Is WoW: Shadowlands delayed due to the Corona crisis? Game Director Ion Hazzikostas gives a clear statement on this.
When World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was presented at BlizzCon 2019, the excitement among fans was high. Many are looking forward to the new expansion, which was supposed to be released in 2020.
But from March onwards, the Corona crisis began to take the world in its grip. More and more companies switched to remote work, and productivity inevitably decreased – Blizzard even distributed care packages to employees. Many films and games have been postponed.
But does this also apply to World of Warcraft: Shadowlands? That concern is shared by many fans.
We at MeinMMO had also speculated that the Corona crisis was the perfect excuse to delay Shadowlands a bit further.
What does the Game Director say? In an interview with Zoltan, the Game Director spoke a few days ago about the release plans. The questioner wanted to know whether the entire Covid-19 situation would cause Blizzard to miss the release schedule.
However, Hazzikostas denied that. The timeline was already quite loose at BlizzCon, which is why they had only specified 2020. That hasn’t changed. When asked directly if Shadowlands is still planned for 2020, Hazzikostas responded with a clear “Yes”.
This is how Blizzard has dealt with the crisis: According to Hazzikostas, the Corona crisis has only slightly limited the developer team’s capabilities for World of Warcraft. Although there was a week of adjustment that was a change for everyone, things went well thereafter.
This is also reflected in the fact that development is currently progressing well, with a new alpha version being deployed weekly, bringing new content and innovations from Shadowlands. Currently, a lot of feedback is being collected for the Tower Torghast and the first quest areas.
So, despite the Corona circumstances, things currently look good for a release still in 2020.
Are you looking forward to being able to play Shadowlands this year? Or would you prefer to wait a bit longer if the product is then better?
