The latest World of Warcraft expansion, Shadowlands, starts its closed alpha this week

Battle for Azeroth was…well, it was quite a large disappointment for many. Blizzard really fumbled the ball in their latest expansion for World of Warcraft, implementing changes to the game’s loot and progression systems that required players to constantly grind in order to not be left behind. It turned the beloved MMO into a stressful experience, as players desperately attempted to keep up their XP gain with many just giving up on the process altogether; watching numbers get bigger is only fun when you’re being forced into doing it. Shadowlands is seemingly looking to change all that whilst also providing players with a narrative that wasn’t a sloppy continuation of a decades-old conflict no-one cares about anymore, and we’ll see our first glimpse of it all this week.

Announced in a blog post, Blizzard confirmed that invites to Shadowland’s closed alpha will be sent out this week to “WoW players with active accounts in good standing, as well as Blizzard friends and family, along with a limited number of content creators and journalists.” This alpha will include access to the starter zone, known as the Bastion, and the expansion’s first dungeon, The Necrotic Wake. More content will be rolled out over time, with Revendreth and Torghast, Tower of the Damned being added in April. Once the majority of Shadowland’s additions have been added to the alpha, the servers will be wiped and the beta will commence which will see plenty more invites distributed across the internet.

The blog post, written by game director Ion Hazzikostas, also confirms that players can expect changes to the quest interface and class abilities. Apparently spells that were removed in earlier expansions are being added back into the game for Shadowlands, so your spellbooks should be thicker than ever. One can only hope that all these new additions actually amount to an experience that’s more enjoyable than Battle for Azeroth. Hell, maybe it’ll even convince those players scorned by the previous expansion to return to the game. I feel the World of Warcraft is due for a quality expansion now.

Last Updated: April 8, 2020