Release Date Speculation!

Blizzard is obviously allowed to release Warlords of Draenor any time they please, but they have set the end of fall as a deadline (Dec. 20th being the last day of fall.) That said, there's one big hint as to the release date, and that's the fact that the Horde Chopper from the Azeroth Choppers thing is due to be released on Sept. 30th. It stands to reason that they'd want people to try out that new mount in the new content.

So how plausible is that? Sept. 30th would mean a release in two months. Is that enough time?

The beta has been going on for about a month now. What's open?

Well, all the zones are open (save Tanaan, which will be in a later patch, like Farahlon, but taunting us by being on the map from the get-go.) You can level up from 90-100 through said zones (there was a character wipe though, so I'm taking my DK back through the zones again, though I'm already back to Talador.)

I believe that all but two of the dungeons have been opened up, and while I haven't run them myself, each of them looks very cool (personally, the ones that I'm most excited for are Grimrail Depot, Skyreach, and Auchindoun.) We still haven't seen the Iron Docks or the Everbloom, but otherwise things are open for testing.

Raid Testing is going on the usual two-bosses-at-a-time schedule.

Garrisons came a long way in the latest patch, but there's clearly still a bit to set up.

Professions probably still need some work - there doesn't seem to be any cloth yet or enchanting materials, but the ore and herbs are there.

I haven't really tried out the level 100 questing content. I think I'm going to try to get to 100 the natural way first, so that I'll have flight points and stuff to travel around and check it out.

So overall, there's clearly still a lot of work to be done. The question, then, is whether that work can be done within the next two months. Given how much has changed in the past month, I think it's hard to predict.

I think Sept. 30th is a plausible release date. Alternatively, it could be when patch 6.0 drops, and we get our pre-expansion event (which I think we're all really hoping will be more like Wrath or Cataclysm and not the non-event that Mists got.)