Shadowlands Pre-Patch Release Date - October 13, Shadowlands Launch Delayed

[Olololo2r5]

Joke's on you, I can just re-schedule my vacation days.

yeah. same.

and i'm glad they are delaying it... blizzard needs to release a finished product for once

[Nachtigal]

I'm betting this releases in the first week of December, with the first raid opening the first week of January. Scourge invasion starts around Thanksgiving.

I'm in the beta. This was NOT ready for release, it's a buggy mess. All of it needs a lot of work. I'm betting there's going to be some big changes rolling through in all of it - Chromie time, professions, the maw, Torghast, all of it. The only parts that don't need a lot of work are dungeons and the raid. Covenants, soulbinds and conduits are going to see the most changes, even as far as conduits being scrapped outright.

You don't defy Activision-Blizzard and the shareholders and take the public slam to your reputation over small tweaks and polishing. They hit the emergency brakes, hard. They have to include this in the Q3 shareholder call now, and that's not going to go over well.

I'm not saying they can't recover. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But for them to slam on the brakes this late into beta...yeah. You don't do this for another week or two of tweaking.

anyone berating a company for delaying a game to fix its issues doesn’t really have an opinion worth considering. Delays are to be seen as a good thing.

[Kathranis]

Remember project Titan? The MMO they were going to make simultaneously with WoW?

It's assets got reworked into Overwatch, but it was scrapped entirely before that for not meeting quality standards.

Also Nomad, Starcraft: Ghost, and Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, plus a ton of other projects that never even got off the ground.

[Space Troll]

Good thing my 1-year sub code from BlizzCon will be going through the end of November.

[Josyel]

Remember Warcraft Reforged got delayed to. And what an awesome game it was at launch, amirite???

[Unholyvamp]

I'd literally prefer playing SL with bugs than having this.
The fuck do i do till the release? which is obviously during Xmas

[Liberate90]

Thank you, Blizzard.

[Kaver]

anyone berating a company for delaying a game to fix its issues doesn’t really have an opinion worth considering. Delays are to be seen as a good thing.

The delay is definitely a good thing. I'm just surprised they didn't already announce it 3 months ago. It has been pretty obvious for a while that they were way behind the schedule, so either they are a bit over-ambitious or they lack some internal communication in the company. Anyway, better late than never

[callipygoustp]

Good for you Blizz. Do it right.

[metzger84]

Thank you, Blizzard.

Hold me by the hand

[Osmeric]

This improves my opinion of Blizzard, and makes me happier I bought the expansion (and a six month sub recently.)

EDIT: well this didn't age well.

[aesthir]

Would've been nice if they didn't announce a release date if they're not sure they can make it... Announcing a delay within the same month as release is just terrible for anyone who took holidays for this.

[GrinnersGrin]

Wtf didn't think blizz had the balls to do this.
I'll stop counter signalling and shilling against them for atleast 2 months now they earned it

[Kon01]

Good middle ground. Get out the pre-patch so people can play around with the new customization options and leveling systems, work on alts, and then release the expansion when the systems have been iterated on enough to be in a good state.

Thats why they implement pretty much every new feature on pre-patch to sort out bugs and save some screw ups when they flip the switch on release date and you can access the new areas without much hiccups.

[Tiev]

Perfect. This was needed. Good plan.

[ashblond]

So, for balance they delay the whole expansion?

I can guarantee you that balance will be an issue anyway.

Exactly. Balance will never be achieved and constantly tweaked, while bugs will always be there.

This delay is pretty meaningless. Blizzard had plenty of time to do this, but they didn't until the last moment.

It is a bad sign and worrying alarm.

[ketsui]

Would've been nice if they didn't announce a release date if they're not sure they can make it... Announcing a delay within the same month as release is just terrible for anyone who took holidays for this.

Yeah cause you know, pandemics happen every other year

[TickTickTick]

That problem is 100% on you and your employer.

Yes. That problem is on me. The problem being I took them for enough respectable company to not delay something that's supposed to be released in 27 days.

The state of the beta was known for weeks and they knew it would be delayed. Instead of doing the right thing and announcing the delay earlier, they waited until 1st days of Q4 JUST TO MAKE SURE people are subbed still.

[--Code--]

I'm sad, but i understand why it needs to be done. Hoping the release is late November or early December so we have a bit of time to play Cyberpunk. If it's late December I would be really damn sad.

[FossilFree]

I think they just hoped to sync it up with Halloween for the zombie event, but they realized it would mean releasing an unfinished game. I'm just glad they had the cajones to do this!

Sure I'm bored, but being bored for ~2 months is better than 2+ years of an unpolished game.