More Leaks Please, Blizzard

Blizzard does not give us players official release dates because they are obsessed with the whole 'managing expectations' thing and they don't want to give complainers anything to complain about. But it doesn't help -- complainers are stupid and they'll complain that Blizzard did not hit the placeholder date that an intern entered at Amazon.com.

Now, consider politics. There is a fine art of leaking in the world of politics. In fact, there is a fine art of deliberate leaks -- 'anonymous sources' who are really press secretaries in charge of dealing with the media.

Why doesn't Blizzard 'leak' their internal target dates? Not a "Cataclysm will be out November 15th 2010" sort of thing, since even Bliz does not know that until they get there, more a "There's no way Cataclysm will be out before November 14th 2010", which is something they do know right now. MMO-Champion often prints 'leaks' about patches, usually a day ahead of time -- more of that sort of thing.

Ordinary people would figure out pretty quickly that the leak was either officially or unofficially from Blizzard and we would then have an idea about release dates, which is a nice thing to know. Complainers, who are idiots, wouldn't get it and would still be complaining about the Amazon dates.