Yes, it's too early.No analysis required.
To be enjoyable: yes its too early.If you wanna chart it up, you can twist and scheme and grasp at straws to say not really. But you also would say shadowlands is the best expansion as well. SL should last longer than what BFA did, beta for Azeroth I am surprised to see lasted that long on your chart. Shadowlands, being partly made from BFA systems shouldn't take this long. Also ironically its beta testing DF systems. No reason it should be shorter since they are doing a season 4 afterall.I also have doubts they will release DF on time as well. They didn't release SL on time and took the 300k(?) EU fine like it was nothing. It would be great if DF released after the love event personally, it should be bug free and not a disaster like how SL / BFA was. I don't think blizzard will handle a 3rd expansion released that's dogwaste for quality.
pog
Even if blizz tries to pawn off the start of the 2 week prepatch event as the “”start”” of the expansion and they launch that on Dec 27/28, while also not having a buffer period before prepatch event (aka 2 weeks then prepatch event).The expansion is still comically too soon.Regardless I see them having basically the same launch cycle of SL but only having a 4 week prepatch. So prepatch on October 25/26, worldwide launch on Nov 21/22. Raid/season/pvp start on Dec 6/7 and then mythic raid on Dec 13/14. All so they can not step on the sacred winter holiday break.So that basically leaves us 17 full weeks left before prepatch in which has to contain the end of season 3 and start of season 4 (which at the most can only have 5 full fated raid cycles). Season 4 stuff won’t end in prepatch but the fomo won’t exist then (unless they don’t have bugs like the m+ worm mount being available in SL prepatch).So yes rushed and the lack of borrowed power systems does not get them off the hook of dev time. No public alpha/beta and that’s concerning.
Depends to be honest since 5 months of testing where they devs listen to feedback is better then 10 months of testing where they go " Nah your wrong about covenants and conduit power just wait and see guys".I also feel that some people have a view of " The expansion was just announced its too soon!". Normally they would have announced DF at Blizzcon in Nov but due to ongoing covid stuff it was going to be virtual in Jan/Feb but we all know the issues blizzard was having. They called of the virtual event which delayed announcement in total by a good 4 to 6 months from when it normally would have been announced. They dropped a patch and have been working on this full force for sometime much like WoD into Legion. Its not too soon if they listen to feedback and if they don't listen to feedback it wouldn't matter if they did a two year beta.
I love all these too early people when they've yet to see how far along the beta/alpha is. Of course I'd bet that just like MMO-C and the wow subreddit a lot of them probably aren't even people that play the game.
Just a reminder to everyone theorizing that this is too early, it WOULD have been to early for ACTIVISION BLIZZARD buuuuuut..... MICROSOFT bought the company now, so perhaps they have more resources to work with to launch the expansion sooner now.
Another fail?
Truth be told I feel like this going to be rushed again sadly. So it's all wait and see, given we don't know when season 4 will start. Along with I imagine the alpha will start next week, and then the beta a month after.
I think it's important to note that we don't know how much internal testing has gone on. Perhaps they're keeping it more under wraps this time around?
Let's face it, if they have another Shadowlands or BFA expansion then the game will continue to stay where it is. Making lots of money with millions of subscribers.The game's 'dead' state is still envied by most of the mmo world.Regardless, this expansion will be released right on time.