Earlier today, we noted fresh changes in World of Warcraft’s launcher that indicated Shadowlands’ testing was imminent, and this afternoon, Blizzard has confirmed it.
“Later this week, we will send out our first round of invitations to a closed alpha test for Shadowlands,” the studio writes.
“This first batch of invitations will mainly go out to long-time WoW players with active accounts in good standing, as well as Blizzard friends and family, along with a limited number of content creators and journalists. This initial wave represents only a small fraction of the pool of testers that will ultimately gain access to the test in the coming months—if you’re interested in helping make Shadowlands better, sign up using the Beta Opt-In link on the Shadowlands home page. Later on, as we engage in focused PvP and raid testing, we’ll also do some targeted invite waves that prioritize players with extensive experience or expertise in those parts of the game.”
The first leg of the alpha will test the “full level-up experience in the zone of Bastion” along with the Necrotic Wake dungeon, the new player experience on the Alliance side, the changes to spellbooks, talents, resources, the quest UI, and PvP currencies. “[L]ater in April we hope to offer the zone of Revendreth, as well as a look at Torghast, Tower of the Damned, our endless dungeon experience,” the team writes.
And if you’re looking for a launch date? It’s not in this post. “Once everything has been released into the test environment, we’ll officially move into a beta phase, wiping all characters and kicking off a larger round of invites for an end-to-end test of the entire Shadowlands experience,” says Blizz.
The team has been hard at work bringing Shadowlands to reality.
Check out the latest Developer Update for more info, including details on the closed alpha test starting later this week.
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— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) April 6, 2020
