We’re heading towards World of Warcraft Dragonflight Season 4 this year, and a new patch is about to drop. In a slight change of plan, Blizzard won’t be placing the latest additions to Azeroth on the Public Test Realm, in an attempt to start surprising players a little bit more.
There’s a lot going on in World of Warcraft right now. One of the biggest and best MMORPGs, the next couple of months have patch 10.2.6 arriving for Dragonflight, and two big updates on WoW Classic in the form of Season of Discovery Phase 2 and the Self-Found mode in Hardcore.
If you’ve been playing recently, you might’ve noticed that nothing from Dragonflight is currently on the PTR, a rare occurrence for such a busy fantasy game. As Holly Longdale, producer on Dragonflight, explains, the team has decided to disrupt the typical rollout.
“We like the idea of releasing content that has some surprises and isn’t datamined or revealed in advance,” she states. “We also like to see the joy the community gets out of uncovering it all together as they all jump in to play. We look forward to seeing if the community likes this type of surprise and look forward to hearing your feedback.”
Longdale notes this is “risky”, and certainly I can imagine some longtime players probably dislike not having early access. But World of Warcraft hasn’t survived 20 years (!!!) without evolving, and that requires looking at how to improve and change. The cycle of PTR to release has been running for a long time now, so maybe we’re due a change.
Dragonflight patch 10.2.6 will come in March, and everyone will experience it together. Whether that’s for good or ill, we can only wait and see! Have a read of our guides to the best WoW addons and the WoW Dragonflight tier list to stay up to speed on the current happenings.
Additionally, make sure to follow us on Google News where you’ll see a variety of daily PC gaming news, guides, and reviews, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.