WoW: Shadowlands Has Been Delayed

Folks, I’m going to be brutally honest with you right out of the gate. It’s going to be unusually difficult for me to remain as objective and impartial as I can be in the wake of this announcement. Even so, I shall soldier on and state the currently-established facts to the best of my ability, for doing so is my sworn duty as Phenixx Gaming’s unofficial Azeroth correspondent. Without further ado, let us begin.

According to a blog post published yesterday by John Hight, World of Warcraft’s Executive Producer, the game’s upcoming eighth expansion known as Shadowlands has officially been delayed to “later this year.” That’s the most concrete time window I can provide at this point, I’m afraid. Within the blog post in question, Hight states that Blizzard is “still in the process of determining the right new date to launch.” Hight goes on to add that the World of Warcraft team members “need this extra time to ensure that [the expansion] lives up to its full potential.”

Despite this rather disappointing development regarding the expansion being pushed back, Mr. Hight did at least have some good news to offer players. The Shadowlands pre-expansion update (or “pre-patch,” for short) is scheduled to launch on Tuesday, October 13th, 2020, presumably after scheduled maintenance concludes for that week.

This patch will include the revamped character leveling system (including a level squish), several metric tons of new character customization options, and the all-new starting zone experience for new players, known as “Exile’s Reach.” The pre-patch will apparently not, however, contain the Scourge invasion events that were originally reported to be part of this update. Hight states in his blog post that these events will be reserved until “closer to Shadowlands’ release.”

I’d love to hear your take on this sudden, unfortunate development, dear readers. What do you make of Shadowlands being delayed? Are you excited that the pre-patch will arrive fairly soon? I know I’ve certainly got quite a few less-than-positive thoughts racing through my mind in the wake of this news, but perhaps this delay is for the best. All I can say with certainty is that I hope Blizzard puts this extra time to good use and isn’t just making players who are tired of the two-year-long saga that has been Battle for Azeroth (such as myself) wait for the new content for the sake of it.