Warlords of Draenor Alpha testing begins
Warlords of Draenor Alpha has officially begun! While at this stage testing is limited, players may feel free to opt-in to future beta testing by going to the Beta Profile Settings on your Battle.net account. Interestingly enough, along with this announcement comes the announcement of a new file format to compress and store game files. The new file format, CASC, replaces the MPQ file formatting Blizzard has been using for the past 20 years.
Keep in mind that this is an alpha announcement -- beta has not officially begun. No beta keys have been emailed out. If you receive an email offering a beta key, ignore it for now -- as more information about the new expansion releases, phishing attempts are like to rise as well. Check out Blizzard's full announcement regarding the Alpha, and keep your eyes peeled -- with a client available, datamining will likely begin soon.
Update: Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas had the following to say about the Alpha:
Don't read too much into the word "Alpha." We have a LOT of content that's ready for testing. http://t.co/c93xZhSOt1- Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 3, 2014
