World of Warcraft Shadowlands Delayed Until Later This Year

Back in August, Blizzard confirmed that the latest ‘Shadowlands’ expansion for the highly-popular MMORPG World of Warcraft would be released on October 26th/27th (depending on your time/region). With it set to possibly provide one of the most detailed overhauls to the game in quite a long time, there was definitely a lot of interest from both those who still continue to enjoy it and even those who had (even for several years now) successfully managed to escape its clutches.

Well, if you were one of those people, then I’m afraid we have some bad news for you. Following a report via CNET, Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has officially been delayed and, perhaps worse of all, they haven’t yet confirmed a new date!

World of Warcraft: Shadlowlands

In making the announcement, WoW’s executive producer John Hight has said that while the pre-launch patch will still go ‘live’ on October 13th, despite a lot of effort, the full expansion just won’t quite be ready to make it’s October 26th release.

“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, [But] 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.”

What Do We Think?

Given that this expansion was undoubtedly one of their most highly-anticipated in recent memory, the decision to delay its launch will clearly have not have been an easy or ideal one for Blizzard to make. The decision to not confirm or reveal a new release date, however, is certainly unusual.

While they have gone as far as to say that ‘Shadowlands’ will release before the end of this year, one suspects that they really would have wanted to get this done before mid-November. There are, after all, a lot of major PC gaming releases coming out that month and, of course, there is the small matter of the PS5/Xbox Series X which will clearly be garnering a lot of attention from the media.

Still, if you did book a weeks holiday to try and get yourself up to the next level cap, you might want to see about cancelling that because at this point, it’s unclear as to exactly when World of Warcraft Shadowlands will be released!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!