Why was the Hextech Crafting Q&A 2 months before the system actually launched?

When implementing new systems, there's a lot of risk involved - there is a lot of potential for things to break or work improperly (i.e. distributing the wrong content). By allowing the new feature to sit on PBE for several patches, the team was able to monitor and resolve issues, which meant a cleaner release. That said, there are a few kinks to work out! ^-^

We do this with a lot of larger projects, such as SRU and DJ Sona. We'd rather the content break on the PBE (a much smaller community, and all the content is free), as opposed to needing hotfixes and making content players paid for unable to be used.