World Of Warcraft Legion May Arrive As Late As Fall 2016

As we wait with bated breath for the Legion panel tomorrow at Blizzcon, an image is circulating that hints at a painfully late release date for World of Warcraft: Legion, the next expansion. The image has not been fully confirmed by Blizzard yet, and seems to be a background image taken from battle.net being shared around on reddit. It gives several details about Legion’s release, including a level 100 character boost with purchase of Legion ($49.99), early access to the Demon Hunter class, and a Deluxe Edition ($69.99) that includes an exclusive pet and mount.

Down in the tiny, fine print, you can see “Expected game release on or before September 21st, 2016”. To put that date in perspective, that’s 15 months after the last tier of raid content for Warlords of Draenor would have gone live, making the final raid tier two months longer than the oft-complained about conclusion to Mists of Pandaria. If September 21st were a hard and fast release date, Blizzard is staring down the barrel of some seriously low subscription numbers.

But that’s probably not the case. Warlords of Draenor had a similar occurrence of “on or before” that released 40 days before the given date. It is much more likely that the September date merely marks an end to Q3, and we may see Legion as early as June or July of 2016. Furthermore, this is still just a leaked image that may not even be fully accurate, though this particular one seems to be sitting in the realm of “pretty likely” as it’s hosted directly on battle.net, Blizzard’s website. We’ll just have to wait to hear more from Blizzard tomorrow during the dedicated panel, and hope they don’t disappoint. Fans of WoW are hungry for more content, and Blizzard’s under a lot of pressure to deliver.