SL Release Date Quasi-Leaked? Nov 30, 2020

[Tartys]

28 october or 4 november shadowlands will most likely release. 30 November would be to late, raiding will start 1 week before Christmas then, they will have alot of people on holiday, and they will need to hotfix alot.

Im gonna guess it’s 28 oct. with the prepatch hitting 23 september

I remember a tweet where it has been stated by Team that they have no intention of letting us do raids during the Christmas Holidays... if so, Raid will start in jenuary or long before dicember.

[Onikaroshi]

I remember a tweet where it has been stated by Team that they have no intention of letting us do raids during the Christmas Holidays... if so, Raid will start in jenuary.

Problem with that is, 5-6 weeks without end game is no bueno

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

September 15th Prepatch
October 13 Release

[Clozer]

September 15th Prepatch
October 13 Release

Thats not happening. Game is still bugged AF. So many quests broken. So many npc missing. Heck monk has still the same bugs since alpha. That's 4 months ago.

[Gaidax]

September 15th Prepatch
October 13 Release

Ur drunk, go to sleep.

Why I would not be surprised to see it releasing in December. Mid-October? Kekw... That ain't happening, son.

[Onikaroshi]

Thats not happening. Game is still bugged AF. So many quests broken. So many npc missing. Heck monk has still the same bugs since alpha. That's 4 months ago.

Monk has had bugs since it came into existance.

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Ur drunk, go to sleep.

Why I would not be surprised to see it releasing in December. Mid-October? Kekw... That ain't happening, son.

There's like zero good dates in dec

[Malefic]

Okay, let's put some data on this. All of the people calling for release dates in October need to understand why that's borderline an impossibilty:

WotLK release date was announced 59 days before it's release.

Cataclysm release date was announced 64 days before it's release.

MoP release date was announced 62 days before it's release.

WoD release date was announced 91 days before it's release.

Legion release date was announced 134 days before it's release.

BfA release date was announced 131 days before it's release.

Any release in October would be a 77 day or less timeline between announcement and release date.

This gives us an average release date announcement to release date time of 90 days. If Shadowlands release date was announced today, 14th August (Where I am) it would be launched on November 12th on the basis of averages, rounding down to November 10th or November 17th because of an 'always Tuesday' release. However, personally, I think the trend of the last 2-3 expansions is what matters since it's when Ion has been at the reigns and there has been a clear distinction between the game "before Legion" and "after WoD". However WoD release date timeline was also longer, so we'll include that in this estimation. That gives us an average of 118-119 days which gives us a release date of December 10th, rounding down to December 8th or December 15th. Not including WoD in that estimation would just make the period of time longer and would inch us towards a 2021 release date.


There is plenty of things for Blizzard to discuss at Gamescom, including Diablo Immortal, their quarterly Diablo 4 update as well as the possibility of them giving us an official release date for Shadowlands. Personally, I think Gamescom is the latest point upon which a release date is announced - I'm expecting a release date to happen in the next week personally.

I won't discuss PTR testing and a lot of the things players have covered in regards to testing the leveling process because that's simply not what the PTR is there for. Sure some data may come back from that that's useful to Blizzard but the PTR is being put up exclusively to test the content players will be participating in in the period of time during the pre patch. All of the leveling testing has been/is being done on beta.

At this point I am certain that the expansion will launch on either November 24th, December 1st or December 8th. Whenever it does launch, I'm also incredibly confident we're not raiding Castle Nathria this year. The above dates work with Blizzards timeline, specifically December 1st or December 8th, November 24th has a potential thanksgiving conflict, however the 2 December dates do not conflict - because the raid would be released after holidays.

Blizzard last year were more conscious about releasing content that would cover the holiday period, intentionally not releasing 8.3 until after December, as well as the raid. I find it unlikely they'll release Castle Nathria in the period of time of 3~ weeks before Christmas. To be at that timeline we'd be looking at an early November launch which I just don't see as being feasible.

Blizzard employees are still working from home, and there have no doubt been Covid-19 related delays. Their most recent comment on the release date stated;

"You have our commitment we will be releasing Shadowlands this fall, even if we end up shipping it from our homes".

This period of time is September 22nd-December 21st. Also that comment is quite clearly PR speak for "We're running this close guys, even if we can't get in to the office we'll make it work in that time frame". If you're comfortably releasing content within that time frame you don't release a statement that basically admits you have struggles and are going to be working against the clock.

Finally, Shadowlands still has a plethora of stuff that's simply isn't even implemented on beta. Conduits in their Essence based form simply do not exist yet. The raid has 0 loot (Which is trivial, that can and will likely be all updated in 1 big swoop 1 week). Half of the things like trinkets don't have anything on them. Plenty of stuff in Soulbinds is still NYI. Classes are still receiving notable mini-reworks, most recently Elemental Shaman and Marksmanship Hunter. Content at Level 60 outside of Torghast and group based content feels completely baron.

I simply do not buy a world where this expansion is released any earlier than the latter half of November, and if I could bet money I would bet on December 8th, with the Tuesday prior to that as my back up, and the one prior to that as my other backup.

[Lucetia]

cool, ill come back in 2 weeks then. gamescom lists blizzards as being someone who is "attending". what else might they be talking about then?

You do know Blizzard has D4, Diablo Immortal, and other games they could talk about as well? Not everything Blizzard attends is WoW related.

[Onikaroshi]

I simply do not buy a world where this expansion is released any earlier than the latter half of November, and if I could bet money I would bet on December 8th, with the Tuesday prior to that as my back up, and the one prior to that as my other backup.

I just don't see them pushing out a 5-6 week wait for end game, nor would I want them to, I'd rather see it delayed then have people start hating torghast cause it's the only thing to do for over a month.

[Lucetia]

Well - we are getting it this year, that's already set in stone.

Nowhere is it set in stone. If you are talking how their presale says by December 31, 2020 then that doesn't mean much. Warcraft 3 Reforged said the same thing yet it released in 2020 instead of 2019.

Nothing is set in stone until we have an official release date.

I just don't see them pushing out a 5-6 week wait for end game, nor would I want them to, I'd rather see it delayed then have people start hating torghast cause it's the only thing to do for over a month.

They've done similar before. It's so you can enjoy the game, get your raid team up and geared and ready during the holiday if you want. That way you aren't rushing to level cap just to get to raids for the race.

[Malefic]

I just don't see them pushing out a 5-6 week wait for end game, nor would I want them to, I'd rather see it delayed then have people start hating torghast cause it's the only thing to do for over a month.

A December 8th release which is what I’m personally putting my money on would see January 5th start the season and major end game content, which I don’t see Blizzard having issues with. This would be a 4 week wait.

[schwarzkopf]

If you are talking how their presale says by December 31, 2020 then that doesn't mean much.

Money means a lot to Blizzard - and having thousands of people being able to legally get a refund on that product would be bad.

Money = stone IMO at Blizzard

[Doffen]

Within the next 12 months is my prediction.


Pre patch can be on ptr for 6-8 weeks, pre patch can last for 4-8 weeks. Thats maximum 16 weeks just to have that in mind. Though, 10-12 weeks all together is a middle ground, I think thats reasonable.

So my prediction still stands. Within the next 24 months we will have SL launch.

[TyrianFC]

I love the way people are talking about release dates /prepatch / ptr etc using words like 'will last' or 'usually last' - completely ignoring the fact theres a fucking global pandemic going on and Blizz is working from home etc.

[MrLachyG]

This is incorrect.

BFA - Pre-patch to PTR June 18, Expansion release August 14 - 8 weeks of PTR
Legion - Pre-patch to PTR June 18, Expansion release August 30 - 10.5 weeks of PTR
WoD - Pre-Patch to PTR September 15, Expansion release November 13 - 8 weeks of PTR

It isn't a month of pre-patch PTR - it's consistently around 2 months, and then a month of pre-patch before the expansion release. October is all but out of the question, especially since they haven't announced a release date, and announced a date less than 3 months out for each of the previous 2 expacs. We are looking at around mid-November.

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Pre-patch PTR has been 8+ weeks for each of the last 3 expansions. You literally have to go 4 expansions and 8 years in the past to find the last time the pre-patch PTR lasted less than 8 weeks (5 weeks in MoP).

I think people are getting confused between how long the Pre-patch lasts and how long it is between the PTR Pre-patch and release

as for actual release date, I predict that pre-patch will drop October 6. Generally there is 4 weeks of prepatch so I estimate expansion release to be 3rd November. then I believe the standard time for levelling before the first raid is about 3 weeks which puts the raid opening the 24th November.

[Onikaroshi]

Nowhere is it set in stone. If you are talking how their presale says by December 31, 2020 then that doesn't mean much. Warcraft 3 Reforged said the same thing yet it released in 2020 instead of 2019.

Nothing is set in stone until we have an official release date.



They've done similar before. It's so you can enjoy the game, get your raid team up and geared and ready during the holiday if you want. That way you aren't rushing to level cap just to get to raids for the race.

3 week, not 5-6

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A December 8th release which is what I’m personally putting my money on would see January 5th start the season and major end game content, which I don’t see Blizzard having issues with. This would be a 4 week wait.

It'd be 5, they're still on vaca the week of the 5th

[Squigglyo]

Within the next 24 months we will have SL launch.

Would damn well hope so

[Chain Chungus]

I don't know if I can play 8.3 till almost December. I only need 2 more island expedition mounts and one toy from horrific visions and I'm pretty much done with everything I want from BFA.

[Gaidax]

There's like zero good dates in dec

Good dates or not, it's simply the case of whether Blizzard will be able to fix all the existing issues in Beta in time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Here you go guys, we release in November, btw nevermind we still miss a ton of assets, have placeholder or outright broken quests and parts of various covenant campaigns not in, but at least you got the "product" here, eh?"

I still very much hope they will clean all that up by November release, but I would not be surprised if it would be December after all.

[Cyranis]

Don't forget about the 2 week notice they promised to give for end of seasons.