WoW Dragonflight: Leak promises release in November, earlier than expected

The big World of Warcraft patch 10.0 is coming in October, the release of Dragonflight in November – that promises a leak that looks believable.

Many players in the World of Warcraft community fear that WoW: Dragonflight will be released too soon. When it was said a few months ago that Dragonflight would be released in 2022, there was great skepticism. But apparently we don’t even have to wait until December, we can start as early as November – the pre-patch should come even earlier.

What does the leak say? According to the leak, the pre-patch 10.0, which expands the game with the new talent system and the other functionalities of Dragonflight, is supposed to go live on October 25, 2022 (in our case that would be October 26) – so already in something more than 2 months.

The official release of Dragonflight would then be on November 28, 2022 – in just over 3 months.

There would then be a rather long “pre-patch” phase of 5 weeks in which players can already play with the new talent system and very likely even be able to try out the new Dracthyr.

Where did the leak come from? The leak is said to be an internal document. The picture (via wowhead) first made the rounds on the World of Warcraft subreddit and was later picked up and widely discussed by community sites such as wowhead. The exact origin of the image and an associated “leaker” does not exist – the original image in the subreddit has since been deleted. However, the fact that there is no leaker by name is not unusual, because such information is usually under lock and key and anyone who shares such documents beforehand often risks their job.

The leak gets credibility mainly because it appeared a few hours before the release of the Wrath of the Lich King Classic schedule and already correctly predicted the date of the pre-patch for it – August 30th. Since this happened before Blizzard’s official announcement, at least this statement is correct and gives the whole leak a lot more credibility.

In an earlier interview, WoW’s Game Director, Ion Hazzikostas, said that the pre-patch is targeting a duration of 2 weeks, but that may well have changed. After all, the Dracthyr recently received legendary Shadowlands items in the Dragonflight Alpha. This suggests that the developers are planning to be able to play the Dracthyr in Shadowlands for a while.

But please keep in mind that this could still be a fake that was just a good guess – that’s always the danger with leaks of this nature.

How likely is that? Even if the release date sounds quite early, the date could make sense. A release in late November would have the advantage that the first raid and dungeon season can start in mid-December and the developers would have around 10 days to add bug fixes and patches. If the release were to take place during the “holiday season”, i.e. over Christmas and New Year, this would cause displeasure among professional players who “have to” raid over the holidays and on the other hand would bind many developers at Blizzard who also don’t would come home.

Whether the leak comes true, we will probably only find out in the coming weeks, when the Dragonflight alpha transitions to the beta and an official release date is finally set.

What do you think of this leak? Do you believe this date or is that too improbable?