Despite the fact that Blizzard has had to shift their staff to work from home during the last few months, Shadowlands is still on track to release this year.
During the Activision Blizzard Q1 2020 conference call, CEO Bobby Kotick said, “through our team’s dedication and incredibly hard work under very difficult circumstances, we delivered results significantly above our outlook for the first quarter.”
Kotick went on to talk about World of Warcraft and the upcoming expansion. “As of now, we are on track to deliver compelling new content, including the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion and the next premium Call of Duty release, both of which are planned for the second half of the year.”
Blizzard president J. Allen Brack later confirmed during the call that Shadowlands was on track for a Q4 2020 release date.
Brack also notes how the unexpected start to the year translated into a subscriber growth during the month of March. Many players returned to the modern World of Warcraft. This drove high pre-sales for Shadowlands. The momentum from March continues to grow and strengthen the active WoW community.
We still have no details as to when the Shadowlands pre-patch will be released. Shadows Rising, the prequel novel, is releasing on July 14th. For this reason, some fans are anticipating the pre-patch may drop sometime during the summer.
