‘World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ To Start Alpha Test This Week

“World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” is entering its alpha phase this week, which means fans and gamers will be able to see new player experiences, zones and more details!

In Blizzard’s developer update, game director Ion Hazzikostas announced that they will be sending out invitations for a closed alpha test for Shadowlands later this week. Only a select few will be invited though, ranging from long-time active players to content creators and journalists.

According to Hazzikostas, alpha players will be able to dive into the new zone of Bastion. However, they are also planning to unroll new contents throughout the test cycle, such as the zone of Revendreth and Torghast, Tower of the Damned – which is their new “endless dungeon experience.”

“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,” Hazzikostas further said in the update.

Aside from the zones, the update also unveiled some changes to expect in Shadowlands, first of which are new spells and talents for players of all 12 classes.

Blizzard is also improving WoW’s quest interface, which should make it easy for players to identify where to go to complete an objective without opening the map frequently. Moreover, changes in PvP currency will be rolled out in the alpha launch, particularly on Conquest.

Of course, with the alpha test launching, it also means data mining galore – which should allow fans to get a glimpse of new features, items and more contents coming to the game. However, Hazzikostas warned in the update to take data mines “with a grain of salt.”

“As our community and fansites dig into the game files that are packaged with the client in the coming days, you’ll also doubtless find bits and pieces of data relating to endgame systems like Soulbinds, Covenant Sanctums, and crafted legendary items,” Hazzikostas explained.

“Much of those features remain a work-in-progress and, especially in an alpha setting, the game’s data contains numerous experiments and discarded ideas, so please take what you might find via data mining with a grain of salt.”

More information will certainly come out as the alpha and beta test roll out in the future. For now, those who want to possibly get in the future bet can sign up on the Blizzard website.