1. Not required to play Shadowlands
2. It's not ready, they even sent out emails saying it wasn't ready and offered refunds.
3. Coincidence does not equal collaboration
4. See #3
5. See #2
They need their product to work on as many machines as possible, not the people that can afford to buy the latest hardware. If WoW had such strict requirements, it would not have the staying power that it currently does. Ray tracing is a "nice to have", not a requirement.
You're wrong. Here are the recommended system requirements for Shadowlands: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/256565Yes the “oh look SL will have raytracing” bait was not a “buy some Nvidia GPUs already” and then when the Nvidia GPUs are out of stock there is a comfortable delay that matches perfectly with restocking of cards globally.
Btw watch how they won’t launch late November to not cross paths with Cyberpunk and have the least attended launch ever.
All that being said while the “recommended” GPU for running SL became a 2080S aka same price as buying a 3080 which is currently out of stock.
I don’t complain btw it’s a fair trade practice in my eyes and makes sense. Companies gain from each other like that it’s not a bad thing.
Where does it list the 2080S?
Just because a game supports a feature on a video card, doesn't make it a requirement. Here's the Fortnite system requirements as an example ... they have ray tracing, why isn't a ray tracing card on their recommended system requirements?
Cyberpunk 2077, despite boasting tons of RTX effects, does not list an RTX card as a requirement.