World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

The veil between life and death is no more. With a single act of destruction, Sylvanas Windrunner has ripped open the way to the afterlife. Azeroth’s staunchest defenders have been dragged into all-consuming…

82 23 November 2020

Adventure Role-playing (RPG) Fantasy Open world

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is an adventure developed by Blizzard Entertainment, released 23 November 2020 on Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 18 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is an adventure game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released in 2020. It is available on Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

The premise, in the publisher's words

Sylvanas Windrunner, fallen leader of the Horde, has pierced the veil between Azeroth and the realm of the dead, setting in motion a series of events that threatens to upset the cosmic balance between life and death. World of Warcraft players entering the fabled Shadowlands will find the realms of the dead in upheaval. Under the normal order, departed souls were delivered to a realm appropriate to the lives they led, but now, all souls are being funneled into the Maw, where the most wicked are damned to suffer for eternity. As they seek to right the cycle and uncover the extent of Sylvanas' designs, players will forge bonds with the Covenants who hold domain over different planes within the…

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are fantasy and open world.

Where it sits in the Warcraft series

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is the 52nd of 69 entries we hold in the Warcraft series. The next entry was World of Warcraft: Shadowlands - Collector's Edition in 2020. Its critic score of 82 is almost exactly the series average of 80. The highest-rated entry is World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King at 97.

See all 69 Warcraft games in release order →

How it was received

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands holds a critic score of 82 out of 100. That places it above 76% of the 7,530 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2020 averaged 73, so it scored 9 points above the year average. Players rate it 70, 12 points lower than critics did — a gap worth knowing about before you buy.

What it launched against

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands launched on 23 November 2020, within three weeks of Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It reviewed better than 1 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

Know one? Send it in and we will test it →