Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Delayed into October

[ffronw]

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Delayed into October

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1409/1409610.jpgMonolith Productions has announced a two-month delay for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.

When Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was gameplay trailer [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/169645-Middle-Earth-Shadow-of-War-Announced-Shadow-of-Mordor-Sequel-August-Release] that has only heightened gamers' excitement for the upcoming title. Unfortunately, the wait for Shadow of War just got a little bit longer, as Monolith has delayed its release to October 10.

The news came in a post on the game's official forums [https://community.wbgames.com/t5/Official-Announcements/Middle-earth-Shadow-of-War-will-now-launch-worldwide-on-Oct-10/m-p/1533762#M16], which said,

"Middle-earth: Shadow of War expands gameplay in every dimension, including the massive open world, the story, the RPG systems, and personal player stories of the Nemesis System. As with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith is committed to delivering the highest quality experience. In order to do this, we have made the difficult decision to move our launch date to ensure that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will deliver on that promise.

We understand that it might be disappointing to have to wait a little longer for the release and are sorry for the delay, but we are working hard to make an amazing game. We're excited to show more at E3."

The move takes Shadow of War out of its position as the first big game of the holiday release season, and moves it back into October. That puts is just a week ahead of South Park: The Fractured But Whole, and likely alongside some other titles that will get release dates in the coming months. How that will affect its sales remains to be seen.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War will now release on October 10, 2017 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

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[Bob_McMillan]

I'm pretty worried about this game. It sounds really good, but things like the fortress invasions have me skeptical.

 

[thewatergamer]

Yeesh, that is not a good sign for the game, I'm glad that they are willing to delay it if it really needs it, but they don't seem willing to release a playable demo, which...with the delay would go along way for compensation (and I know AAA games don't do demos anymore, but first time for everything right?) Also, the last stream had some...features that were missing from the initial gameplay reveal, and when pushed on it the devs gave a very generic "just the order of events and the way the game evolves in development" which was also disturbing to me...they had better be very careful with how much they delay and hide because us gamers are really sick of games dicking us around, not to mention the micro-transactions in a singleplayer game

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Has August really become the beginning of the holiday release cycle? This madness must end!

This kinda sucks but I'd rather a game get delayed and come out finished and whole rather than a mess just to meet a date.

 

[TilMorrow]

I did think that August seemed a little too good to be true when the game seemed announced almost out of nowhere and we only had a very heavily scripted "gameplay" trailer to go off of but at least they admitted they needed a bit more time on it.

 

[shrekfan246]

Wasn't this game announced, like, yesterday?

Seriously, I can't believe I need to say this yet again, but publishers really just need to stop announcing speculative release dates in the first place.

 

[Spacewolf]

Yea I'm not surprised they announced it so close to release date while it was still in Alpha that it didn't seem like a realistic time scale, especially for something so ambitious. Abit more time in the oven will probably be beneficial in this case.

 

[Jadak]

Wasn't this game announced, like, yesterday?

Seriously, I can't believe I need to say this yet again, but publishers really just need to stop announcing speculative release dates in the first place.

To be fair, if the original release date was August then that's close enough they were probably feeling fairly confident about it until they apparently reevaluated things.

But yes, generally I agree. Take shit like Far Cry 5 in what, February 2018? Why announce that now?

 

[Petromir]

Yeesh, that is not a good sign for the game, I'm glad that they are willing to delay it if it really needs it, but they don't seem willing to release a playable demo, which...with the delay would go along way for compensation (and I know AAA games don't do demos anymore, but first time for everything right?) Also, the last stream had some...features that were missing from the initial gameplay reveal, and when pushed on it the devs gave a very generic "just the order of events and the way the game evolves in development" which was also disturbing to me...they had better be very careful with how much they delay and hide because us gamers are really sick of games dicking us around, not to mention the micro-transactions in a singleplayer game

Demos take time and resources to make, and if a games being delayed brcause it has bugs or other similar issues then releasing an early demo as compensaion seems suicidal, as the demo would therfore be a slice of a build known to be too buggy to launch... Especially true of openworld games which don't have the easily partioned off levels of some games.

Wasn't this game announced, like, yesterday?

Seriously, I can't believe I need to say this yet again, but publishers really just need to stop announcing speculative release dates in the first place.

To be fair, if the original release date was August then that's close enough they were probably feeling fairly confident about it until they apparently reevaluated things.

But yes, generally I agree. Take shit like Far Cry 5 in what, February 2018? Why announce that now?

Because people like to plan and budget for things? Also given the prevalnce of leaks both intentional and unintentional likelyhood is you're going to have to deal with people talking about things. Keeping the existance of a project completely secret is a fairly rare thing, formally announcing it allows you to talk about it and have some input into what people are saying about it, not doing so means ignoring or no commenting, or denying it, all of which can cause bad blood. (And FC 5s existance was leaked).



In all honesty theres no perfect answer here, early announces can lead to frustrations about delays and overhypeing issues. Late announces leave you more open to rumour mills, and also allow less in the way of marketing etc.

 

[Jadak]

Because people like to plan and budget for things? Also given the prevalnce of leaks both intentional and unintentional likelyhood is you're going to have to deal with people talking about things. Keeping the existance of a project completely secret is a fairly rare thing, formally announcing it allows you to talk about it and have some input into what people are saying about it, not doing so means ignoring or no commenting, or denying it, all of which can cause bad blood. (And FC 5s existance was leaked).


In all honesty theres no perfect answer here, early announces can lead to frustrations about delays and overhypeing issues. Late announces leave you more open to rumour mills, and also allow less in the way of marketing etc.

To be clear I wasn't saying they shouldn't announce the game now, whatever on that front. I was referring more to the announcement of a specific date. Sticking with Far Cry 5 as an example, they could just as well go with "early 2018" at this point, but instead it's the very specific "February 27, 2018".

Obviously some developers are better than others at sticking to schedules and Far Cry games have been formulaic enough I'd be surprised if they delay, but setting such a precise date so far out almost seems like a shot in the dark waiting to be moved later on.