Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion, which was originally due to launch on 27th October, will be delayed until some time "later this year".
Announcing the news in a statement on the World of Warcraft website, Blizzard explained that while it had made "significant progress iterating and polishing the core gameplay and features" of Shadowlands - the zones, campaign, level-up questing, and story are all "ready to share", it says - it felt additional work was still needed in other areas.
"As everything started coming together," the developer wrote, "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". It calls Shadowlands "one of the most intricate expansions we've yet created", and says the challenge of tuning the endgame "was compounded by the team having to work from home".