Guessing the new Shadowlands release date

[Onikaroshi]

11/20 is my gut prediction. A Friday 5 weeks after the Pre-Patch drops. Because expansions are always Fridays, and the 30th was also a Friday.

My meme pick is the Friday before or after FF14 5.4 releases.

We've had 7 expansions.... 6 have released on tues, 1 had released on thursday, what?

[Mojo03]

It's really not even debatable. It's December 8th, if it's 2020.

Why?

November is new consoles, big end of year blockbuster games, and a holiday. They 100% aren't going drop it in the middle of that.

That leaves December 1st, 8th, 15th... 22nd and 29th are out of the question.

Won't be 1st because it's too close to Thanksgiving and they aren't going to force their employees to crunch the week of Thanksgiving. Won't be 15th because if there are issues, they won't force their employees to crunch the week before Xmas.

Which leaves what? The 8th. SL will launch on the 8th or technically the evening of the 7th.

End of debate.

[AngerFork]

Count me in as one of those who thinks we are likely looking at 2021.

As I see it, this is not a move that Blizz would do to simply buy themselves a couple of weeks, especially without a date attached. That lack of date is important here. They may have an internal goal, but the fact that they haven't announced it tells me they don't have 100% confidence in hitting that target time. This tells me that we are at least a month out, likely more.

From there, I also think you rule out Dec. 1st if for no other reason than it is right after Thanksgiving. Shortened work week, you are unlikely to really be able to get devs to put in extra crunch time and/or best confirm that their fixes are in place. There will likely need to be server architecture updates as well and doing those on a holiday week could pose problems. Due to how America celebrates the Holidays in December, the 22nd & 29th are straight out as well. This leaves realistically 2 Tuesdays it could happen, 12/8 and 12/15, with either one almost certainly pushing the raid start date to 2021. Dec. 8th is a possibility here, after all Cata was released on 12/7. Dec. 15th is perhaps less likely as any sort of major fixes would have be set up right before or around the holiday season, which again Blizz may be hesitant to staff.

So why not Dec 8th? Because I feel that in addition to the fixes, Blizz will need time to properly advertise and show off the new date and they will need confidence in the new date. I don't think based on what we have that they'll have that confidence in mid-November, which means they either need to short change the advertisement or push for extra time.

Moving it to Jan 2021 avoids all of this. You don't have to worry about the holidays, you don't have to worry about giving the date enough time to breathe, you have extra time to really fix things in case your initial plan slips out of your control, and after the holiday season you've got a window where not a ton of games are coming out.

[Nite92]

I think that it will be at most two weeks or 2021. They released WoD on 13th Nov and said that this relase date sucked because there was progress to be had over the holidays. IIRC correctly barley not even the first 100 guilds were done before christmas holidays ( https://imgur.com/a/70DFjGv ).
I don't know how to add pictures

[Byleth]

At this point, I'd prefer they delay it until 2021.

Managing a raid team push over the holiday season is a nightmare.

[Nnyco]

24th is a major American holiday week, it's not really on the table.

Wouldnt that be the exact oposite? Perfect time since alot of people already booked days off.

[Mojo03]

Wouldnt that be the exact oposite? Perfect time since alot of people already booked days off.

The flip side of that coin is if they did that they would be forcing their employees to work through Thanksgiving week. Launch weeks are hectic, especially on these kind of games.

It’s coming out December 8th.

/end thread

[Momster]

Literally no one knows and guessing is completely pointless

What are you even doing in this thread..? Is quarantine this empty for you?

[Aradur]

Who knows what unexpected problems that little indie-company releasing an AddOn for the first time is facing again. At the state of professionalism Blizzard is operating at atm i guess they will delay it until 2021.

[VinceVega]

Who knows what unexpected problems that little indie-company releasing an AddOn for the first time is facing again. At the state of professionalism Blizzard is operating at atm i guess they will delay it until 2021.

While i am not a fan of delay, that is a bit harsh no?
Everyone was fine with the Cyberpunkt delays. Corona and all.

[Imphrazel]

put my on November 24th. I think they want to do it before Thanksgiving.

If it is delayed until December, I think we can expect Season 1 in January 2021.

[JuusGaming]

I'd put money on December 1st with raids and PvP season opening first week in January

[Vasilisa]

*Looks at crystal ball* December 29th.

But being serious it looks they they screwed up something a moment before the release. Let's just hope it's really the need of some polishing and not something big that would move the release into 2021.

[Aradur]

While i am not a fan of delay, that is a bit harsh no?
Everyone was fine with the Cyberpunkt delays. Corona and all.

I don't care about Cyberpunk, i don't know when it was announced, when it was released and when they announced the delay. If they handled it like Blizzard - giving a release date months ahead, go radio silence and then delaying it 3 weeks before the actual release is planned - it's not professional for me too.
I work in IT's and when i tell my chef "Yo, i know we have a press meeting in 4 weeks and will announce a new product but it won't be finished. Just say we deliver it somewhat in the future. No actual date though." i can go and look for a new job. And it's not like that would effect millions of people like with Blizzard.

[Malefic]

11/20 is my gut prediction. A Friday 5 weeks after the Pre-Patch drops. Because expansions are always Fridays, and the 30th was also a Friday.

My meme pick is the Friday before or after FF14 5.4 releases.

Expansions have never released on Friday.

They always release on Tuesday (UTC time at least), the only exception was Warlords that was launched on a Thursday due to the Tuesday being remembrance day which I believe is Veterans Day in the U.S?

[Nyel]

I don’t see them releasing season 1 this year. And with that notion, a December release makes more sense than a November release.

Ask yourself: would they risk the bad press of a delay that’s only about to be 3-4 weeks? I really don’t think so.

[jdbond]

Whats with all the "fun" predictions? December, really? Fact that pre-patch has a date now means there is an automatic upper limit. Shadowlands is coming in November, whatever anyone "believes". I believe it is delayed by 2-3 weeks. So 10 or 17 of November.

[Protean]

Late November is out because of Cyberpunk and US Thanksgiving. Late December is out because of holidays. They wouldn't delay the game if they only needed a week or two to polish it... they'd just launch it buggy and unfinished like usual.

That leaves early November and early December as the only logical windows. Judging by the state of balance and bugs on beta, I'd say December is more likely.

Blizzard has never planned release around other games.

[Starmania]

While I feel Dec 1 would be the absolute latest, I think it actually launches Nov 17. That they announced pre-patch for Oct 13 I think proves that they are confident that SL will come shortly after. I think there is no chance it gets pushed to 2021, otherwise they might as well have not mentioned pre-patch at all and just removed the corruption rotation and nerf corruption and socket costs so that players have something to do.

[razorpax]

I don’t see them releasing season 1 this year. And with that notion, a December release makes more sense than a November release.

Ask yourself: would they risk the bad press of a delay that’s only about to be 3-4 weeks? I really don’t think so.

Well look at it this way

People knew that the game wasn’t ready by testing beta

The new haven studio got people on a “blizz is activision” kick

So what I would do is use the whole “release it when it’s done” line and then eat a little bit of bad press with the amazing press and the coverage of “this is old blizzard grats to you” from content creators and outlets I mean look at Twitter and the forums.