WoW

Starting with the leadup to Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard has released expansion tie-in comics online to help fill in the gaps of story or lore for the forthcoming title (and in one famous example, showing us the future).

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands introduces us, as players, to an entirely new method of zone layout that's more reminiscent of our time on Argus during Legion than anything we've encountered previously.

Okay, so in a move that sure surprised me, Blizzard has decided to push back the release date on Shadowlands, and has announced the release date for the pre-patch to be October 13.

The good news is, we now know the date of the 9.0.1 pre-patch leading up to World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion -- October 13.

Blizzard has announced that the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion will be delayed to later this year, while the pre-patch will arrive October 13th.

The launch of Shadowlands grows ever closer, and with it comes all kinds of improvements, like a level squish, new zones, and class changes.

It's time to throw wide the gates of the first raid in Shadowlands, Castle Nathria.

The end of Battle for Azeroth is just around the corner.

We're a couple days past "1 month to Shadowlands!" at this point and also very nearly in "Shadowlands comes out this month!" territory -- and yet, we still don't have a pre-expansion patch.

Getting ready for all the changes that happen when a new expansion pre-patch drops is a time-honored tradition in World of Warcraft, and it's one I've been through a few times now.