World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the latest expansion to mega-hit MMO World of Warcraft, has been delayed. The team at Blizzard announced that the new expansion will be pushed back to later in 2020. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was supposed to come out on October 27, bringing with a rebalance of the endgame, but that’s on the shelf for now. The patch has been pushed to a new release date because the scope of the content reworked overwhelmed the team as they are working from home.
— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) October 1, 2020
“Over the past several months of testing, we’ve made significant progress iterating on and polishing the core features and gameplay of Shadowlands,” the statement reads. “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.”
So there you have it, another major content update to a popular game delayed because of COVID-19. 2020 really is becoming the worst possible year for gaming, and pretty much everything else.
So what content is giving them trouble? Well, everything! Not only are the four new zones: Revendreth, Ardenweald, Maldraxxus, and Bastion, but players will also get to experience a level squish back to 60 that will rebalance all the power creep from newer content. This should have the intended effect of making it easier for new players to experience everything that the game has to offer without feeling like effort in older content was wasted when compared to the power of new gear and content.
And in case you were wondering, the content is still getting released on a slower schedule. There will still be a Shadowlands pre-patch coming out on October 13, which “lays a lot of the groundwork for the expansion and includes our revamped character leveling, new-player experience on Exile’s Reach, and a host of new character customization options.”
That pre-patch will let users get ready by downloading bug fixes and some of the new content that the expansion relies on. It likely will contain some new content, but players will have to wait for the full expansion to see what it actually is, as it’s likely to be held in the background until launch.