But to answer the question of the late alpha, Dawson admits that while it’s coming at an “awkward” time compared to past alphas, it’s just because Blizzard is shifting how it handles public World of Warcraft testing pretty dramatically.
But Blizzard says this is due to a change in how it’s doing testing, and not a cause for concern.
World of Warcraft is a very heavily community datamined game, between its alphas, beta, and public test realm.
But this time, Blizzard wants to keep more secrets back from the public until it’s ready to fully release them.