‘World Of Warcraft’ Alpha Shuts Down, ‘Legion’ Beta Expected To Begin This Week
With the sixth World of Warcraft expansion releasing on August 30, the Legion alpha is officially closed as testing moves forward to the next stage. The Legion beta will begin on Thursday, May 12, giving more players access to the expansion during its testing process. Those invited will have a chance to test the new expansion including the upcoming class changes, the transmogrification revamp, and the new Broken Isles area.
During a Legion developer update, many details and announcements were revealed concerning the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. Players can watch the video, posted on the official website, but several fan websites have detailed the stream for easy access. In the update, World of Warcraft developers revealed that the beta would go live on May 12. The Legion beta will only be available to those that are invited; however, many more players will be invited to the beta phase of testing. According to the video update and MMO-Champion, the beta will begin that afternoon.
“The current plan is to take the alpha down over the next day, wipe all of the existing characters, send out a large beta invite wave, and then on Thursday at 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST start beta!”
If invited, players will find themselves able to complete the Broken Shore scenario. Later, they will be taken to new Dalaran where their Artifact quest will start them on a major class-specific journey. In Legion, players will find new features reminiscent of some Warlords of Draenor aspects. Class Order Halls are similar to the garrisons in Draenor but drastically different. Offering fewer missions with greater rewards, Class Order Halls are expected to keep the player moving through the storyline rather than sitting in an instanced world. As stated on WoWhead, heroes will need to find Order Resources in the world, and players will likely spend their first resources on the Order Hall tech tree.
In addition to the Class Order Hall, players will find that their Artifact weapon will also shape the way they play Legion. Each specialization in World of Warcraft has a unique Artifact weapon. Throughout Legion, players will only wield their Artifact weapon. It will level up, and it can be customized with relics and through each weapon’s trait tree.
The video update mostly focused on what many players already know about Legion. Questing in Legion will be different from what players are accustomed to. The new World Quest system lets players choose where they want to play for the day. Instead of missions being dictated by daily limitations, some quests will be briefly available while others will be available for days. Those available for a short time, only a few hours, for instance, will only reward gold. Quests that are available for days will offer new gear or special mounts giving players ample time to complete the quest before it disappears.
As for news concerning the rest of the game and not related to Legion, leveling was mentioned as needing work. Players quickly find themselves leveling through a zone too fast making the quests no longer offer experience. Even without heirloom items, players often out-level a zone before finishing up that zone’s storyline. In the update, it is mentioned that older zones have the potential to use the new Legion flexible zone tech giving zones a larger leveling window keeping the content relevant longer.
Beta invites are expected to go out soon. As always, be sure to check any beta invite emails for their credibility. The easiest way to check on a beta status is to visit the official World of Warcraft website and sign in. As of this writing, beta invites have not been sent out yet.
[Image via Blizzard Entertainment]
