Guessing the new Shadowlands release date

[orsraunia]

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.

Unless pre-patch is delayed... But yeah, I know what you mean, it makes sense. I had the same thought and this is why I voted for 17th of November. But still, anything can happen. Not announcing a date means that they want to be pretty sure before they announce, so they want to see how things will progress in the following couple weeks. So, anything can still happen.

[razorpax]

Blizzard has never planned release around other games.

Really.....every release is planned around other games dude heck remember WoD alpha??? 3 levels one zone and one dungeon released the day after wildstar

[Malefic]

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.

What is this automatic upper limit? Some pre-patches have been 6-8 weeks in the past. If the game was only being delayed by 2-3 weeks, we likely would have been given a date.

The fact we weren't means they feel the delay is a timeline they cannot pinpoint, thus gives credibility to it being a longer one. I think a further delay to early 2021 is more likely than an early November release at this point.

[tomten]

Dec 8th with raids opening 5th of jan like others have said makes the most sense to me too.
Would be weird to just delay it for 3-4 weeks and doubt they'll wanna wait for 2021 and earlier means raids open mid christmas which is bit meh.

[Dracullus]

Dec 8th with raids opening 5th of jan like others have said makes the most sense to me too.
Would be weird to just delay it for 3-4 weeks and doubt they'll wanna wait for 2021 and earlier means raids open mid christmas which is bit meh.

Also it gives them massive amount of data from Mythic 0 for balance tuning.

[orsraunia]

Yeah, my thoughts...delaying by 3 weeks is losing face over nothing.

Why over nothing? If they can put some bandaids on some major issues in like 3-4 weeks and avoid releasing a broken product, it's not for "nothing". I don't believe they want to avoid releasing something that is not polished, just something that is not broken. Ofc, just my personal opinion. And I believe that they'd hate to move it to 2021, because of yearly earning reports, etc? But I am not really sure about the latter, because I am no expert in financial things...

Still, I get your logic, it makes sense, all I am saying is that you never know. Maybe they just need a small delay to put some bandaids on some major issues, but they just don't know when they'll be done with that and thus they prefer to wait 1-2 weeks and see how they're progressing, before setting a new launch date, instead of risking giving us a date and then delaying some more.

[Realsteel]

This year is just horrible in all sorts of ways. I suggest Blizzard thoroughly polish this expansion until January 2021. 2020 is just a jinxed up number. Nothing good will come of it.

[TickTickTick]

Cata was released early December (6th, was it?), so my take is December 8th.

[jdbond]

Remember the state of Legion or BFA at launch. None of them were "finished" or polished. This is what Blizzard is aiming for. People think they will take 2 months to polish whatever needs "polishing".

They won't. They will release a semi-working game. They are not even there yet.

[Monteverdi]

I don't see it happening in November. Delaying for just a week or two doesn't seem enough. Then you run into Thanksgiving in the US, and I don't think they'll release in the week before Thanksgiving, or for sure not the week of. Maybe December 1st, or as an outside chance December 8th, but by the 8th you've got raids opening up suspiciously close to Christmas.

But if not released by the 8th, due to holidays, I doubt we'll see Shadowlands in 2020.

[zrvnavi]

see yall in 2021

[Dracullus]

This year is just horrible in all sorts of ways. I suggest Blizzard thoroughly polish this expansion until January 2021. 2020 is just a jinxed up number. Nothing good will come of it.

Lol, like 2021 is shaping to be any better.

[Poppincaps]

On a personal level I really hope they don't release it until December. I have my PS5 and Cyberpunk 2077 arriving in November.

[MatPandaZ]

People here thinking they would have Mythic release on Christmas :')

[Tojara]

I'd guess the 24th of November or the 1st of December if I were a betting man. If it's either of those dates, I would also throw a prediction in that they might make the content release schedule a bit more more delayed than they initially planned, pushing the first official "season" of Shadowlands activities into the new year (raids, M+, rated arena). This might be boring to some people, but I'd imagine a lot of people would be happier knowing that there's zero stress around the holidays surrounding raiding schedules (or lack thereof). Whether they do this or not is entirely up in the air, but I believe in this expansion they delayed a major raid tier by a few extra weeks just so it wouldn't land on the holiday season (keep in mind, this was the exception and not the rule, there have been a few raid tiers that literally launched at the end of November historically despite people being upset about it).

I can't imagine that it's going to be pushed to 2021 because it seems outlandish to me that we're going to live in the Shadowlands pre-patch for two and a half months.

I was looking forward to the 26th of October but my prediction back in the early Summer just assumed the expansion was going to be released in late November anyways, meaning my expectations are still kind of surrounding that date. When I heard the October release date, myself and many others were pretty surprised that it was that soon.

All in all it's probably for the best anyway. For those of you that played WoD, WoD didn't really feel "complete" until a couple months in when they fixed loads of things (garrisons, balance, QoL and quite a few other things). Lots of people were in full meme mode basically announcing that WoD had finally entered release state a couple months after it's release, and it was kind of true (lets just forget the absence of a tier between BRF/HFC). What I'm trying to say is that if Shadowlands actually released on the 26th, it's incredibly likely the game wouldn't feel "ready" for another month anyway, and for anybody paying attention, the balance changes they've been putting out consistently every week (which is good) have been pretty massive and have no signs of stopping anytime soon. Lets put aside how trash the Azerite system was from a conceptual standpoint for a second and just remember how wild the balance changes were to the values in the first several weeks of BFA (for those of you who don't remember, some things were buffed/nerfed by 100-500%).

[Tiradon]

I do hope it's December 8th or beyond.

There are so many games coming out with the next generation console... More and more Shadowlands is becoming less of a MUST

[Nyel]

Call of Duty: Cold War is launching November 13. It's another Activision product. That absolutely rules out the 10th and 17th November (as if it wasn't already obvious they're not aiming for just 2-3 weeks of a delay).

November 24 is the earliest possible launch date, but December 8 / 15 are way more likely. They won't rush Season 1 to get it out this year just because.

[PrivateSmiley]

December 14th.

[Zexaniro]

Jan 3rd, raid on Jan 20th

[McNeil]

I'd say that November is out of the question. Its way to close to the previous date, a lot of other big releases is also in this month, and Thanksgiving will be around the corner. At the very least they could release it at the end of the month, making it just a one month delay. My bet is either 1st or 8th of December, probably closer to the 8th at it hits the sweet spot when it comes to the holidays. Ideally I'd like to see them delay it further into Januari 2021 though.