Blizzard president J. Allen Brack said in the company’s Q1 earnings call earlier this week that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is still on track to release at the end of the year.
While Blizzard’s development team has been forced to transition to working from home due to COVID-19, Brack added that the developers are doing a “really good job” at shifting to the new methods of workflow.
This past month, Blizzard opened up the closed alpha for Shadowlands. Following a bit of testing, developers like Ion Hazzikostas have spent some time answers questions from select streamers on Twitch.
In an interview a few weeks ago, Hazzikostas gave a similar confirmation to that of Brack’s. Talking to a pair of French WoW streamers, he said the company still planned to have Shadowlands out by the end of the year.
In addition to telling reporters that Shadowlands should still be coming in November or December, Brack added that Blizzard is seeing “strong pre-sales” for the game, with WoW’s Western subscriber base growing in March.
Despite being consistent about Blizzard’s release plans, Brack gave no indications about what the next step is for the WoW development team or when those steps will take place.
The Shadowlands alpha went live on April 9. Since then, there have been a few additions and changes to the tested content. But there’s no word yet on when players can expect to see closed or open beta testing begin.
