wow Shadowlands Delayed: The Expansion Won't Launch October 27

[Staff 1,488]

Blizzard just posted an update and they are delaying Shadowlands to later this year and the new launch date has not been determined yet.

(Source)

To the WoW community,

I wanted to let you know that we’re delaying the release of Shadowlands to later this year—and while we’re still in the process of determining the right new date to launch, we felt it was important to let you know about this change in plans as soon as we could. This was an incredibly difficult decision for the team, as we’re as eager to get the expansion into your hands as you are to play it—but ultimately, we feel it’s the right decision for the game—and for our players.

Over the past several months of testing, we’ve made significant progress iterating on and polishing the core features and gameplay of Shadowlands. We’re at a point where the zones, the campaign, the level-up questing experience, and the story we have to tell are essentially ready to share. We’re excited by the Covenants at the heart of the expansion, and it’s been a thrill to see Torghast take shape into a fun new kind of WoW experience, thanks in no small part to your input.

However, as everything started coming together and we’ve been listening to and building upon your feedback, it’s become clear we need a little more time for additional polish, and to balance and iterate on some interlocking pieces—particularly those related to the endgame. Shadowlands is one of the most intricate expansions we’ve yet created, and while we’ve made great progress, the challenge of tuning the endgame was compounded by the team having to work from home.

Blizzard has a commitment to quality. We believe Shadowlands will be something special, and we’ve heard from many of you who feel the same. We need this extra time to ensure that Shadowlands lives up to its full potential.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that beginning October 13 we will be releasing the Shadowlands pre-patch, which lays a lot of the groundwork for the expansion and includes our revamped character leveling, new-player experience on Exile’s Reach, and a host of new character customization options. And once we get closer to Shadowlands’ release, you’ll be called upon to defend Azeroth against a resurgence of the Scourge during our pre-launch event.

Thanks for your support and passion, and for your continued help and feedback as we head toward the finish line.

We’ll see you in the Shadowlands soon,

John Hight, Executive Producer of World of Warcraft

[Ragingwolf 310]

This is fine considering the heap of things that need to be ironed out, thoroughly examined, modified, worked, and balanced.  

[Teufel 331]

Wasn't counting on it, but sure glad it happened. The whole thing needs quite a few more rounds of polishing.

[elmurufdd 45]

yup this was needed so much broken on beta atm 

[Arcling 898]

It's good they are taking their time, hopefully they will work more on fixing some bugs and balance. At least Pre-patch is coming, so that part of content should be ready and bug-free, I guess.

[Lithari 194]

6 minutes ago, Ragingwolf said:

This is fine considering the heap of things that need to be ironed out, thoroughly examined, modified, worked, and balanced.  

Well, considering the fact that we do not get the most up-to-date build of the game, the internal testers are 3-4 builds ahead of the external testers, i have seen a game full of bugs during beta release a week later to be almost bug free.....so you can never judge a products readiness on the beta builds we get.

[Lithari 194]

2 minutes ago, Arcling said:

It's good they are taking their time, hopefully they will work more on fixing some bugs and balance. At least Pre-patch is coming, so that part of content should be ready and bug-free, I guess.

Now-a-days, more and more bugs are common in games, even when they delay it to fix them and the bugs tend to be there for years and sometimes, never get fixed.

[Wildwitch 108]

Better safe than sorry - as WOW history has been buggy. I'm HAPPY they are taking the time to fix things!

[Senou 40]

I wish blizzard would take the opporturnity to fix bugs in old content as well. Some old raids for example are still unplayable, quests and npc's tend to bug out. I found a lot of problems with old content since I'm passing time by grinding old reputation.

AS for SL, I'd love to see balancing in form of buffing stuff which is weak rather than nerfing stuff to the point where it is barely viable for more difficult content. This would solve the problem of classes / specs not being played or being called boring.

[SidonisAntares 290]

Good call, it's clearly not polished enough yet for release and fix.

[Borgoff33 101]

saw this coming 3weeks ago pretty sad it took them this long to admit the xpac was not close

[PepperAmmy 34]

1 hour ago, BluePosts said:

Blizzard has a commitment to quality

warcraft 3 reforged anyone?

[ResoWho 68]

*filtered* this, first time in 32 years ill take vacation for an expansion and now they delay it. great

[Dreamcatcher 66]

I'm glad this happened Shadowlands can be one of best experiences in WOW history, If you need more time to polish it more and make it perfect then its fine by me

[KDF 26]

6 minutes ago, ResoWho said:

*filtered* this, first time in 32 years ill take vacation for an expansion and now they delay it. great

I'll bite. What games had expansion packs in 1988?

[Baharok 234]

I really like this decision and it comes across the fact that i will have to work like 10+ hours a day going from next week until end of November.

 

I hope they can keep fixing alot more stuff and look forward to it.

[ResoWho 68]

9 minutes ago, KDF said:

I'll bite. What games had expansion packs in 1988?

when my mother met my father, they created an expansion and that was me. jokes aside, i just wanted to say that its the very first time ive taken vacation for a game and that im not young. im a bit sad now :<

[elmurufdd 45]

45 minutes ago, ResoWho said:

*filtered* this, first time in 32 years ill take vacation for an expansion and now they delay it. great

just rescind it 3 weeks from now never heard of a company that wouldn't let u rescind time off and use it again later 

[ResoWho 68]

1 minute ago, elmurufdd said:

just rescind it 3 weeks from now never heard of a company that wouldn't let u rescind time off and use it again later 

ive to coordinate my vacation with my co-worker since we are a small company and only 2 of us working late shift. when my vacation ends (08.10), my co-worker got 2 weeks. only thing i can ask for is if he would swap with me or hope that its delayed for 2 weeks, also we arent allowed to take vacation in december sadly

[tr111 6]

People who actually believe that they'll get the better version of the game after this announcement actually have no idea how big corporations operate.

They didn't extend the testing/tuning phase to improve something - they extended it because they couldn't reach their norm, which wasn't that different for the last 2 expansions.

I can even rephrase it in more familiar terms - imagine 8.0 getting delayed and then it still comes out as it were, just later. This is what is happening with 9.0 at the moment.

The announcement is the most blatant way of trying to save face. Which also explains the amount of bloat and trying to be intimate with the community.

This delay is an enormous economic hit. And, unlike what Americans seem to be so eager to wish was true, we don't live in the world of Marvel or whatever, and this was by no means a heroic, highly personal deed that the company chose to do. In fact, after receiving the news about the blown deadline, the decision was probably made by the accounting department before being passed over to upper staff.

Edited October 1, 2020 by tr111

[InfernalDevil 1]

Took a vacation for realise. Wanted to try to come back to the game. But its seems that I have to cancel it or just do nothing on it... You can't announce date for this whole world and then just cancel it. I can't trust them any more. This ia not rhe company that i remember, that care about there players. That is disappointing ( 

Just personal opinion...

Edited October 1, 2020 by InfernalDevil

[Entega 1]

29 minutes ago, InfernalDevil said:

Took a vacation for realise. Wanted to try to come back to the game. But its seems that I have to cancel it or just do nothing on it... You can't announce date for this whole world and then just cancel it. I can't trust them any more. This ia not rhe company that i remember, that care about there players. That is disappointing ( 

Just personal opinion...

Weird because this is more classic blizzard than not delaying. They delayed many games in the past because they weren’t ready. 

[Migol 433]

Yeah agree the delay is necessary but they should have let us know earlier than 3 weeks and some change.     A lot of people in my guild had taken the release week off and now they're boned.

[Starym 3,800]

1 hour ago, tr111 said:

People who actually believe that they'll get the better version of the game after this announcement actually have no idea how big corporations operate.

They didn't extend the testing/tuning phase to improve something - they extended it because they couldn't reach their norm, which wasn't that different for the last 2 expansions.

I can even rephrase it in more familiar terms - imagine 8.0 getting delayed and then it still comes out as it were, just later. This is what is happening with 9.0 at the moment.

The announcement is the most blatant way of trying to save face. Which also explains the amount of bloat and trying to be intimate with the community.

This delay is an enormous economic hit. And, unlike what Americans seem to be so eager to wish was true, we don't live in the world of Marvel or whatever, and this was by no means a heroic, highly personal deed that the company chose to do. In fact, after receiving the news about the blown deadline, the decision was probably made by the accounting department before being passed over to upper staff.

What on earth are you talking about? So they delayed it... to do nothing? Obviously the expansion isn't up to the (lower) standards of today's Blizz, which means if they HADN'T delayed it it would have been more of a mess. The final product might still be sub-par, but it will 122938129389218391829839% be better than what we would get if they didn't delay it.

Also, no, this decision was made exactly by the devs, because they're the only ones who can make the call whether they can fix the issues by the release date or not. They saw that they couldn't (IMO they decided to ignore the Covid effects from working from home too much, like MANY studios did) and so they had to push REALLY hard to the upper manmagment to convince them to delay (which is why it took so long to announce).

[Ragingwolf 310]

4 hours ago, Lithari said:

Well, considering the fact that we do not get the most up-to-date build of the game, the internal testers are 3-4 builds ahead of the external testers, i have seen a game full of bugs during beta release a week later to be almost bug free.....so you can never judge a products readiness on the beta builds we get.

Even so the expansion was not up to par per the Developers.  I rather they fix a majority of the issues like Class Balancing than slap some duct tape on it within two weeks and sell a product that will ultimately make people angry and demand a refund and unsub.