The "Epic Link" field in JIRA stopped displaying the Epics list in alphabetical order

Issue Summary

Some Customers are reporting that after the upgrade to Jira version 8.20.7 LTS and 8.22.0, users have noticed that the "Epic Link" field is no longer sorted alphabetically, but is now sorted by "id." In previous versions this seems to be sorted alphabetically. This has been reproduced internally. So far these were the versions detected, but it could be present in another recent Jira versions as well.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install or upgrade to Jira 8.20.7 or 8.22.0 or 8.13.20.

1. Create several issues as Epic issue type naming them with different names
2. Create an issue as any other issue type to be able to select an option in the Epic Link drop-down field

Expected Results

The Epic Link drop-down list is sorted in alphabetical order.

Actual Results

The Epic Link drop-down list is now sorted by id.

Workaround

Revert the improvement using a feature flag: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/jswserver-21026-jql-based-epic-picker-1116286666.html (be mindful of performance consequences).