Typically, the time it has taken to go from announcement to release has been roughly a year. Wrath was announced in the fall of '07 and came out in the fall of '08. Likewise Cataclysm the next two years, and Mists the next two.
But as I said in a previous post, Wrath and Cataclysm both had a whole patch to release before work could begin in full on the next expansion. We got Siege of Orgrimmar in early/mid September, and with no 5.5 on the horizon, we can assume that from Sept. 10th on, Blizzard has been working full-steam on Warlords of Draenor.
That doesn't mean it's ready. After all, they only showed us a little of one dungeon, and details remain sketchy on a lot of the rest of the expansion (though what I've seen of the new character models looks awesome.)
So here's the pessimist's view: if WoD sticks to the pattern, we'll be seeing it some time in the fall of '14. Even from a pessimist's perspective, it seems unlikely that it will be late fall. I would expect that WoD will come out in September at the latest.
But let's throw in some optimism: They have a few months' head start. Consider that 3.3 had yet to come out (with the Dungeon Finder, three dungeons and a 12-boss raid) when Cataclysm was announced. There was a ton of work to be done on one of WoW's biggest non X.0 patches. Likewise, Mists was announced before 4.3, with the addition of a raid, three dungeons, the awesome Darkmoon Isle, Transmog, Void Storage, and the Raid Finder.
But as we stand right now, Mists of Pandaria is totally complete. Sure, some of us (me) haven't really gotten their fill (I must confess I have yet to do flex mode, other than some abortive attempts with my guild - we really need to recruit more healers and another dedicated tank) of 5.3, but from Blizzard's perspective, beyond a few maintenance bug-fixes and the occasional buff or nerf, they're done.
So that's why I imagine we could, in fact, be seeing Warlords of Draenor sooner than usual.
Theoretically, they're hoping to get it out before the early summer/late spring time period. This would seem to imply that they're shooting for early/mid spring, like April or May.
If they can start the Beta before the end of this year, I could see them hitting that (if I recall correctly, the Beta usually lasts about six months, which would fit for late April or some time in May.)
If they can really ramp up the schedule, imagine if they announced a new expansion next year as well? Granted, assuming we get the standard three raid tiers, I wouldn't want them to rush through it too fast, but one of the things that was always cool in Mists of Pandaria was the fact that there was always something to look forward to. About a week or two after each major patch, they opened the next one on the PTR. Right now, even though I think Siege of Orgrimmar is still relatively fresh (though I definitely haven't been hitting it as hard on LFR as I was ToT, so maybe that's just because of my personal experience,) we're now in the longest period without new content in the expansion (which admittedly is typical for the final patch.)
It's not happening tomorrow, but I have some very reserved and cautious hopes that we might get Warlords of Draenor in the first half of 2014.
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