World of Warcraft: Shadowlands delayed to later this year, pre-patch coming October 13

Announced earlier this afternoon via the World of Warcraft twitter account and site blog post, Blizzard has released a statement declaring that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will no longer launch on its original October 27 release date. Instead, the eighth expansion for the long-running PC MMO will launch on an as-of-now unspecified date later this year.

In the statement made by Executive Producer John Hight, the Blizzard boss makes it clear that both player testing and complications due to remote work have contributed to needing a little extra time to get everything ready for launch. 

However, as everything started coming together and we’ve been listening to and building upon your feedback, 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. Shadowlands is one of the most intricate expansions we’ve yet created, and while we’ve made great progress, the challenge of tuning the endgame was compounded by the team having to work from home.

Despite the delay for the expansion proper, the statement does also state that a pre-patch laying a lot of fundamental groundwork for the expansion will launch on October 13, and will include revamped leveling system and customization options. A pre-launch event will also take place ahead of the expansions eventual release.