5.0.1 PTR and Mists of Pandaria Beta

[phantom325]

We will soon begin public testing of patch 5.0.1 of World of Warcraft, a patch that will precede the Mists of Pandaria release, and includes many features and functions that are new to the game.

We encourage all players who wish to test patch 5.0.1 with us to take careful note of the following:

It will not be possible to access the 5.0.1 PTR realms with a game account that accesses the Mists of Pandaria Beta.
If a game account has been flagged with a Mists of Pandaria Beta license, it can only be used to enter Beta realms.
This limitation is on each World of Warcraft license, and is not Battle.net account-based.
While testing 5.0.1, players will not be able to access zones or content that is a part of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.
Thank you for your continued support of our testing and tuning process. We look forward to seeing you in-game.

Source: Access to 5.0.1 PTR and Mists of Pandaria Bet - Forums - World of Warcraft

Now, Blizzard is famous for saying "soon", and taking a long time, but hopefully it is right around the corner!
Are you excited for this?
Will you be playing the PTR?

As always, I love to hear your comments. Until next time,
-phantom325

[Phantons]

It isn't too far away. When 4.0.1 hit the live servers (October 10(PTR Realms on September 12) 2010), Cataclysm was out in under 2 months (December 7). Based off of that, not previous expansions, I would guess about 3 months from now, or so, being an October release date. Keep in mind though, that a while ago they said that they were trying to develop this expansion faster than the previous ones. If they hold true to that, I would expect a possible September release date.

[Laera]

Just pushing this to the top again as a reminder for those who want a tiny headstart. You can already download the PTR patch! Start the Launcher and it auto-downloads. There are no servers up yet, but the loading screen already is the MOP one and you don't need to download it all later!
(Disclaimer: I think that there will be some new things to download when the PTR servers actually launch, so don't think you're completely good to go)