Originally Posted by
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.