Still no release date announcement

[Nyel]

I hope so. Delaying the expansion for only a few weeks would make no difference. The only reason they would release Shadowlands this year is that allmighty shareholder money. And we all know thats priority number 1.

Release in late january would be nice.

Honestly, the changes from the last weeks have been mostly negative. If they walk this path further, a launch next week would have been better than a delay for several months where they change things for the worse.

[Wheeler]

You’re overly optimistic if you think more time is going to make a huge difference. They need more time because they designed the self into a corner and now they are stuck.

The hard hitting reality.

You could have 2x the developers focusing solely on tuning, and they wouldn't be able to get this right. It's exponentially more difficult than anything they've ever had to tune before. Classes getting power by legendaries that get power by conduits/soulbinds that get amplified by class abilities? Yikes. That's a few orders of magnitude more difficult than Azerite Traits, and that killed an entire expansion.

[ceall]

I know, i know, there are many release date speculation threads out there, but i just had to open up one myself.

I'm 100% certain that shadowlands will release in december 15th. And here's why:

1. It's after Thanksgiving
2. It's after the US election
3. It's before Christmas
4. It's still in 2020
5. It should give the devs enough time to fix a lot of stuff
6. Going by previous expansions, the raid drops 3 weeks after release. That'd put castle nathria release to january 5th
7. January 5th is after holiday season
8. Noone would be having to rush towards anything
9. TBH noone really expected a november release when the delay was announced
10. I wanted 10 bullet points but can't think of a 10th ^^.

[Hinastorm]

Oh I guess it is 3 weeks for the raid, I thought it was 2 for some reason.

As usual you'll get a ton of replies shitting on you for X reason, but this date actually makes sense to me.

[blackbird1205]

I'd take it because I have to submit my bachelor thesis on december 14th, would be a lovely rest of the year.

[Nyel]

15th seems a bit too close to Christmas. 8th seems like a better date, but in the end one week more or less doesn’t really matter.

[Hinastorm]

15th seems a bit too close to Christmas. 8th seems like a better date, but in the end one week more or less doesn’t really matter.

They can't completely avoid a major holiday at this point. If they do the 8th, they have to delay the raid release which throws early expansion gearing out of wack.

The 1st makes sense also, but Bliz cares about the 0.01% of players who will be pushing mythic nathria week 1, so that probably won't work out either.

[Zandermill]

Expect bad news on the 29th with the Activision earnings call. Im guessing sometime q1 next year for Shadowlands now.

[Hinastorm]

Expect bad news on the 29th with the Activision earnings call. Im guessing sometime q1 next year for Shadowlands now.

That's good news not bad. Plenty of games to play.

[Zandermill]

That's good news not bad. Plenty of games to play.

Trails of Cold Steel 4 and Cyberpunk say hi.

[Nyel]

They can't completely avoid a major holiday at this point. If they do the 8th, they have to delay the raid release which throws early expansion gearing out of wack.

The 1st makes sense also, but Bliz cares about the 0.01% of players who will be pushing mythic nathria week 1, so that probably won't work out either.

As I said, one week more or less doesn’t matter. If we wait 4 weeks until the raid or 5 changes nothing. Especially with holidays in between it‘s even easier because many players will have other things to do, are on vacation or whatever.

In no December scenario will the raid launch this year.

[Hinastorm]

As I said, one week more or less doesn’t matter. If we wait 4 weeks until the raid or 5 changes nothing. Especially with holidays in between it‘s even easier because many players will have other things to do, are on vacation or whatever.

In no December scenario will the raid launch this year.

It does matter because people go into the raid much better geared. Every extra week is more and more gear.

Which means they have to either adjust tuning in the raid, or it's going to be an overly easy raid.

I doubt they'd adjust tuning. Too much effort.

I'm not against that necessarily, to be clear. I'm ok with easy first raids.

[Blayze]

I'm not against that necessarily, to be clear. I'm ok with easy first raids.

People do need an introduction to raiding, as opposed to Cata where all four of your potential 'first boss' fights (Halfus, Magmaw, Omnotron and Conclave) were varying flavours of bullshit.

[Deventh]

Except that the last promotion was in July, so no it is not every 6 months. This is a "please don't leave us, because of the delay" promotion.

The cosmetic set is absolutely dreadful looking. I wouldn't wear that even if I got it for free. The wings are the only things that are okay and even then, it's far from being worth 6 months of subscription for a game that will get no new content more than likely for the next few months.

[Th3Scourge]

Don't argue law if you don't understand the terminology. Legal obligation doesn't mean you are forced to meet your obligations (I mean hell, what logic is that even?) - it just means that if you don't meet your obligation, you might face other consequences. Which in this case, at least where I live, would be to offer refunds. For example, a non-disclosure agreement is legally binding. You have a legal obligation to keep your mouth shut, but no one can force you to be shut. You'll just face consequences if you break the agreement.

For some reason people seem to confuse "legally binding" with something that puts you into jail or something similar. Many things are legally binding yet there are zero consequences if you don't meet your legal obligations.

Again, they will just offer refund if someone objects to them no releasing by 31st December. Like they did for WC3R. I took them up on that refund, not because of the delay, but

No one gives a shit if you want to argue semantics on what they are or are not required to do by law, and I can absolutely guarantee that you are not going to win a legal battle with Activision-Blizzard because they didn't release something by a proposed date.

[Soisoisoi]

Posted the following in another thread so figure I'll post it here as well / more potential discussion:

-

Cba to make a new thread (or search, so if posted already my apologies) - so hijacking this one:

Now, it's probably speculation, but worth noting that tech radar posted about new games getting Ray tracing including WoW Shadowlands that is...

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was also announced as getting ray-traced shadows when it (hopefully) comes out in November

Just food for thought. I know RTS is in currently with prepatch, so that's what makes me wonder why they'd say it's not already in and use otherwise random speculation.

Sauce: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/nv...ft-shadowlands

[cparle87]

Hasn't it happened like 3 times already this year? I swear there was two mounts (the dragon & the parrot [I think???]), but I might be misremembering.

We had the Dreadwake and now this mog.

[SirBeef]

Let's all reflect on the fact that it is already almost the original release date and there is still no new release date announcement.
And also the new please-don't-leave-us desperate 6-month "promotion."
2021 is looking more and more likely.

Oh noes. Should we raise pitchforks and set HQ ablaze in fire?

Relax. My god. It's just a game bro.

[Toybox]

I've gotta be honest, even though I was happy Blizzard did the right thing & delayed the game, & even though I knew the only way to balance all these daft systems was to make them all close to irrelevant, the hype I had for Shadowlands has slowly whittled away leaving nothing but apathy in its place. I went from reading up on Discords & beta testing with guildies wherever possible to barely paying attention to anything WoW related. We finished collecting all our mythic mounts a few months back so no-one is even logging into live at the moment, as there's bugger all of interest to do.

Last time I felt like this was 4.3, & then I ended up taking an 18 month break & missing the early patches of one of the games best ever expansions... The 15 months or so I took off between 8.0 & 8.3 were down to hating the gameplay, but this what I'm feeling now & felt all that time ago? This is just nothing but apathy.

If the game needs another delay, I'll still want them to do the right thing & delay it, but if not for the people I play with, I think I'd give up hope entirely.

[dragi]

If they don't release expansion in this year this only make ppl mass unsub and quiting. For regular players it already nothing to do, few mounts with game balanced around lvl 60 gonna make ppl only frustrated.