They’re a fan community called Azeroth Championship Wrestling, and it’s the fantasy version of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling - tiny indie wrestling events, staffed by a passionate crew of wrestlers for a few loyal locals. In the hidden corners of Stormwind City, characters are gathering for secret wrestling matches. Some of Azeroth’s heroes are setting up underground fight rings in the canals of Stormwind or the halls of an ancient monastery, and it’s because they’re chasing an experience the current game can’t offer them.
Some players reject all of these in favor of a role-play take on the experience of a live fighting exhbition. And based on my hours with the alpha, I didn’t see anything that would make me second guess their decision.World of Warcraft offers a few different flavors of PvP: fast-paced arena battles, War Mode fighting out in the world, or battlegrounds. But Hazzikostas and the team seem confident that the game will be ready before the end of the year. Hazzikostas said that Dragonflight has had the same development time as any other World of Warcraft expansion, and was being worked on prior to Shadowlands’ launch.īlizzard could, of course, run into some potential game-delaying snags over the next few months that could affect its plans for Dragonflight - especially with each class moving to a new talent tree system and the new Dracthyr Evoker class. Blizzard intends to test these different zones in “rapid succession.” In what Hazzikostas estimates to be about a month and a half, the game will be ready to move into beta, where the expansion will likely be sewn together and playable in the proper order. However, when the alpha gets updated next week, Blizzard will rotate the Azure Span out to work on feedback and move a new zone that’s filled with quests in its place. In the build I played - which is the opening build of the alpha - only a single zone (The Azure Span) and questline were available. But unlike Shadowlands and other World of Warcraft expansions, all of Dragonflight’s zones are currently ready for testing. That’s a seven-month window, whereas Dragonflight will only have a five-month testing window if Blizzard releases it before Dec. Shadowlands alpha testing started in early April 2020 and eventually launched on Nov. Hazzikostas blames player skepticism on what would traditionally be a very short beta window. “We wouldn’t have announced were that not the case, particularly after the Shadowlands delay a couple of years ago.” “I think we’re feeling comfortable,” he said. Tackling the biggest community question first, Hazzikostas addressed community speculation that Dragonflight might be delayed into 2023. Through both of these experiences, we were able to answer a lot of questions the community has had. We’ve had an opportunity to test this alpha build already, in a preview event held by Blizzard, and were able to speak to game director Ion Hazzikostas in a group interview about Dragonflight. Players who are interested in testing Dragonflight before its release later this year can sign up on Blizzard’s website. But as is tradition, Blizzard will expand alpha access to more players as it adds new builds, and expand to a much larger group when Dragonflight hits beta in a few months. The alpha testing period for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight starts Thursday for a small group of lucky testers.