World of Warcraft Leads Explain How Faster Release Cadence Helps Development Team Avoid 'Heroics'

ign.com:

World of Warcraft’s community has been rather high on the latest expansion, Dragonflight, for a number of reasons. Among them is the general feeling that – contrary to the previous expansion, Shadowlands – there’s always plenty to do. And yet, World of Warcraft leads say that while the release cadence is faster than ever, shifts in how they pace and announce these updates are helping the team avoid crunching to make them happen.

Speaking to IGN, game director Ion Hazzikostas says that the team heard the “tremendous amount” of feedback about content drought in Shadowlands, and began work to retool its public test realm (PTR) so the company could have two PTR builds running at the same time. World of Warcraft’s public test realm is essentially a separate version of the game that allows the public to test game updates before they’re released in the official version of WoW. And having two up at once means the team can run public testing for multiple updates at once, allowing the team more time and flexibility as they tweak new features for official release.

“It was something we actually didn't have the technical ability to do before,” Hazzikostas explains. “And in accomplishing that, I think we also have given the team a lot of flexibility, which is actually a strength. It can sound like this is a grueling pace that we're setting, but in a lot of ways, done right, I think it actually gives the team more freedom.”

As a specific example, Hazzikostas offers the just-released new cross-faction guild play feature, which debuted in patch 10.1. He says the original plan was to have it out in 10.0.7, but the team realized it was too buggy and would require “heroics” to make happen. In the past, Hazzikostas says, pushing a feature like