I would guess last week of September to boost quarter numbers. Doing it the last quarter would risk having 3 slow quarters out of 4.
Nope. Way too early.
BFA should have launched in Oct so I am going to say the earliest you should see shadowlands is Oct. Latest you see shadowlands is December. For shadowlands to release in January it means they ran into a lot of problems with the level squish.
I see the problem being BFA was not a complete finished product at release, if they do that again with SL they will get even more frustrated customers.
Either they release it well done or wait.
You realize they don’t have a clue yet how to do the level squish in game and let alone test every zone, mob, instance, etc… with every spec and level of character? That alone will take them 6 months. And they have nothing done but the idea of it. At least that is all they are telling us. If they had tons done, they would have let us play it at blizzcon.
where is that rumor from?
Rumors are dumb…but the player meltdowns when something like that happens are always great to watch.
There isn’t a rumor. It’s either made up on the spot from op or he’s reading too much into the videos that are pointing out that Shadowlands is noticeably less developed than BFA and Legion were at this particular point. He’s also conveniently leaving out the fact that we have had three in a row expansions now that on their launches were horribly obvious in that they weren’t even close to finished for launch and that a bit of waiting might not necessarily be a bad thing.
I hope Blizzard digs their heels into the dirt on Activision and tells them “Look, when we made things that were ready when they were ready we didn’t have these glaring issues.”
You didn’t notice the problems of there feeling no zero content on TBC launch, or Wrath launch, or even Cataclysm launch and to a lesser extent MoP. Unlike WoD, Legion and BFA where you’re leveled within the first day generally, definitely within the first week. Then you’re sitting on your hands until raid. Legion it was a bit better because they had m+ out on the second week and it was capped but it gave people repeatable and enjoyable content until EN two weeks or so later.
Contrast that to BFA where if you hit max level, you basically had zero content outside of weekly mythic dungeons and world quests for three solid weeks.
If it took them until mid 2021 to release Shadowlands but it actually came with a complete launch experience to where I didn’t need to wait a whole month until the raid, or 2 weeks before Mythic dungeons and all I had to experience were world quests, I’d be fine with that.
In fact I’m praying Torghast is available day one and not bugged to hell, even if they cap the rewards so be it. It will be something for me to endlessly do until other content shows up once I’m done combing over every single zone and enjoying the game’s new aesthetics.
Another two games are releasing expansions to capitalise on holiday sales in Dec.
I dont buy their excuse.
You might be, but a lot of people arent.
Im not. Might actually cancel my sub after getting AotC if theres going to be a year and a half of 8.3.
I would remind everyone that BfA started alpha in Feb, beta in late April and launched in Aug. That means that they have until April or so to get alpha out (even if Beta takes another 6 weeks than BfA) while hitting end of year. I would expect that they would require systems implemented as a schedule gate for beta starting, but the only complex system is earning legendaries.
The expansion is launching with 5 zones, 5 dungeons and a raid. There is nothing here which screams super extensive work. The zone designs and quest lines for BfA were strong-the problem was end game/systems and not the zone designs.
Come June if there is no alpha, it is time to find another game to play for a while.
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I love the internet lawyers, most of whom probably havent even looked at the purchase agreement.
There won’t be. At the very worst you’re seeing 10-11 months which is mostly the norm these days. Antorus was 9 months. Siege was 14.
Also sorry but, that’s why the game is so bad. MMOs don’t win longevity. They win hooking people early by being good. If your game is riddled with issues in the first month, that’s usually it. You don’t recover. You keep the undying fans sure but that’s it. A good and recent example is Archeage Unchained. The game released with so many glaring flaws, blatant bug abuse, poor PR from unbanning exploiters and now there aren’t that many people playing the game now compared to launch just a little shy of a month ago.
WoW is also the same way. The only expansion to buck this trend was Legion because they managed to rectify their glaring problems relatively early and slowly ironed out the others. However for MoP, WoD, and BFA, they clearly haven’t recovered and it was all because they pushed out unprepared expansions to hit a deadline because people were screeching about “I’M TIRED OF THE CURRENT RAID! NEW EXPANSION NOW!”
And content droughts affect their bottom line.
BfA actually had a release date of on or before end of September, not December. Already got a feeling we’ll be trapped in this hell til another year after today.
Personally,I WANT Blizzard to take their time,if they need to push for a delay then I’m all for it if it means they can make an expansion they find ideal and players eill enjoy. [most anyway,you can’t please everybody] The main problem in the industry when a product gets rushed out too soon and earlier deadlines get set than later,are more often than not impatient people who throw tantrums and due the usual entitled song and dance [I picture Veruca Salt’s “I want it now”] leading to morale dropping during fevelopment and needless crunch treatment tantamount to what you saw in the past with Warner Bros gaming doing to Netherrealm Studios during MK11 development,Rockstar with Red Dead Redemption 2,CD Projekt Red with The Witcher series and recently,Game Freak with Pokemon Sword/Shield.
Sure,you could argue the greedy executives having a hand and in some ways you may be right or you may be wrong. HOWEVER,consumers in one way or another also have a hand in this by being impatient and almost as demanding as a Karen at a box store which again,leads to pointed out treatment,stress inducing crunches and games turning out broken AF like Sonic '06/Boom, WWE 2k20,Assassin’s Creed: Unity,Fallout 76,Pokemon Sword/Shield,etc.
“But…content drought!!!” You may cry out despite there being various things to do outside of raiding,raiding and more raiding such as catching up alts,transmog farming,BGs,Arenas,pet collecting/pet battles,etc. Another thing that can be done is simply take a break until pre launch event and play something else,there are a crap ton of good games that recently came out you can play to pass the time.
TLDR for the short of attention span- Delays have happened in the past so if this does happen,there’s no skin off my nose about it because good things come to those who wait. Better to wait and play something amooth then have something busted or have meaty content removed to rush it out and placate the impatient.
NO expansion is complete at release .
THat is why they come in patches . If they were complete everyone would go into them at their starting level and would hit the final raid boss of the expac withing 6 to 9 months with nothing left to do for anywhere from 15 to 18 months. That is longer then the time HFC opened in WoD to the Legion pre-patch
Can we sue blizz for emotional distress?