Guessing the new Shadowlands release date

[Biglog]

It's all conjecture but with the info we have we can make an educated guess to narrow it to ~4 weeks. They could do another announced delay to 2021, but that seems unlikely. The delay that was done they were very transparent about being for "polish" and stated it would still be released in 2020, when they didn't have to open themselves to that date obligation. It would have been easier to just say it's delayed and will be out when ready. But they didn't do that. So there would really need to be a massive significant bug or slew of bugs to cause that. The 9.0 launch has been a little shaky, but nothing I don't think that would cause them to announce a 2nd delay. They'll be very leery about that knowing a 2nd delay wouldn't be received well by customers at all. They are really past the dev point with Shadowlands of major changes that would take a lot of time, and that's not the type of changes they said they'd be doing during this extra polish time.

I also don't think they would have accepted the PR/customer hit of the first delay for just an extra week or two from the original Shadowlands release date. My guess is that Blizzard decided that if they are going to lose some sales to refunds because of the delay that it should be at least a month. That would be about a 1 month window sometime between ~ November 24th and Christmas to cash in on holiday sales.

Beyond that within that window is just throwing darts. But it really should be somewhere in that range. They could also easily do a release on a day other that Tuesday since the base 9.0 patch is already applied, and they gave that as one of the benefits of this launch approach vs. the old all at once update patch expansion launches. It's just a flip of a switch for them now to open Shadowlands. So they can work around individual days that might not be a good fit like the wow anniversary.

[Celthalas Justice Bringer]

I predict the end of November. Seems a bit fitting. A October release made sense, but oh well. I am glad they are focusing on the integrity of the product.

[Wild]

Nov 24th I'd feel

[Xavv]

December 1st is the only sensible date left.

[AngerFork]

We ain't raiding Castle Nathria this year on the live servers.

Agreed. The only way that we would do that is with a 12/1 release and employees working overtime to fix bugs during the holiday season. There's no chance of that happening IMO, especially if the employees have to crunch as is to get SL out to everyone. Not to mention the outcry that the World First community would have about needing to raid for World First over the holidays.

This then IMO also calls the 12/1 date into question as a possible date, simply due to how much time we'd be waiting in the patch pre-raid. A month I could see, but not much beyond that. Pushing the raid out 2 weeks afterwards would be 12/15 which would again cause a lot of end-of-year strain to their already strained employees, so that seems unlikely.

As I think that same strain would happen with bug fixes if SL launched on 12/15, I'm of the opinion that it's either 12/8 or 1/12/2021, the latter of which I predict will be the actual date.

[mrcodez]

December 1st is the only sensible date left.

I'm still in the Jan 2021 camp for a "proper" shadowlands launch.


9.0 has been released, we are playing Shadowlands live without the content.

Refunds have been made available.


Take a browse through the bug report forums and that's just for pre-patch. There are some real broken things in the pre-patch that they have to work through. Those won't magically go away with the pre-patch event or the main content patch of shadowlands. Some of the bugs affect many aspects of the game. I'm not talking about tuning I'm talking about things not functioning.

What's really got me thinking about a 2021 release of shadowlands content is that many of the broken things that made it live in pre-patch were reported in-game, submitted to forums. But still never fixed. I think that points to a lack of resources. Probably pressures of making new content, responding to beta feedback/tuning, and fixing bugs that are just overwhelming the team.

You either get more resources or you get more time. If decide on neither than you get badly buggy / non-functional games. Listening to beta feedback there are many things that are still just broken. Not just tuning problems but rather "we can't test this thing because it is broken and doesn't work".

Another indicator is they blamed the delay on covid-19 and work remote. Hard to tell what they mean. Less efficiency? Work to move resources remote that were never intended to be accessed that way? both?

Can they tune, tweak, and fix enough bugs to release in 2020 with the resources they currently have is the real question. I currently believe the answer is "no". They will need way more time, probably somewhere in January.

[Kithelle]

At this point I'd almost say they may as well wait till mid December that way people can buy the expansion for Christmas

[Sarethion]

Since I'm EU, I forgot that Thanksgiving is a thing I've already voted for November 24th, so just disregard that

Well, I was totally wrong about the Thanksgiving thing and my revised guess, but still - at least my original guess was correct

Congratulations to people who voted/guessed correctly

[AngerFork]

I was way off too. I thought for sure they'd need to add in more than a month, but happy to be wrong. Now to just hope that they've given themselves enough time to make launch day a ton of fun!

[Toybox]

Predicted December 8th, happy with November 24th! I know what to expect (& not expect) in terms of content so I'll not be disappointed on that front, but I do hope they've given themselves enough time to fix what is in the game.

Glad to be wrong

[MrLachyG]

is it too late for me to guess?

[Zenfoldor]

Really glad I guessed wrong. Excellent!

[ceall]

I want to be really honest here.

This delay seems unnecessary in retrospect.

They pushed back the release by a mere 4 weeks. They could have also released it as initially planned and put the "changes" they made into a 9.0.5 patch.
If they don't want to take their time to really fix the game, then they could have just released the game with tonights build and fix it afterwards.

I really hope for another delay at this point.

[rrayy]

Jan 5th would be an optimistic date at this point, let's just say that. Anyone saying it's coming in November are just off with the clouds delusional btw

Seems like the people saying it was coming in November know what they are talking about.

[Nize]

I want to be really honest here.

This delay seems unnecessary in retrospect.

They pushed back the release by a mere 4 weeks. They could have also released it as initially planned and put the "changes" they made into a 9.0.5 patch.
If they don't want to take their time to really fix the game, then they could have just released the game with tonights build and fix it afterwards.

I really hope for another delay at this point.

Game was broken on a technical level. This is something they discovered literally the week before the last intended pre-patch date (Sept 29) when they shifted out of Release state. They thought they were on track for release up until that last week, so it's fairly reasonable to think that they didn't need a crazy amount of time to finish up.

As far as all the December predictions (with a January raid) go, as I said in the other topic weeks ago, I thought it was silly to guess that they'd have the first season start more than a month after game's release. it's a great way to destroy the momentum that the game's release would have. People would have regular mythic dungeons for more than a month? Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

[ranzino]

guessed 17th nov because thanksgiving. but it seems blizzard is not afraid of holidays.

[Nize]

guessed 17th nov because thanksgiving. but it seems blizzard is not afraid of holidays.

That was my guess as well, it was a reasonable date, but mostly because I figured they wanted to get out ahead of Cyberpunk.

[Loeve]

Im guessing november 23

[Phaelia]

I’m surprised it is coming out when it is but my guess of it being before December was spot on. Thankfully.

[Necomis]

guessed 17th nov because thanksgiving. but it seems blizzard is not afraid of holidays.

I had picked 10th but the 23rd still gives them a few days for anything that pops up with servers.