Quickie: Cataclysm? When It’s Ready.

Blizzard always had an “it’s ready when it’s ready” philosophy for its game releases, with the last World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King possibly being an exception. It seems as if they are back on track now though, as Blizzard’s Frank Pearce just alluded to in an interview with vg247.com. When asked whether Cataclysm would be set for an end of the year release he answered “Hopefully. If it’s ready. If not, then we’ll hold onto it.”

While I do applaud holding a product until it is ready, I think having to wait for even longer would be a real big problem for World of Warcraft players and especially raiding guilds. We can see guilds left, right, and center having problems with recruitment and retirement due to players being bored with a game. Seems like a delay in the release until early 2011 could be really, really bad. Remember that the last raid content for the game was released in December. A 2011 release date would mean more than a year with pretty much no new content at all.