World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Release Date Speculation

Another week, another bunch of rumours flying around about the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion release date. Today the ball got rolling once again following an update to Amazon shoppers who had pre-ordered the game.
According to numerous mail-ins on the subject to WoW:IncGamers, Amazon have been busy notifying purchasers that they will not receive the game until 5 January. This latest update comes a week after Amazon had changed their release date to 11 November. However, Target are stating they have a release date of 31 December. UK online retailer ShopTo has also posted a date of 14 January 2011. All this basically means that nobody actually has a real release date as yet.
Fans of the game have also been busy data mining the World of Warcraft client and uncovered files that state the next Arena season will start on the 14 December, and Blizzard had stated that season would commence one week after launch. This would put the release date as 7 December.
As you can see we are in the dark on this still and in true Blizzard fashion, only Blizzard actually knows when the game is likely to appear and have declined to comment on a release date as we expected. Expect a further update at this year’s BlizzCon.