WoW: Shadowlands Release Date Announced

The time is nearly upon us, my friends. The Banshee Queen, Sylvanas Windrunner, has ripped open the barrier between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. We must soon enter the Shadowlands to put an end to whatever nefarious schemes she and her unholy allies may be plotting. At long last, I’m here to report that the question of when we’ll actually be able to do that has finally been officially answered.

Per an announcement made by Blizzard and subsequently reported upon by the venerable fan site known as Wowhead, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is another piece of Blizzard content that’s on their global release schedule. That is done in an effort to theoretically ensure that everyone gets to play the expansion at the same time. The announced release schedule states that Shadowlands will release on North American servers on Monday, October 26th, 2020 at precisely 4pm Pacific time.

This means the expansion will go live on European servers at the stroke of midnight CET on October 27th, at 7am local time in Taiwan, 8am local time in Korea, and 10am local time in Australia and New Zealand, all on that same date. That is, of course, assuming everything planned on this schedule goes off without a hitch. Blizzard has never encountered any issues with a global release schedule as I recall, so there’s precedent which dictates that everything will be fine. Even so, it’s hard to say definitively until the date draws nearer.

The long-awaited announcement of Shadowlands’ release date has led to a fair bit of speculation regarding two aspects of the game in particular. Specifically, I can’t help but wonder what might end up being the fate of the current double character experience buff known as “Winds of Wisdom,” along with when the expansion’s pre-patch and everything it entails might go live. My intuition tells me Blizzard surely won’t keep a double-experience buff active for any length of time once the expansion is out. However, they may intend for that buff to work in tandem with certain aspects of the Shadowlands pre-patch.

For example, based on what I’ve read about the game’s public test realm, which is different from the official beta version of Shadowlands, the expansion’s pre-patch will reportedly contain an invasion of the Scourge. This was apparently done in the pre-patch leading up to Wrath of the Lich King, as well. I’m wondering if this invasion will work similarly to the demon invasions that took place in the Legion pre-patch.

I vividly remember that pre-patch because, as I recall, those demon invasions granted massive amounts of character experience to players at virtually any character level, even without the aid of a double-experience buff. I can’t help but wonder whether this will be the case with the update preceding Shadowlands. If anything, I suspect there’s a possibility that Blizzard will keep Winds of Wisdom active during the Scourge invasion event to give players the opportunity to power-level their characters and make sure they’re all ready to jump directly into Shadowlands content once the expansion is out. Though admittedly that could just be wishful thinking on my part.

In any case, I’d like to give you today’s final word, dear reader. Are you excited for the new expansion? Has the announcement of its release date got you considering coming back to the game in light of everything the new content will entail? Do you have any theories about the pre-patch and/or the Winds of Wisdom buff? Do feel free to sound off in this article’s comments!