Blizzcon 2015 - Ion Hazzikostas and the Warcraft team from Blizzard unveiled Legion - the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft. With the Beta slated to begin shortly after Blizzcon ended, there was much excitement among the community.
May 2016 - Alpha has been up for a few months, but only to a somewhat exclusive handful of 13/13 Mythic raiders, some top end PvPers, streamers and Friends and Family of Blizzard employees.
Today, Watcher finally announced that the Alpha will be taken down over the course of the next day, along with a complete character wipe. A new, large Beta invite wave will be going out to players, with plans for the official Legion Beta to begin at 2PM PST on Thursday, 12th of May. While there was no specific mention of the intended demographic of the Beta wave, Alpha is generally reserved for the higher end players, while Beta is a more inclusive and open test, from players of all skill levels and backgrounds.
Watcher also took the time to give some insight as to why Legion's Beta has come so much later than originally anticipated. Blizzard's bets tests have been "Beta tests" in the traditional sense - an iteration of the game that isn't feature complete, likely with bugs, missing or placeholder content, and a constant work in progress. However, the gaming industry has shifted the idea of a Beta test to being a "polished demo" in recent years. Blizzard decided to take this into consideration to keep in line with player expectations.
With Blizzard hoping to stress test the servers and having no future character wipes planned, they are hoping that this large, one-time mass playthrough of the Broken Isles will provide them with the data they need to help ensure it is a smooth launch experience, both in terms of server stability and quest fluidity. Alongside the introduction zone, players will have all classes and specialisations, with testing and ongoing tuning of raids, dungeons of all difficulties, quests, class order halls and artifact related content expected to occur throughout the life of the Beta.
All current Alpha players will have Beta access as is the norm for Warcraft, and any players wanting to get in on the Beta action should keep an eye out in their inboxes and Battle.net account to see if they've been given an invite!
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Ashoran- 05-10-2016vBulletin Message