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

[Inoculate]

I'm honestly happy with this decision. Gives me some hope that they do care about the success of this expansion outside of sales. Sure, it sucks we have to wait but from what I've experienced in beta...would have been way way worse to force a launch.

[sensei]

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.

Release dates are generally set by clueless assholes who don't have a clue about what it takes to get a game done. These few weeks probably have been hell for the employees at Blizzard as they had the whip cracked repeatedly at them in a futile attempt to make an unattainable deadline.

[Elise the Seeker]

Could have announced it earlier before people actually took time off from work... a lot of people just f'ed their vacation time...

If you take off time to play a game then that's your own fault.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

Yeah cause you know, pandemics happen every other year

Didn't they announce it when the pandemic was already in full swing?
People expected a release in late November or early December, and they could've gone for that time period instead of October.

[TickTickTick]

Yeah cause you know, pandemics happen every other year

Did the pandemic make them all blind? Because the possibility of delay was known. But people assumed that since it's only one month to it, they are gonna stick to their plan.

I wouldn't be mad if they announced it one month ago. Not this late.

[Quixef]

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.

What the hell?

There is no rule requiring you to wait for the expansion subbed, you know. This forum is full of these inane conspiracy theories and it gets tiring after a while.

[Onikaroshi]

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.

It won't be 2 months, 1 month maybe, but releasing in december wouldn't work out well. First 2 weeks and you force raid progress during the holidays, last 2 weeks and you're trying to handle an expansion launch around employees being on vacation.

[metzger84]

It won't be 2 months, 1 month maybe, but releasing in december wouldn't work out well. First 2 weeks and you force raid progress during the holidays, last 2 weeks and you're trying to handle an expansion launch around employees being on vacation.

You think code monkeys can't get their vacations cancelled and thrown into crunch mode?

[Gadzooks]

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

Why not both over-ambitious, and an internal communication issue? They're not mutually exclusive. No clue what the exact issues were, but yeah - a lot of us beta testers called this when they announced the release date.

[Hellbound Bloodhound]

Regarding people bashing the delay just because... its like you don't want to have a polished expansion?

I mean I'm all for the delay, but let's not pretend it will do wonders. They might be able to fix some critical things, but there will still be problems with this expansion.

[Lindon]

They are mostly working from home anyway because if the virus.

Covid is not the problem during Christmas. People are simply not working because they are on vacation during the holiday.

[Onikaroshi]

You think code monkeys can't get their vacations cancelled and thrown into crunch mode?

With blizzard already in bad employee PR mode them getting vacations canceled would be a PR nightmare.

Also, a lot of people don't play over the holidays (hence the whole not wanting progression over the holidays) so why would they want to a release an expansion when there's less people playing?

[Nachtigal]

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

Not to offend or anything but people really like to talk like they know what’s going on at Blizzard, and honestly I think they’re all full of it. 3 months is a long time for something to go wrong, and they’ve always told us internally they’re ahead of what’s available on beta servers..

I could see them struggling, but still holding out hope that they’d be able to make it work... if that scenario were true though, they’d be on some pretty thin ice... it would only take one semi significant setback to push them into delay territory.

Which... is where I think I’ll be putting my money. If they knew 3 months ago they were going to delay, they’d have told us. Furthermore, 7 months of living in 2020 should’ve taught everyone to expect the unexpected by then, lol.

[TickTickTick]

And regarding the delay... why did they wait for so long? People made vacation plans already, many of us resubbed for multiple months just to throw that money down the drain now? They knew in what state the game was weeks ago and I bet they knew that people always resub a monthy before the release so that waiting till today was just...

Aren't you surprised they announced it on the first day of Q4? Gotta collect those numbers.

[Kaver]

Why not both over-ambitious, and an internal communication issue? They're not mutually exclusive. No clue what the exact issues were, but yeah - a lot of us beta testers called this when they announced the release date.

The funny thing is that no one was expecting a release date so early in the beginning. Most people were originally expecting late november or early december. So there was no pressure on Blizzard (from the players) to release it in october. It most have been internal pressure that made them take that decision.

[Harry Botter]

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.

Vote with your wallet and stop supporting them. It's what I do when a company offends me enough.

[Nfinitii]

Honestly I’m ok with this. Especially since we r getting prepatch finally. And I just got beta invite.

[metzger84]

Why not both over-ambitious, and an internal communication issue? They're not mutually exclusive. No clue what the exact issues were, but yeah - a lot of us beta testers called this when they announced the release date.

Why would be a communication issue? It may as well been deliberately postponed up until the very latest possible date (= expected prepatch launch) in order to keep subs active. Like they care about people taking vacation for this shit.

[Talon8669]

Honestly this is very good news. With the sweeping massive nerfs recently and changes I really don't think their anywhere close to being ready to release. And kudos to Blizzard for actually realizing this and delaying instead of trying to push and put how a trash release. In case anyone doesn't know what I am talking about let's use Warlock as an example. Throughout all of raid testing most of the data if not all was done for aff specifically as the decimating bolt drain soul build. Arguably very strong if not OP. However with recent nerfs to both necro lords and venthyr for warlocks they literally have no data for aff lock raiding outside of their own internal tests. And this is just the case with one spec for one class. This will give them more time to continue working on classes and covenants and dial back, modify and rework some of these massive sweeping changes they have made over the last couple of weeks and get some more data of the beta testers and the new covenant/spec builds. Believe me I am a little ticked off also that BFA is going to continue but one of our biggest gripes as a community has been about how Blizzard lost sight of quality before profit and have blamed Activision for years. This just shows Blizzard is willing and capable of running their own show and pushing back for a better quality game before release.

[Tartys]

What a relief...