Shadowlands Season 4 To Have Shorter Runtime - Release Date Speculation

In Blizzard's post on raid reward experiments in Shadowlands Season 4, a seemingly innocuous comment mentions that the bonus season will have a shorter runtime than previous seasons.

It’s worth noting that the systems we’ll be talking about today are designed around specific goals to fit with Season 4’s shorter runtime — it’s very possible that even if they’re received well, they may undergo significant iteration to match the cadence & intended progression of a normal season of content.

Not a whole lot of context is given, so this is all still speculation, but we can take the runtimes of previous Seasons as a rough guide for what that could mean for Season 4.

Season 1 ran for just under 7 months, beginning on December 8th, 2020. Season 2 went on for just under 8 months, starting on July 6th, 2021. Season 3 been going for 2 months so far, since March 1, 2022.

This would make it seem as though Season 3 will probably last another 5 months, though with the PTR already so far along, its seems very likely that 9.2.5 will launch well ahead of its end date. Given that the bonus season doesn't actually release with a whole lot of brand new content or a new raid tier, instead remastering previous Shadowlands raids on a Fated three-week cycle, it would stand to reason that Season 4 won't be far behind and Season 3 could end early as a result, though Blizzards initial Season 4 announcement specified that it would come after the current season had run for a «typical duration.»

Now that Season 3 is well underway and players are pursuing all of the seasonal aspects of Mythic+ and competitive PvP, we’d like you to join us in considering what might come afterward. Later this year, after the current season has run for a typical Read more on wowhead.com