Release Date coming in soon?

The Guildwars2 Professions are coming in fast. It seems like just yesterday I was painlessly checking every day looking at the same revealed necromancer profession. Now they seem to be being revealed relatively quickly.
Any speculation on a release date? I'm thinking definitely in 2011.
Remember there's only two more professions to be revealed/|||The game isn't only about proffesions.|||They have stated that closed alpha/beta will be in 2011, and they'll see when release is based off of how those go. In other words, they have not even started closed alpha yet. Do not expect anything until 2012.|||I would be utterly shocked if the game comes out before 2012. We haven't even had a Beta version yet, so hold your horses! The Sylvari, Asura and Charr will probably all get weeks dedicated to them and there is plenty of unknown content they can talk about. Do not expect any further information on the last two professions anytime soon!|||I'm going to assume it'll be somewhere in 2012 and in the worst case scanario, 2013-2014.|||Quote:








In other words, they have not even started closed alpha yet.




? Just wondering where this bit comes from? From the leaked Thief videos, it seemed probable that they may be in Alpha testing, based on the other players running around. Could be devs, but could be testing. I'm just curious if we have confirmation that they aren't even in Alpha yet.|||When its ready!|||It's vaporware! The grass isn't even in alpha testing yet!!!11!!!one!!|||Sorry, maybe I should have stated that a little differently. This is what I should have said:
I do not believe they are in closed alpha yet due to the wording on the official website which states: "We will be conducting small closed alpha and beta tests in 2011. The feedback from these tests will determine when we will do public beta tests and ship the game."
The part where it says "will be" makes me think they have not yet started the closed alpha, though it will probably be soon. I guess they don't really have to say when it starts though, do they?|||They just recently changed the attribute system that they introduced about eight months ago, so they are still fiddling with key parts of the game. (Can you imagine the number of things that change affects? Every weapon, weapon mod, piece of armor, and rune with stats. Every dialog referencing stats. Every skill that gives a temporary stat buff or debuff. Every formula for calculating damage done or received. Dozens of things that all need to be revised to fit.)
They recently mentioned that they've been fiddling with the necromancer's skills, and I'm sure they're still tweaking the skills of the other announced professions. They didn't even demo two of the ele attunements at the last PAX, and only added one of those to PAX East. (Sadly, it wasn't earth. ) That's with two professions left that aren't even complete enough to reveal, as far as we know.
We've known for a long time that the sylvari are being redesigned, and we've not heard that this is finished yet. The norn have just become ready enough to include in the PAX East demo. The asura have only been seen in skill videos so far. So it appears that all the playable races are not yet ready for testing.
They've answered questions many times by saying that they haven't reached a decision on how "x" (some particular feature) will work, or that they don't feel comfortable enough about how "x" is working to talk about it. So we have few or no details on some pretty crucial systems: guilds, marketplace, PvP, storage, etc. (And note that they felt comfortable enough with the attribute system to talk about it last summer, but still felt a need to make major changes. So, when they don't feel comfortable, things must be really discomforting.)
Honestly, with the amount of work apparently ahead of them, I think they'll be doing quite well to get a beta out within the next nine months, much less a release. They're still working on some very core systems.
Perhaps their iterative development process is so good that they can do this very late in the development cycle without fear. But, when someone is tinkering with a car's engine instead of just touching up the paint job and wiping fingerprints off the dash, it doesn't seem like it's really near to being ready for a test drive. I'm not holding my breath for a release before 2012.