If the eyes of many World of Warcraft players are currently riveted on Wrath of the Lich King Classic since they hope for news by this summer, a large part has not forgotten the Dragonflight extension. And fortunately ! And that's pretty good, since a news that few hoped for a long time has mysteriously been secretly deployed: the Alpha!
Dragonflight Alpha: The first signs of an imminent announcement?
Let's make it clear from the outset: it is the deployment of the Alpha internally that was "secretly" unveiled this Tuesday, June 8, 2022 in what is called the "Blizzard catalog", the famous "CDN" ( Content Delivery Network). This concretely means that at best the internal test phase has begun (or is about to begin) and that only Blizzard employees and their relatives have access to the beginnings of the ninth extension of WoW. Neither the press, nor the influencers and even less the common players can therefore to date get their hands on it. What's more, the few people in the mode who can "play" it undoubtedly only have access to micro-features of the expansion, the first draft of the new talent trees for example. No raids, probably no dungeons, and probably not even more than a level or two beyond 60!
Now that the introductions are done and you now know what it's all about, what does this mean for us mere mortals? Well... Officially, not much to be honest. But if we dig a little bit into the past, we discover for example that this famous internal Alpha was added to the "catalogue" on February 20, 2020 (it should be noted that this makes a formidable palindrome: 02/20/2020 ) to finally be deployed to a handful of elected officials (press, influencers) on April 9 of the same year, around a month and a half later.
Here are the deployment dates of the other Alphas and Betas (the most recent):
If we believe what we mentioned previously about the Alpha of Shadowlands, we can imagine an official deployment of the Alpha of Dragonflight around mid-July 2022 at the latest, with possibly even an announcement planned soon to keep us informed that "all is well, the Alpha is coming", during the Summer Game Fest for example. But this would again only concern a handful of elected officials in the world, mainly the press and influencers, and ordinary players would probably have to wait for the opening of the Closed Beta to access part of the game.
This Beta, precisely, could see the light of day quite late in the year. Although we now know that Blizzard wants to collect as much player feedback as possible in order to offer the best expansion possible, we also know that Wrath of the Lich King Classic is lurking nearby and it could be counterproductive to offer a Beta. in full period supposedly dedicated to Classic. Thus, it is relatively easy to imagine that the opening of the Closed Beta could take place during the fall of 2022, around the end of September, or even the beginning of October.
All of this, of course, remains pure speculation based on the assumption that the Wrath of the Lich King Classic expansion would be scheduled for the end of the summer, as we mentioned in a previous article, and that Blizzard would take into account the great interest of many "Retail" players towards Classic and vice versa. These two elements are absolutely not confirmed, just as nothing obliges Blizzard to publish its Alpha and its Closed Beta within the same deadlines as those of the previous extensions.
In the meantime, let's take a look at Summer Game Fest and see if Blizzard intends to make one (or more) announcements there. Otherwise, we will have to be patient. But obviously, it's progressing... Slowly, certainly, but surely!
This new patch was supposed to continue the shift started on 12.10. If for the moment the balance of League of Legends does not seem too upset, some characters seem to be doing well.
