NA 330.792 
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‘As many have noticed, this is the first period of time since Dragonflight launched that we haven’t had an active PTR and we understand that it is creating some curiosity.’
Even in Classic Season of Discovery, Data Miners have caused Game developers to take a stance against it to make sure players will receive a fresh, un-spoilered experience. Josh Greenfield, Senior Producer on WoW Classic, shared his thoughts on Twitter regarding Datamining of Phase 2 Season of Discovery.
The reason for Season of Discovery to still appear on the PTR is simple and logic:
‘Having no Era PTR for the patch at all compounds this further because then we can’t catch systemic problems such as server issues and crashes that will affect all versions of vanilla classic, and we run the risk of making the launch unstable for many players.’
This makes sense, and especially Wowhead as the primary source of spoilers and data mining are taking measures to prevent players from accidental spoilers.
After the Classic WoW developers announcing that a PTR is important to guarantee stability, just a few days later Holly Longdale announces the opposite for Dragonflight.
That means there will be no PTR (Public Test Realm) for a portion of the next content update as we have traditionally done. What we can say is that it will be coming in March. A finer point, but the update will also include everything that’s needed for Dragonflight Season 4 but will be hidden. Around (after) the launch of the update we will make Season 4 available for testing on a 10.2.6 PTR before it goes live.
Why are we doing this? We like the idea of releasing content that has some surprises and isn’t datamined or revealed in advance. 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. This is risky experiment and could be a bit bumpy, though we are doing everything we can to ensure success.
For us atleast, and we admit that we are very ungenerous, this rather seems like a lack of developers working still on Dragonflight, especially after the major layoffs recently. Most resources are probably pulled to The War Within, which also receive more News this week.
The announced Beta cycle for War Within also seems rather low in comparison to previous expansions, seeming that Blizzard tries to “rush” the expansion, which is not inherently bad, but Dragonflight might sees less valuable content.
Patch 10.2.5, while it seemed fine for lore and story, was lacking massive content. Remember Patch 10.0.5, with the major reworks on Classes? Or Patch 10.0.7 which released a whole new zone and new solo-player content, even if it was just a minor patch?
