Call me crazy, but I like to experience the story as I experience the content.
IMO, Blizz should do a closed BETA. Make people who participate agree to a non-disclosure agreement and forbid people from streaming the BETA.
Also, encrypt as much of the story as possible.
Teasers are great. Spoilers suck!
Closed Betas don’t work anymore. It’s too easy for things to get leaked, as it’s very easy to hide your trail nowadays so NDAs may exist but rarely enforced as they have to figure out who did it with proof they did it.
And I’d rather things be released in a controlled environment than people releasing partially real information and then posting fake information meant to rile the community up.
Or do I need to remind you of the Dragonflight leaks, where people posted real information but put in their own wishlist which got people’s hopes up? Cause that’ll happen tenfold in a closed beta situation.
But yes, they need to encrypt important story stuff. I was really annoyed Pelagos becoming the Arbiter and SYlvanas’s Fate was datamined, personally.
Like, we know there’s an encrypted storyline around the Forsaken and Calia in 9.2.5, and I’m glad they’re keeping it encrypted.
Just stay off sites that give spoilers >.>
not just the sites that are a problem, there is also the fact that many WoW youtubers report on this stuff too, sometimes without clearly disclosing at the start that it’s spoilers so you think it’s news/an announcement you missed and
WHAM spoiler, all over you.
I did attempt to shield myself from spoilers in Shadowlands, but Just scrolling through Twitter or youtube thumbnails gave a lot of it away. People shouldn’t have to avoid all of the internets to experience the content as it was intended.
If you want to avoid spoilers for a game as openly datamined and talked about as WoW, you have to stay off the forums, YouTube (titles and thumbnails in recommended videos will spoil you), Reddit/Twitter/etc (notifications, suggestions, etc will hit you), and turn of ALL chat in-game…
for months on end, up to about a year given past gaps from announcement to release.
It’s not realistic for this game, because Blizzard uses an open beta and datamining as free advertising. They WANT people talking about it.
Then I guess you’ll just have to accept that it’ll happen. Not having a beta for WoW would end up with the game in a worse state then it usually is, and people datamine f&f alpha’s, so it’s not like an nda beta would do much
Then just don’t watch anyone playing it and don’t read spoilers. Why does everyone else have to have it the way you want it to be rather than you just avoiding spoilers? Why do you get to make demands?
Wanting to avoid spoilers is the best way to break the habit of mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds lmao.
Will never happen. It’s free publicity.
That’s easier said than done these days 
. Ads, emails from places like gamespot - it would mean staying away from all tech! I’m just messing, it can be difficult but if someone wants to avoid spoilers, they definitely can.
You touch a good point that has crossed my mind a few times.
Blizz uses the Beta testing process as a marketing tool, which I don’t feel is right. Market all you want, tease all you want… but to use the protect testing process as a means to market the product feels wrong to me because it taints the purpose of the beta process.
Would be a weird move for them to make after they’ve been going on about being more transparent and receptive towards the community.
If you don’t want to be spoiled avoid websites where the spoilers would be posted, it’s very much possible. You want an authentic day one experience, then by all means do so.
Other people wanna see what’s happening and provide feedback.
Feedback on systems and features is one thing.
It’s nearly impossible to avoid spoilers, aside from totally staying offline for the months prior to content release. It’s impossible because I feel like they encourage spoiling the content by giving away Beta keys to popular streamers. Spoilers are all over thumbnails and social media posts. They even give extra beta keys to streamers to give away as some sort of contest reward. Testing the beta has taken the place of the actual release in terms of the hype of experiencing the content, which is unfortunate because many people aren’t able or don’t want to experience the content in beta form.
Blizz could take some easy steps to mitigate the spoiling culture. That’s all I ask.
Then don’t pay attention to any of the news/leaks or whatever.
I go into story content blind just fine each expansion.