Blizzard released the World of Warcraft Dragonflight 2024 roadmap in December, leaving players wondering about the mysterious Patch 10.2.6. Almost two months later, they still don’t know anything about the update other than it won’t be available for testing before launch.
On Feb. 6, the executive producer and vice president of WoW, Holly Longdale, published a post on the official WoW site that outlines some details about Patch 10.2.6. This patch will be a “unique event inspired by past musings from the community” but won’t be available for testing on the PTR realms.
It should be available to all players with an active subscription, including Classic and Dragonflight. Even though Longdale didn’t reveal an official release date, the patch will likely release in March 2024.
On top of that, the update will include details surrounding Dragonflight season four, but you won’t be able to access it. As soon as Patch 10.2.6 releases, you can hop on the PTR realms and test out the final season of the expansion.
The idea behind this is to keep content fresh and surprising. This was the case with Season of Discovery, Blizzard’s new take on WoW Classic.
Longdale explained Blizzard’s rationale behind this decision. “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,” she wrote. “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.”
Retail WoW and Classic normally have entirely different approaches and rarely intertwine. This is one of the rare cases where Blizzard is taking inspiration from Season of Discovery.
