As some of you may have noticed, yesterday evening Amazon.com sent out an e-mail to anyone who had pre-ordered World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Its purpose was to inform them that the game would take three to six days to ship, because it was going to be released two days before Thanksgiving.
So, Amazon might have some inside info that would make them confident that Cataclysm was being released on November 23rd. However, Blizzard has neither commented on the Amazon e-mail, nor, more importantly, announced a release date.
In other words, we’d be surprised if this was the actual release date, for a number of reasons…
For example, while shipping the game right before a holiday weekend seems great for players (except those players who, you know, want to spend time with their families), it would certainly suck for Blizzard employees. For the same reasons we are unlikely to see a release date set in late October, because Blizzcon starts on the 22nd. It’s unlikely that Blizzard would place a new game release in the same time period of a major con that many of their community managers and developers will attend (not to mention players who would like to be playing that game).
Other Mid-November dates, however, are more likely, judging by the state of the beta and the progress of patch 4.0 on the Patch Test Realms, though we still wouldn’t want to bet any money on the ineffable Blizzard Entertainment.
(via WoW Insider.)
