On October 24th, Blizzard announced that The Burning Crusade, the upcoming expansion to World of Warcraft, would be pushed back from its November release to a release in January 2007. This is to allow Blizzard to have more time working with the closed beta testers in removing any bugs in the game.

This news has sparked a huge response from players. In 60 hours, there were 481 replies to the news. Many players were not surprised by the news. Blizzard is famous for pushing release dates back, and the fact that closed beta just started at the beginning of October was a good indicator that it would be pushed back. The fact that it will not be out before Christmas was a shock to most, though.

Responses to this news varied: Some people have decided not to purchase the expansion, others are upset but understanding, many are neutral, and there are some who are happy that it's pushed back. There is a hope by many that the male Blood Elf character will be changed back to its original model now that there is time. Others are happy because they have more time to level to 60 or complete the raids that they are working on. The ones who are the most upset are the level 60 players who feel as though there is nothing worth doing. Apparently, raid items will be replaced and the PvP rank will be reset with the expansion, so they feel that raiding is pointless until the expansion is released.