‘World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ release date delay: Expansion won’t arrive in October but the pre-patch will do

It is the year of delays and change of schedules, and “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” is not spared. Blizzard has just announced that the expansion has been removed from its October launch, but will still arrive in 2020.

‘World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’: New release date is still unknown

Video game development has gotten more complex in recent years, and the announcement of release date delays has been a common occurrence. Adding to the list of games that got delayed this year is the highly anticipated expansion “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands,” Blizzard announced on Thursday.

“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,” ‘World of Warcraft’ executive producer John Hight said in a statement. Hight added that the team developing the expansion is still working from home. Many video game studios moved to a new working setup to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in their offices. It is also worth noting that the delay of “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” comes after the opening of beta tests.

In the same statement, Hight mentioned that “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” will still be released “later this year” but a specific release date has yet to be decided. Logic dictates to follow official announcements, which in this case means looking forward to the expansion’s launch before the end of the year. The expansion was supposed to be released on Oct. 27.

The response online to the “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” delay has been generally positive with most fans saying it is better to wait for a few more weeks or months than to get an unpolished game. Some might be talking from experience, though. It can be recalled that Blizzard faced backlash earlier this year after gamers were greeted with persistent crashes and missing gameplay features on “Warcraft 3: Reforged.” It was originally planned for a late 2019 release until it was delayed until early 2020.

‘World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ fans still has something to anticipate this month

On the bright side, the “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” pre-patch now has a specific release date and it is set on Oct. 13. From that point, players will experience one of the biggest changes brought by the expansion, which is a new starting point situated in Exile’s Reach along with an array of new character customization options.