Today, 2020 claimed another victim with World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. The highly-anticipated expansion to the MMORPG titan has been delayed to a later date.
As of now, we don’t have an exact date as to when we should expect to be able to see World of Warcraft‘s latest expansion. The only information that Blizzard was able to give us is that they still intend to have the expansion out at some point this year.
There is some good news, though – quite a bit, depending on your view. Many are thankful that Blizzard chose to delay the expansion instead of simply releasing it broken and busted, making it so the expansion is actually enjoyable instead of just available.
But better than that subjective view comes news that many have been waiting for. With the announcement, Blizzard made the compromise of finally releasing a launch date for the prepatch to the expansion
Until now, there hasn’t been any news of the prepatch launch date, which had become a thing of suspicion for much of the player base. Given that prepatch is, among many things, meant to be the transition into the expansion, not having a date raised alarms.
— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) October 1, 2020
“In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that beginning October 13, we will be releasing the Shadowlands prepatch,” John Hight, executive producer of World of Warcraft announced, “which lays a lot of the groundwork for the expansion…”
Hight goes on to mention that this prepatch includes revamped character leveling, new-player experience on Exile’s Reach, and many new character customization options as well. Leading us into the expansion, prepatch is essentially the pavement of the road we take.
Interestingly, the prepatch might be launching as a bit of a peace offering for having to delay the game. Hight mentions that, as we get closer to the release of the title, we’ll then deal with the resurgence of the Scourge during the pre-launch events.
It’s unknown if this is prepatch launching sooner than expected to get the changes out and the event occurring later than prepared, or if this is truly what they had intended to do. Either way, many fans are happy to finally know prepatch is coming out.
If nothing else, the developers releasing prepatch means that they must not expect the expansion itself to take a great deal of time. If they’re willing to drop the pre-expansion patch already, they likely expect to be able to have the expansion out in a reasonable amount of time.