2020 has been a year fraught with delays, cancelations, and push-backs in the gaming community, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many companies forced to work from home and distance workers, production took a massive hit.
The same reasoning was used for the delay that struck World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the latest expansion for Blizzard’s titanic MMORPG World of Warcraft. Late last month, the developers were forced to announce a delay of the title.
Today was the day that players had been expecting to see the title released, with October 26th being the original release date that the developers announced. Due to the unfortunate delay, we continue to wait for the expansion.
Sadly, we can’t say that we have another date to look forward to at this point. Despite the delay coming nearly a month ago, Blizzard has released no new launch date, leaving players unsure of when they should expect the title.
The only hint that Blizzard has given is that they still anticipate a 2020 launch, but the more and more that time goes on, the less certain that looks. With October almost over, we’re running out of time for the 2020 window.
If not for Blizzard's delay, #Shadowlands would've now been live. 😢
Let's hope this delay makes Shadowlands even better than expected.https://t.co/PebEExThqu pic.twitter.com/9ou5iBQERa
— Wowhead💙 (@Wowhead) October 26, 2020
It’s also difficult for the player base to make any sorts of guesses on when the release would be, assuming we are still anticipating a 2020 release. With only two months left and no release in sight, players have begun to get a bit antsy.
That isn’t to say that the developers haven’t been making good use of this time, though! Blizzard has been quite transparent about their work on the expansion, releasing updates to let players know what fixes they’re working towards.
Plenty of updates are always hitting the beta, as well. Blizzard is hard at work making things as tuned as possible for launch, trying to keep it so that the delay doesn’t still end up in releasing a broken, busted game.
All in all, there’s still a good amount of work to be done, and Blizzard seems to be doing everything they can to make sure that the Shadowlands release lives up to the considerable amount of hype that it’s been given.
While we don’t have a date on when we can expect the title, Blizzard hasn’t had anything to say about delaying it again, and seem rather confident that they’ll still be able to release the title before the end of this year. Whether the developers are able to deliver on that promise or not, only the coming weeks will be able to tell.
