Heh, you know a game (in this case, World of Warcraft) is big when a 3 month delay of your expansion pack makes the headlines on all the major news sites.   I can't say that I'm at all surprised though... Blizzard doesn't have much of a reputation for shipping on time.  It's not as if Burning Crusade, with its sheer force of gravity, is forced into the holiday season for sales, and if attach rates of other MMO expansion packs are any guide they will sell a vast number of them no matter when they release.

Blizzard also has a reputation for putting quality ahead of schedule concerns.  I think this is a key element to most of the super blockbuster games out there.  I know that almost all of Ensemble's games had originally been internally planned for earlier dates, then readjusted once we got to the point of making realistic calls of how close we were to shipping.  As the saying goes, a game that is late, is late for a few months, but a game that sucks, sucks forever.  Blizzard may not ship with any kind of regular schedule, but they certainly don't suck.

That's why I'm so blown away by companies like Insomniac and Rockstar North... GTA: Vice City and R&C: Going Commando are two of my favorite games of the previous console generation and both were made in under a year of calendar time.  Amazing.