Q2 2008 release (before any delays that is).
I dont believe any very late 2008 dates though, Blizz is slow, but not that slow. More likely they would take away some content than spend 2 years between expansions again imo.
Ofc any ETA we see now will be bullshit, but at the same time, Blizz surely got an ETA, release when its done cant be used forever, no matter how much they say they are free from Vivendi.

Each of the dragonflight/Aspects is charged with maintaining balance/order in a certain sphere of Azeroth's "ecology". If you are disruptive to that sphere, they will come and kill you - that's their job (except for Bronze - they will go and uncause you). The black dragonflight is Death, AND the actual dragon that is the Aspect has been driven mad by Old One influence (C'thun possibly), and is more or less of the opinion that the best way to balance Death on Azeroth is nice, even, and all around.

The balance they (should be) maintain(ing) is necessary for the survival of Azeroth as a whole - while short term, any of their specific goals may seem good/evil as regards the continued (immediate) survival of the mortal races, ask any Horde player - we will happily extinguish all gnomes for the greater good. The dragons just have a significantly larger perspective. Thus, Malygos regaining his sanity and seeing the very large mess of things that the mortal races have made of magic, while diametrically opposed to what we normally associate with "good" - "life" - is also in the right. Too much magic in the hands of fools, and Azeroth ends up like Draenor. And on behalf of the Horde, let me just say - I'm doing my part to cut down on the gnome infestation. For Azeroth.

The conflict between the aspects this set up are covered in the War of the Ancients trilogy. BWL was just a skirmish between Red and Black.

As for the Titans, there were a few episodes of Transformers: Beast Wars, I think it was, where they had a whole plotline with aliens having created Earth as an experiment, and the Transformers running around mucking up their experiment was simply unacceptable, and therefore the experiment was a total wash... so they went about wiping the slate clean. The Uldum quest(s) make it sound like a similar scenario is not out of the question. ("Uhm, yes, hi. We are the Titans. We've noticed you've got a spot of Demonic Taint on you, and we're sort of against that sort of thing. Prepare to meet Gort, our emissary. He brings peace. Goodbye, and enjoy what remains of your existence.")

It's actually not their job to come and kill you if you step out of line. For the most part the Aspects were charged with watching over Azeroth, however they're not supposed to meddle in mortal affairs. In the War of the Ancients the Aspects played their hand because the Legion came to destroy them all. Originally some of them thought to let the Elves deal with it themselves since they brought it on themselves, Alexstraza objected of course, being the aspect of life, and Krasus also helped turn the tide(according to the novel's account anyway).

The Black Dragonflight's charge wasn't death, they are the Earth Warders, responsible for the mountains and the lands, and the shaping of them and such. Despite the corruption of Neltharion, their charge remains, however it has become corrupted, volcanoes, earthquakes, any oddity you see on Azeroth's landscape can be at least in partially responsible for the corruption that befell that flight(Not counting Searing Gourge/Burning Steppes, Ragnaros is responsible for that). The Black Flight isn't killing people because they're charged with Death, they're killing people and cause destruction cause they're nuts.

C'Thun likely had little to nothing to do with Neltharion's corruption, as it's documented that C'Thun plotted and planned for himself while he was sleeping in Silithus, he watched the races, and planned for himself, he didn't interfere in the War of the Ancients, and watched as the Legion tried to invade and fail. The Old Gods did however corrupt Neltharion, and are the reason he created the Demon Soul.

Never once in the history of Azeroth have the Dragons Flights(Not counting the batty Black Flight) come out and declared war on the mortal races for whatever reason. It's not something they do, they have a hands off approach in regards to these things.

Ok, wiping out mortal races is not an act of sanity, I don't care how you spin it heh. Magic had little to do with what led to the fall of Draenor. The conflict the Dreanei brought with them and the Orcs themselves had everything to do with that. The Fel Magic the Orcs started using eventually led to the destruction of Draenor with the portals and what not. But magically initially had nothing to do with it, remember all Orcs used to be Shaman.

Chris Metzen said the same thing basically.

I agree wholeheartedly.

In my experience, people don't commit to a raid unless they feel that either a) they're making progress and getting kills, or b) they reasonable expect a) to be true in the immediate future. Absent these things it's hard to keep people coming back for a tough encounter.

People are much more likely to start thinking in terms of the raid's success if they have a few wins under their belt. Sub-optimal specs, weak gear, lack of practice or attentiveness or the like are much more likely to improve if the raid feels like real progress is being made. If a guild or group's 25-man raiding consists of running at Gruul and bouncing off for weeks, people are much less inclined to think like raiders. People that start off as poor raiders can and do improve.

One of the reasons I think Naxx 2.0 is an inspired idea is that a longer introductory raid encourages people to get into the mindset; if done right, it'll be like MC in the sense that in the process of clearing it, a group of 25 people will turn into something resembling a coherent raid force. With a few easy bosses down, people feel like they're making progress (even if those bosses are PuGable, victory is a powerful motivator) and start thinking, theorycrafting, reading guides or raid forums, tweaking their specs, adjusting their gear, and generally trying to improve.

Obviously I'm talking about people on the more casual end of the spectrum, but still, this is my (limited) experience. Your mileage may vary.

Done.

Interesting quote from a blue poster on EU forums about WoLK
WoW BlueTracker: 08/08 Information on Northrend

This quote would seem to imply that both are options. Now of course, this could just be marketing guff, and Arthas will be your standard Big Raid Instance Boss (TM). But I wonder if Blizzard are heading to something altogether more interesting - a kind of "decision" where some realms will choose one path, and some choose another.

Interesting that they use "defeated" rather than "killed", also. Again, could just be hedging of bets, or keeping cards close to their chests.

Even if I'm wrong about there being a choice between possible outcomes for WoLK, it's encouraging that they say solo and raiders will decide the issue. Unless it's another meaningless grind like the War Effort, of course. But if there really is some "victory condition" for the server that isn't just "has the end raid boss been killed yet?", that would be a welcome addition.

This was spoken to at BlizzCon. One of the biggest failures of vanilla WoW and TBC, in Blizzard's mind, was that the 'average' player (even the 'average' raider) had very little (i.e. no) interaction with the primary villains.

The intention, from what I heard during the panels and afterwards, is for Arthas to feature prominently in many other aspects of the game - forcing your hand through quests, appearing at the end of dungeons, and much more. His central role in WoW lore, and particularly in the current goings-on of Northrend, lend to the credibility of this ambitious prospect.

He will, however, ultimately be a raid boss. As to whether there will be some kind of world event and/or whether we defeat/kill him, no one knows yet.

Paraphrasing Metzen: You'll see Arthas just about everywhere, don't quote me on it, but you might see Arthas at the end of some quests, dungeons, taunting you, trying to break your will. So by the time players reach level 80, they will all be familiar with who he is, and what he's up to.

Now, my personal opinion/view:

Arthas will be a Big Raid Instance Boss, however, through questing, players will be told/praised for accomplishing things that supposedly are weakening the Lich King's defenses/power, and helping your faction gain on his domain, so that when raid groups finally arrive at the top of Icecrown, they are technically fighting a weakened Arthas.

This is how I think they'll make the average player feel that they've had a hand into defeating the Lich King.

Tigole also mentioned that they want to do more "Ahn'Qiraj like" world events, minus the linen. Such a world event, perhaps to shatter whatever defenses the Lich King has on Icecrown Citadel, would be a good way for people to feel like they are participating in what will ultimately end in a raid boss fight.

Hmm. Solo quests / 5 man instance quests that need to be done a set number of times to break Arthas's defences and make him vulnerable? Sounds doable.

And the best thing is - you could make them daily quests, so the bleeding edge can't brute force them by grinding their nuts off. If your server opens the instance early, it means everyone pulled together to do it. Of course, if that's the way they're going, you need to open new 5-man content in the same World Event. One of the problems was AQ was the "why should I grind to open somewhere I'll never go" feeling. If there had been an AQ5 and a couple of solo quest hubs opened in the same event, it would be much more fulfilling.

I'll be rather sad if they go for server quests again at this point. Having gotten suckered into a multi-server transfer to a new realm (in an attempt to dodge what were four-digit queues at the time) my guild is uncheerfully stranded on a dead server that would have literally no chance of completing anything like that.

I doubt they'd take the relatively few ghost server into account when making plans but it sure would be rubbing salt into the wound.

A "realm-wide decision" would be the worst design in the history of MMORPG's.

Vote Arthas in '08!

Well imagine if the 'realm-wide decision' was how weak the server made arthas before the raiding guilds get in the instance.

Simple example: daily quests, which ultimately make arthas or his defences weaker. Lets say when you do X dairly quests arthas loses X hp (to a maximum value). Kindof like a server doing Vaelastrasz at 50% or 30%, but the different is the **entire*** server has played a hand at getting the boss to that state.

My server might make a 'realm wide decision' that we want to weaken arthas the most. We work our asses off, get access to some great new endgame 5 man content, and the 25 man raiders get 'the 30% vael' version - everyone wins and played a part in a big decision and takes their share of the glory for what they want to achieve from the game. The key to making this would be daily quests, so nobody can just brute-force things like in AQ. Because different realms have different populations, you couldnt just use 'number of daily quests completed' - it would have to be something like 'number of daily quests completed by what % of lvl 80 players' to ensure its not too biased towards big servers - simply for being... big.

On the back end you'd probably want some new content/items/whatever that all players get when Arthas dies for the first time on your server (or server+faction) so that non-raiders are rewarded for helping the raiders. The easier it is, the sooner the raiders kill him and the sooner you get your shiny.

That's a pretty silly statement to make considering that one of the best events in Asheron's Call was a "realm wide decision" during on the monthly story events to not shatter some crystal, which was the default "how to advance the story" decision. One on server a very large group of players defended this crystal for quite some time until the GMs finally aided the offense in overcoming the defenders. Even years after AC is ended its still remembered as one of the best events in the game because of this.

Back in the day, Asheron's Call implemented a dungeon where you had to destroy a big crystal prison that contained the game's version of Kel'Thuzad or Illidan (he was called Bael'Zharon). The catch was that going into this dungeon flagged you for PvP. So (mostly for RP reasons) a group could go in there and defend the prison to prevent the boss from being freed. AC did not have instanced dungeons, so once he was freed, he was free for good. I don't remember the exact implications, but a lot of things changed around on your realm once he was free, and not necessarily for the better. He was quickly freed on most servers, but one realm's defense held out for weeks.

Asheron's Call had a lot of really, really cool ideas. They had regular content patches that would change the world significantly, and there was a very strong ongoing story arc that players actually participated in advancing.

Unfortunately, the core gameplay just wasn't that fun. But for getting players involved in the storyline, AC was a fantastic game.

Edit: Malan, stop reading my mind!

That's really just a game event not unlike the AQ opening event. Completely different from a realm "deciding" that they're going to be hardcore or casual and players on it having to live with the consequences for long periods of time.

I could see potential good and potential bad from a realm wide kind of thing. If it's done just right it could be amazingly epic, with a culmination of efforts leading to the defeat of Arthas at the hand of thousands, on the other hand, some servers could have that while other servers never kill him because casuals refuse to help the raiders on their server or something like that. I'm really kind of intrigued by the idea and not sure what to expect, but it's an interesting concept.

Nothing wrong so far . But due to my pessimistic view towards the average forum poster, I'm anticipating some fun times with this topic of conversation.