Why Blizzard Fans Are Celebrating This Delay

The upcoming Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft was originally meant to launch on Oct. 27, 2020. However, Blizzard announced yesterday that the new expansion would be delayed until sometime later this year. While this means it will be a little while before WoW fans have a chance to explore the realm of the dead and battle the horrific Maldraxxus, the response to this delay has been somewhat unexpected. In fact, many fans appear to be pleased with Blizzard for announcing it.

While video game delays this year have been pretty disappointing across the board, it seems like most fans are actually pleased to learn that Blizzard will be taking its time in completing Shadowlands. As can be seen in the official Blizzard forums, many fans were concerned that the game was far from being finished. Even high profile streamers like Asmongold, who plays WoW on his Twitch channel regularly, have expressed that they'd rather Blizzard delay the game than release an unfinished product. Regarding Shadowlands, Asmongold recently tweeted, "if the game's not ready, delay the f**king game guys. You can only release it once, do it right."

Blizzard has decided to do just that. Also, as spotted by WoWHead, Blizzard has also offered refunds to gamers who had preordered the expansion. Rather than being up in arms over the delay and refund, however, most WoW players seemed to be very appreciative. Warcraft YouTuber BellularGaming tweeted, "The chances of Shadowlands shining have increased greatly." Meanwhile, Asmongold responded to the news with, "THANK YOU BLIZZARD."

Also, gamers won't be entirely without new content. Blizzard has announced that it will be releasing a pre-patch for the expansion on Oct. 13. This pre-patch "lays a lot of the groundwork" for Shadowlands, meaning that it should keep the hype from dying down as work continues on the full expansion.

Unfortunately, not all fans were quite so supportive of this delay. In fact, some disgruntled gamers actually took out their frustrations by launching a DDoS attack on Blizzard. According to Blizzard, this attack resulted in players being disconnected from the game's servers. Apparently these hackers were so mad about the Shadowlands delay that they decided no one should be able to pay the game. Luckily, it appears as though Blizzard was able to quickly resolve this issue. 

Shadowlands is a highly anticipated expansion for a number of reasons. One of the most exciting things about Shadowlands is that Blizzard has promised to fix the biggest problem with previous WoW expansions. Rather than dropping new players in cold, the expansion will allow players to learn much more of the game's lore before the story missions of Shadowlands become available. Not only will this keep newer players from being entirely confused by the intricate storyline, but it will also allow them to be at a higher level when they get there. Players will enter Shadowlands at level 50, all caught up on the story and ready to face the newest dangers in the world of Azeroth.

Hopefully this delay will indeed allow Blizzard the time to make Shadowlands live up to the hype. A new release date has not been set for it, but hopefully that will be announced in the near future.