Whar does Alpha mean?

[Deletedyou]

Ok this is really dumb but what does the word alpha mean when its being used like this Alpha Outland

[Dante]

Video game development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia read from "Milestones"

[Nyarly]

I should be in bed but..
From what i learned during my lessons (i study game & level design), there are multiples milestones (builds) that are produced during the development of a video game.
The first one is the game concept, the thing you show to the editoor in order to demonstrate what the game will be about and what you can achieve.
Then comes the prototype which is a more advanced build but still in the early phase of production, you don't have much but it's starting to looks like the final game.
After that is the alpha which includes all the final content and half the assets.
Then is the beta with all the content and all the assets (and bugs like on the previous versions).
The last milestone is the release candidate which should be what you're going to sell.

Blizzard kinda makes its own rules about that but it more or less still applies. F&f means it's for the friends and family of the development team.

When we use the term alpha, it means it's from an alpha build or that it's just an early version of the thing.
There are three "old outlands" :
- One in deadmines which is a very early small test of outlands, kinda like a game concept
- One in the sea (was there for a bit in 1.12.1) which is what you could call a prototype of outlands
- One taken from tbc f&f client which is the real alpha of outlands