Guessing the new Shadowlands release date

[crusadernero]

I am thinking this as well

and for every day that passes and Blizzard is quiet about launch date, 2021 release gets more and more likely.

And if the game was as busted as people say it was, they have alot to work on.

[Alga]

The 2021 crowd retardness can only be possible in such dirtholes like MMOC, aint it?

[ranzino]

What do you think will happen with the Shadowlands Collector's Edition and other physical editions? Will they be shipped on previous release date or are they also delayed until the actual expansion is launched?

CE underway and deliveries immiment, if not delivered to customers today already.

be aware: no other physical editions anymore, it is blizzard shop or nothing.

[rrayy]

and for every day that passes and Blizzard is quiet about launch date, 2021 release gets more and more likely.

And if the game was as busted as people say it was, they have alot to work on.

No it doesn't. Blizzard isn't going to say anything until they are ready. Everything they do have out there still says 2020. A 2020 release is still far more likely as if they knew it was going to be 2021, they would just say so.

[SteveZaer]

Release date will probably be 12/8 with a raid release on 1/5 or 1/12.

It allows them to hit the 2020 metric without having the raid appropriately tuned.

[Hinastorm]

Prove it. Prove that every single release is planned around other games. I double dog dare you, because you can't, because they don't do it.

It's pretty common knowledge at this point, and it's happened too many times to just be a coincidence.

Sorry, I don't find links for people on the internet anymore, just for them to be called fake.

[Dystemper]

and for every day that passes and Blizzard is quiet about launch date, 2021 release gets more and more likely.

And if the game was as busted as people say it was, they have alot to work on.

Pretty much. Dont think they will want to risk a Dec release with the Holidays . If it was near ready We should have heard something . If it does release in Dec, I dont think that it will be as polished as people want and t will suffer. I dont see any way it releases in NOV with Cyberpunk 2077 or near the releases of the new Consoles. Jan seems a far safer bet to me

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It's pretty common knowledge at this point, and it's happened too many times to just be a coincidence.

Sorry, I don't find links for people on the internet anymore, just for them to be called fake.

Are people actually saying Game companies dont delay releases because other bigger titles release near then? Jesus that been a thing since forever, same with movies .

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Prove it. Prove that every single release is planned around other games. I double dog dare you, because you can't, because they don't do it.

This is hilarious. This has been a thing since Vidoe games came out on consoles and PC. Hell I even remember it being a thing in the Arcade days

[razorpax]

I have to say that well I do believe it will be the 2nd of December it’s very possible it’s at the 6 week mark of prepatch.....though it makes more sense to go for 7 weeks because holidays

Then I hope a longer gap between launch and season one because not doing so is dumb for shadowlands and how the systems work

The January raid schedule makes more sense (also the ppl saying we know there’s only a two week gap...we know nothing)
I think week 1 is a possible 5 renown now
Every week you get 100 or so soul ash
War mode is going to really screw with the experience of having only 5 zones

Ideally that gap alleviates pressure on a majority of players and possibly allows a launch of lfr at the same time

I’ll just be happy my alt can keep up with my main....possibly...I’m still debating on the alt choice.

Plus a 6 week rotation really helps with the legendary power acquisition since some are from world bosses

I see no positive to a 2 week raid release or a delay to 2021 especially with blizzconline

[Protean]

24th of November. Take it or leave it.

[Nyel]

We ain't raiding Castle Nathria this year on the live servers.

[Zexaniro]

As somebody who accurately guessed the prepatch and SL post-December release date when everyone was saying I was off the mark, I can confidently say SL isn't coming until Jan. Event for prepatch won't be released until November, this is obvious as they have refused to release the first phase of the event in order to prolong the patch, it's going to be around for a very very long time.

Jan 5th would be an optimistic date at this point, let's just say that. Anyone saying it's coming in November are just off with the clouds delusional btw

[Arthzull]

As somebody who accurately guessed the prepatch and SL post-December release date when everyone was saying I was off the mark, I can confidently say SL isn't coming until Jan. Event for prepatch won't be released until November, this is obvious as they have refused to release the first phase of the event in order to prolong the patch, it's going to be around for a very very long time.

Jan 5th would be an optimistic date at this point, let's just say that. Anyone saying it's coming in November are just off with the clouds delusional btw

They won't wait that long, even on the site, and in-game when buying the x-pac it says on or before December 31st 2020. so it will be before Dec 31st.

[Dracullus]

16th anniversary ends 30/11, it's another nail in the coffin for November release. Blizzard won't give us 16% XP/reputation boost on start of expansion.

Imo right now Blizzard try to decide between 1st and 8th December. 15th is too close to Christmas break, kinda doubt Blizz want to piss their devs even more this year and cut their holidays.

[Biglog]

It's all conjecture but with the info we have we can make an educated guess to narrow it to ~4 weeks. They could do another announced delay to 2021, but that seems unlikely. The delay that was done they were very transparent about being for "polish" and stated it would still be released in 2020, when they didn't have to open themselves to that date obligation. It would have been easier to just say it's delayed and will be out when ready. But they didn't do that. So there would really need to be a massive significant bug or slew of bugs to cause that. The 9.0 launch has been a little shaky, but nothing I don't think that would cause them to announce a 2nd delay. They'll be very leery about that knowing a 2nd delay wouldn't be received well by customers at all. They are really past the dev point with Shadowlands of major changes that would take a lot of time, and that's not the type of changes they said they'd be doing during this extra polish time.

I also don't think they would have accepted the PR/customer hit of the first delay for just an extra week or two from the original Shadowlands release date. My guess is that Blizzard decided that if they are going to lose some sales to refunds because of the delay that it should be at least a month. That would be about a 1 month window sometime between ~ November 24th and Christmas to cash in on holiday sales.

Beyond that within that window is just throwing darts. But it really should be somewhere in that range. They could also easily do a release on a day other that Tuesday since the base 9.0 patch is already applied, and they gave that as one of the benefits of this launch approach vs. the old all at once update patch expansion launches. It's just a flip of a switch for them now to open Shadowlands. So they can work around individual days that might not be a good fit like the wow anniversary.

[Celthalas Justice Bringer]

I predict the end of November. Seems a bit fitting. A October release made sense, but oh well. I am glad they are focusing on the integrity of the product.

[Wild]

Nov 24th I'd feel

[Xavv]

December 1st is the only sensible date left.

[AngerFork]

We ain't raiding Castle Nathria this year on the live servers.

Agreed. The only way that we would do that is with a 12/1 release and employees working overtime to fix bugs during the holiday season. There's no chance of that happening IMO, especially if the employees have to crunch as is to get SL out to everyone. Not to mention the outcry that the World First community would have about needing to raid for World First over the holidays.

This then IMO also calls the 12/1 date into question as a possible date, simply due to how much time we'd be waiting in the patch pre-raid. A month I could see, but not much beyond that. Pushing the raid out 2 weeks afterwards would be 12/15 which would again cause a lot of end-of-year strain to their already strained employees, so that seems unlikely.

As I think that same strain would happen with bug fixes if SL launched on 12/15, I'm of the opinion that it's either 12/8 or 1/12/2021, the latter of which I predict will be the actual date.

[mrcodez]

December 1st is the only sensible date left.

I'm still in the Jan 2021 camp for a "proper" shadowlands launch.


9.0 has been released, we are playing Shadowlands live without the content.

Refunds have been made available.


Take a browse through the bug report forums and that's just for pre-patch. There are some real broken things in the pre-patch that they have to work through. Those won't magically go away with the pre-patch event or the main content patch of shadowlands. Some of the bugs affect many aspects of the game. I'm not talking about tuning I'm talking about things not functioning.

What's really got me thinking about a 2021 release of shadowlands content is that many of the broken things that made it live in pre-patch were reported in-game, submitted to forums. But still never fixed. I think that points to a lack of resources. Probably pressures of making new content, responding to beta feedback/tuning, and fixing bugs that are just overwhelming the team.

You either get more resources or you get more time. If decide on neither than you get badly buggy / non-functional games. Listening to beta feedback there are many things that are still just broken. Not just tuning problems but rather "we can't test this thing because it is broken and doesn't work".

Another indicator is they blamed the delay on covid-19 and work remote. Hard to tell what they mean. Less efficiency? Work to move resources remote that were never intended to be accessed that way? both?

Can they tune, tweak, and fix enough bugs to release in 2020 with the resources they currently have is the real question. I currently believe the answer is "no". They will need way more time, probably somewhere in January.

[Kithelle]

At this point I'd almost say they may as well wait till mid December that way people can buy the expansion for Christmas