I don't think it needed much confirming tbh. WoW expansions usually release roughly a year after their announcement. I've been fully expecting 10.0 to come out around April 2023 the whole time.
Any sooner would probably be a disaster anyway. As you said, they need time to get things right. I'm personally hoping they go the Legion route of giving us a long Alpha/Beta with a lot of community involvement and frequent dev updates. But maybe that's huffing too much copium.