Today, Blizzard introduced a new intro page to their World of Warcraft website, featuring the Mists of Pandaria release date (September 25, 2012), as well as the option to pre-purchase both the standard and digital deluxe edition of the expansion. It’s a little surprising that the release date will be this late in 2012 as it is, looking back to one of Blizzard’s investor conferences held on May 9, 2011, CEO Mike Morhaime was quoted stating:
“We’re not ready to talk about the content of the expansions at this stage but we are looking at ways to speed up the development process.”
Following this, Blizzard attempted to clarify that speeding up the development process and thus releasing expansions or updates on a more timely basis was, indeed, the plan. Unfortunately for Blizzard, the Mists of Pandaria release date of September 25, 2012 sets the record for the longest period of time in between content updates for World of Warcraft.
The latest content update that included Dragon Soul (the final raid tier that marked the end of the Cataclysm expansion) was released on November 29, 2011, giving players a year plus some change without providing any new content updates.