With the Mists of Pandaria beta supposed to be announced very soon, I figured it's about time to start speculating on the Release Date.

As far as I could tell, the last time I talked about this, I put MoP down for Q4 (October/November time frame) until more information was made available.

Even though there are supposed to be 3 games released this year, things are looking down for HOTS anytime soon. I'm still hopeful for a surprise Christmas release though.

Now, according to Boubouille, Blizzard will be sending out the Beta Invites either today or tomorrow, and the F&F specific Beta will not be happening this time.

The information that I'd really like to know (to determine a release date), is the length of the beta. This will be determined by the amount of content. So, will the Mists of Pandaria beta be just like past betas (approximately 5 months long), or are they going to shorten the beta this time around?

The WOW beta was 7 months long, TBC 4 months, WOTLK 5 months, and CATA 5 months.

Assuming that this is going to be a "normal" beta, the release date should be some Tuesday in July or August. However, they've skipped the F&F Beta test this time and they might shorten the beta to get it out even sooner.

So, say that I have a specific date already in mind.. but I didn't want Blizzard to see it. What's the best way to "lock it up" until a specific day so that critics could not possibly deny it's authenticity? I've been trying to think about it, but unfortunately, critics will just claim that it was "hacked in" or something (they'll have an excuse for everything.) Anyone aware of a website where you can post a message that "unlocks" at a certain time?

* Oh, by the way, I have another Path of Exile key to give away. I'll create a new post at approx. 1:00PM PST today and put it up. First person to register it, gets it.