After nearly a year of waiting, MMO fans finally know the exact date when World of Warcraft Shadowlands will be released. This means that fans can start calling off work and planning their 50-60 leveling plan for late October. Although it won’t be until then that players start truly exploring the new content, aligning with a Covenant, and making their way towards the new endgame, a Shadowlands pre-patch will arrive ahead of the launch to set the stage for the new content both narratively and in terms of gameplay and features.
The Shadowlands pre-patch has a ton of heavy lifting to do by implementing the level squish, adding new character customizations, and transitioning the narrative away from the events of Battle for Azeroth and towards the Shadowlands. It has become tradition for the pre-patch to do much of the heavy lifting when a new expansion is on the horizon and this has helped make launch day much smoother and saved players from long installs and server issues as they log in to play on the actual expansion release date. Despite World of Warcraft announcing the expansion release date last week, the exact date of patch 9.0.0 still remains a mystery.
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That said, players have a long history with WoW expansions at this point and it isn’t too difficult to make some educated guesses about when the big patch is going to arrive. The main factor to consider is that in recent expansions players have have roughly one month between the pre-patch content and the actual expansion release date. With a release in the final days of October, this means that the most likely day for a pre-patch launch would be September 22 or September 28. That isn’t a lot of time, which means that players who still have BfA content that they want to finish up should get to work within these next three weeks.
It seems very likely that Blizzard will give at least a one to two week heads up about the pre-patch release date once we are a bit closer. In the meantime, players should continue trying to complete anything pressing that may change or go away when the new content rolls out. Now would also be the best time to finish leveling any characters who players want to see at level 50 after the level squish takes place. Getting to 120 is easier than ever right now thanks to the 100% experience bonus that is in place until Shadowlands releases. Players who are are trying to level up through the final push should concentrate on completing Invasions every time they are available for the fast leveling option.
Be sure to check back in the coming weeks as more details about Shadowlands emerge. Until then, For the Horde!
World of Warcraft is available now for PC. At this point, World of Warcraft Shadowlands releases on October 26 or 27 (depending on time zone) for PC.
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