World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas, speaking to PC Gamer, tried to reassure fans who feel that the upcoming Dragonflight expansion is being released in a hurry.
According to him, the release in 2022 corresponds to the "historic precedent". It's not too early, and it's been two years since the last expansion. A reminder that Battle for Azeroth was released in 2018 and Shadowlands in 2020.
In addition, Hazzikostas points out that work on Dragonflight began even before the release of Shadowlands. "It had a full development cycle, standard for any WoW expansion in the past." But this time around, the developers deliberately decided to have a "more focused public testing period."
More targeted testing steps should help with feedback. In past alpha tests, there were weeks when nothing happened, and the players did not know what to do with themselves. Now, the developers have changed the approach to testing stages - within a month and a half they will add zones, other talents, trees, dungeons and everything else. And then move on to beta.
Interested players can already try their luck by signing up for the Dragonflight alpha test here. Not all users will receive an invitation.