A delay until after New Years seems much more likely to me.
A delay until after New Years seems much more likely to me.
No it's not, it's only a big deal for competitive teams. Those who aren't in any sort of race aren't going to be bothered by this too much or at all. I know my own team and others I know won't care much. We'll just delay raiding until after the Xmas holidays, just like how we have put raiding on hold every time Xmas was in the middle of our raid progress.
Sure many people won't be a fan of this if the schedule comes out the way you detailed in your first post, but it's not going to be as many people as you think who will be genuinely negatively affected by it.
However the pandemic has shaken up SE's release schedule a lot so I wouldn't be surprised if they do end up delaying the release of savage due to being aware of how the timing is far from ideal for western competitive players in the world race. I don't think it's a coincidence that before the pandemic we never had expansion releases or tier releases so close to or in the middle of a multinational holiday. Also they have specifically said the msq for 6.0 is going to be very long, so perhaps from that alone the savage release will be later than usual. I do hope either will be the case because while most raiders won't be hugely negatively impacted by those dates, I don't like the idea that the world race would be favouring those who don't celebrate Xmas or have families who understand their raid commitments.
If I remember correctly, wasn't one of the Eden patches (5.4?) released just a little before Christmas? So OP, you'll survive, it's really not that big of a deal.
I can't speak for your country of residence but here where I live, many people including goverment bodies believed it be over by end of 2020. Here we have halfway into 2021 and only a 20% is vacinated in my country. It gonna take some time until a herd inmunity is reached.
So yes, we'll see if the world will have opened up pre-covid with travel restrictions being lifted etc.
I'm absolutely no one would be upset if your preferred content (or the expansion as a whole) released the week of Christmas and you weren't forced to delay it.
There's no reason not to push Savage back a week or two. That way everybody gets to enjoy it in their preferred way.
You aren't competitive if you aren't clearing within the first two weeks. At least within the context of hardcore prog. The entire purpose is clearly the tier fast. If you're only clearing 5-10-15 weeks following the tier drop. You aren't in the same competitive scene. Therefore, the release date will naturally impact you far less.
I sincerely doubt anyone in that scene will mind waiting an additional two weeks if it means not having to schedule around the Holidays. And considering the demographic Ultimate cater towards, that same crop of players will never feel there's "too much content." We're the ones always wanting more.
I imagine the first tier of a new raid (Savage) is a tad different, because for the second and third you can (usually) just ignore the story and go right into the raid. I don't do Savage raiding, but it'll be interesting to see how they deal with this, if they thought of it.