Beta

Betas (and alphas) represents the earliest opportunity for players outside the development team and a handful of selected "friends and family" to experience a game or expansion. This often makes betas a very exciting time to be playing a game, with testers able to experience new features and explore new content months ahead of other players. As well as providing an advanced preview of the game as it will be released, betas typically see extensive changes and developments, often including repeated iterations of major features, reworking and remodeling of zones and instances, and myriad tweaks and adjustments to player abilities. New abilities may be introduced, found wanting, and removed, without ever seeing release; while others may see a striking range of possible implementations before a final model is settled upon. The developers often use betas to try out outlandish new ideas, often expressly warning testers that the changes may well be bad ones.

Access to features and content within a beta typically expands from a very limited starting point, until full (or nearly full) access to all planned features is available. For example, expansion betas usually start with players only able to access the starting zone/s for the new expansion, with further zones slowly added over weeks or months. Major features and systems are sometimes only added late in the beta, and more trivial aspects such as terrain detailing and critter spawning often come only near the end of the beta. For these reasons, testers are often reminded for much of the beta that the full picture has not yet been revealed, both in terms of tweaks to existing features and the addition of entirely new ones, with testers and indeed players without access to the beta, reading reports on its development, otherwise wont to get an inaccurate picture of the state of the expansion. Nonetheless, feedback is often essential from testers long before balancing and adjustments have concluded.

Beta testers also get the opportunity to witness some interesting and unintended bugs, including minor graphical glitches, broken events, quest lines, and instances, and more extensive problems such as broken systems and server crashes. Some, such as terrain glitches causing player ghosts to spawn underneath graveyards (thereby trapping characters without hope of escape) may cause annoyance to all, while others, such as a broken ability allowing hunters to summon dozens of pets at once, may be gleefully exploited by many testers. Bugs may be frustrating, entertaining, or both, and often provide some of the most memorable moments of any beta test.

Stages

• A Warcraft game or World of Warcraft expansion typically starts in its early alpha phase where the game is available only to the development team.
• The next stage, alpha, is when the game will open to friends and family.
• Once the game enters its beta phase is when the game opens to a more broader player base to help test features and content. This would be the final stage until the game enters the "release candidate" stage and will shortly be released to retail.

Beta access

The most common form of beta access is receiving a beta invitation from Blizzard Entertainment. Other forms include:

• receiving a key from content creators or fansite giveaways
• conventions possibly providing access such as BlizzCon
• limited time offers guaranteeing access (Annual Pass)

Some games will include "beta access" during its pre-order period, allowing those who pre-ordered the game to participate in the beta. The first expansion to offer this was The War Within. For BlizzCon 2019, attendees and Virtual Ticket holders were provided beta access to Warcraft III: Reforged.

Timeline

	Game/Expansion	Alpha	Beta	Notes
1	World of Warcraft		Before March 2004 (start)	See its section
3	The Burning Crusade		October 12, 2006 (start)	See its section
4	Wrath of the Lich King		July 3, 2008 (opt-ins) July 17, 2008 (start)	See its section
5	Cataclysm		June 30, 2010 (start) November 22, 2010 (end)
6	Mists of Pandaria		March 20, 2012 (opt-ins) March 21, 2012 (start)	Players who bought the Annual Pass were guaranteed access to the beta. Editors of Warcraft Wiki had a chance to win a beta key.
7	Warlords of Draenor	April 3, 2014 (start)	June 27, 2014 (start)	See its section
8	Legion	November 23, 2015 (start)	May 9, 2016 (start)
9	Battle for Azeroth	February 7, 2018 (start) April 24, 2018 (end)	April 24, 2018 (start)
10	Shadowlands	April 6, 2020 (announce) April 8, 2020 (start)	July 8, 2020 (announce) July 15, 2020 (start)	See its section
11	Dragonflight	July 14, 2022 (start)	September 1, 2022 (start)	See its section
12	The War Within	April 18, 2024 (start)	April 15, 2024 (announce)	The Epic Edition provided beta access. See The War Within beta timeline.

Classics

	Game/Expansion	Closed Beta	Open Beta	Notes
1	World of Warcraft: Classic	May 14, 2019 (announce) May 15, 2019 (start) July 12, 2019 (end)
3	Burning Crusade Classic	March 23, 2021 (announce, start)
1	Classic: Season of Mastery		September 30, 2021 (announce) October 5, 2021 (start)
4	Wrath of the Lich King Classic	June 22, 2022 (announce, start)
5	Cataclysm Classic	December 19, 2023 (announce, opt-ins) March 7, 2024 (start)		Originally planned for Winter/Spring 2024.

Others

	Game/Expansion	Closed Beta	Open Beta	Notes
	Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos	February 7, 2002 (start) June 24, 2002 (end)		Initial wave of approximately 5,000 players. Battle.net beta disc was sent out to these testers. (See gallery)
	Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne	February 13, 2003 (announce) February 14, 2003 (start)		10,000 participants in the initial phase.
5	Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft	August 16, 2013 (start)	January 21, 2014 (start)
	Warcraft III: Reforged (Multiplayer beta)	October 29, 2019 (announce, start)		See its section
5	Warcraft Arclight Rumble	October 17, 2022 (start)

World of Warcraft

This section concerns content related to the original World of Warcraft.

Starting before March 2004, Blizzard started signing up Closed Beta Test testers from an unknown pool of people using an undisclosed method of selection. The Closed Beta Trial ran for about 7 months ending in more widely available stress test and then an open beta before final release around the end of November 2004.

The "Closed Beta" was the first phase of Blizzard's stress test. There were three servers and virtually no lag existed. This closed beta was also known as the "First Stress Test". The servers were split up into the following:

1. PvE Server (Original Closed Beta Server)
2. PvP Server (Added near the end of Closed Beta)
3. Beta Server 1
4. Beta Server 2 (PvE)

During the closed beta, content was delivered in various "pushes," beginning with the Human push. This was followed by Dwarf, Undead, Night Elf, Horde (orcs, trolls and tauren) and then the open beta. During most pushes, only the newest push's content was available -- human characters were unavailable, for instance, while players were testing the undead character experience.

The Burning Crusade

This section concerns content related to The Burning Crusade.

Starting late September 2006, Blizzard started signing up Closed Beta Test testers for the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, from different playing areas. The plan was to introduce additional players to the beta test in subsequent waves, thus people that didn't make it in the starting lineup still had a chance at a Burning Crusade beta spot prior to launch.

The Closed Beta started on 12 October 2006. They were split into two servers: Hellfire (PvE) and Blade's Edge (PvP).

Wrath of the Lich King

This section concerns content related to Wrath of the Lich King.

Opt-ins for the public beta began on 3 July 2008; the beta began 17 July 2008.

Beta keys were given out to BlizzCon 2007 and Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 attendees and Blizzard also gave out Beta keys to various organizations (fansites, etc.) for promotional reasons. Warcraft Wiki hosted the WoWlympics contest with some beta keys available.

Warlords of Draenor

This section concerns content related to Warlords of Draenor.

Main article: Warlords of Draenor beta timeline

The alpha test was officially announced to start on 3 April 2014 which presages the beta test, but with no time frame given. Closed beta invite cards were given out at the PAX East conference in April 2014.

The first beta testing began 27 June 2014.

Warcraft III: Reforged

This section concerns content related to Warcraft III: Reforged.

The Warcraft III: Reforged beta was announced on 29 October 2019 and started that same week with invitations going out over the coming weeks. Initial invitations included those who pre-ordered the Spoils of War Edition with subsequent waves going to additional players such as those who pre-ordered the Standard Edition of the game. BlizzCon 2019 attendees and Virtual Ticket holders got instant beta access.

Shadowlands

This section concerns content related to Shadowlands.

Shadowlands alpha testing invites started going out a couple days after 6 April 2020. The beta for Shadowlands began on 15 July 2020 and more invites went out to a bigger variety of players. Many content creators received "access keys" where winners would get their account flagged by Blizzard Entertainment on 2 September 2020 if they won a certain giveaway/event that was setup by the creator.

Dragonflight

This section concerns content related to Dragonflight.

Main article: Dragonflight beta timeline

Dragonflight alpha testing invites started going out on 14 July 2022. The beta started on 1 September 2022.

Gallery

• 

  The beta disc sent out to the approximately 5,000 beta testers for Warcraft III.

• 

  Beta invite cards for Warlords of Draenor from PAX East.

See also

• World of Warcraft evolution guide
• Public Test Realm