Blizzard confirmed today that it plans to move forward with more testing of World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, Shadowlands, with a beta starting next week.
In a livestream on YouTube and Twitch, game director Ion Hazzikostas recapped some of the things that the team has learned from beta testing and announced the developer’s intentions to move into a beta phase.
While moving from alpha to beta still means that the game is in testing, Hazzikostas was careful to explain exactly what the transition meant in regard to how far along the game has come.
Essentially, the game should have close to full playability.
“There shouldn’t be missing pieces or giant missing pieces that aren’t there,” he said.
Thus far in alpha testing, only very specific zones and game modes have been playable. But in the upcoming beta, basically everything will be available for players to test.
Bulleting out each of the big takeaways from the beta announcement, Hazzikostas noted that “much work remains” for the game but all features will be there for players and they’ll be able to play the game all the way to level 60, the game’s new max level.
Additionally, players will finally have access to some of the game’s endgame content and many more players will be invited to play the beta.
Reiterating intentions to have the game released before the end of the year, the upcoming beta is being launched just more than three months following the release of the game’s Alpha that went live on April 9.
