Blizzard has announced its intention to activate the Mists of Pandaria pre-launch patch on August 28th, coincidently, the same day that Guild Wars 2 officially launches.
Whether this is actually an attempt to subvert sales of the Guld Wars sequel MMO, or if Blizzard is merely doing it as a bit of friendly competition isn't particularly clear, but the dates are clearly linked. If it is the former, it seems unlikely that it will make a massive difference, since Guild Wars 2 is a brand new, fully formed game and Mists of Pandaria, no matter how big, is just an expansion.
However, the actual expansion isn't released until September 25th, suggesting that most of the pre-launch patch's 6GB of content won't be accessible until the game goes live - but we'll have to wait and see.
World of Warcraft has been bleeding players left and right over the past year, dropping several million subscribers, especially in the past few months, when many are thought to have migrated to Diablo III. Blizzard is obviously worried that Guild Wars 2 will present a similarly distracting gaming experience, enough to perhaps tempt a few long time WoW players away. However everyone is expecting Warcraft's player numbers to get a nice boost as the expansion is released, bringing back old players and perhaps even a few new ones.
Comments
Nice try Blizzard. But no thanks.
I repeat. Nice try Blizzard, but no sale.
Free
Even if it was free...fuck that GW2 always
Really? Buy a brand new, fun
Really? Buy a brand new, fun pvp game or buy an expansion to an outdated subscription based grindfest? Plus if you pre order gw2 from their website you get 3 days early access which means saturday the 25th.
GW2
Taking a look at play.com's pre order pricing, both MoP and GW2 have the 47.49e price tag, A full game vs an expansion at that price (plus not to forget WoW's monthly fee). I'd pick GW2 anytime, but that's just me. To me it feels like WoW ran it's course and milking the cow isn't gonna bring back the millions of players lost.
Well, this is a big mistake
Well, this is a big mistake for Blizzard, now MoP is going to seem dead on launch, just because everyone is going to be playing GW2.
Too Fucking late Blizzard
Been playing the GW2 beta and now my desire to play WOW is all but gone! Farwell Blizztard, i'm taking my $$$ over to arenanet!
So the news is there starting
So the news is there starting the download for the patch earlier instead of doing it all on the launch day? sounds like a good idea, not sure how having something you can't use for a month is going to make people not play something new.
they have done this with
they have done this with every expansion its not like you can start leveling its just pre launch talent trees and all that stuff same as its been every pre launch patch....
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