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Blizzard has launched the alpha test for its upcoming expansion World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Players who wish to jump in (or jump on) can do so by opting in as a tester.
The first phase of the alpha focusses on one of the four new areas, Azure Span. Naturally, the alpha introduces your ability to ride dragons. As the name implies, that is sort of the big draw here.
Some players who have are taking part in the alpha test have published videos of the game in action. Check out one such video below, from PlatinumWow (via VGC):
Speaking to IGN, Blizzard production director Patrick Dawson said that it wouldn’t be a very long alpha:
“In prior alphas . . . we’d have a two, two-and-a-half-month-long process where different things came online in a haphazard and less structured way.
“Maybe you’d get one zone, then have to wait two to three weeks, maybe even longer for the next zone. Systems wouldn’t come on at a consistent rate, that kind of stuff.
“But . . . one of the models we liked was how we do things like raid testing. What we do is we open up a boss for people to focus on, everybody plays that boss, we get great, focused feedback on that, and then we shut it down and move onto the next boss.
“Likewise, we looked at our alpha strategy, and we said, ‘How can we get that type of feedback out of an alpha?’ And the answer was, instead of having this long alpha, let’s compress it a bit and focus the feedback on specific things each and every week.”
Blizzard has confirmed that the new expansion will be out this year. But no specific launch window was given.
