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World of Warcraft Director on Early Access for The War Within: ‘Wish we had been clearer when we announced it’

In the new World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, you can get into the exciting new stuff faster by choosing a more expensive 90 dollar edition. This caused some disagreement when it was announced, but the game director Ion Hazzikostas says it won’t really affect how players progress compared to each other in the end.

The Epic Edition of World of Warcraft: The War Within comes with 30 days of game time, a companion pet, and two toys. The big deal here is that you’ll have assured access to the beta version and the opportunity to play the game three days ahead of everyone else.

Blizzard is allowing World of Warcraft players to purchase early access for the first time. Ion Hazzikostas, the game director, confirmed this choice in an interview with PC Gamer, aligning Blizzard with companies (such as there new boss Microsoft) that have already adopted a similar approach:

“It is a trend across the industry that we’re paying attention to. A number of games have done it. We’re looking to make sure that we’re maximizing the value of our expansion offerings, of these expansion bundles.”

The standard (base) version of The War Within is offering both the level boost and Dragonflight at the same cost as before.

Ion Hazziskostas World of Warcraft

“The immediate concern that we knew we needed to tackle, and I think frankly I wish we’d done a better job of explicitly spelling out when we announced it on the web page as part of the pre-sale process, are the restrictions that are associated with the early access,”

During the early-access period, players won’t have access to most end-game opportunities, according to Hazzikostas.

“The early access period is really pulling in that start by a few days. For these people to get a head start on leveling, aimed more at a lot of players who may not have as much free time and not have the ability to take time off work, and therefore miss out on that first week of running Mythic Zero [dungeons], or running max level dungeons with their friends and their guild mates who are able to jump in.”

Be sure to check out the full interview with PC Gamer.