Warlords of Draenor Moves Into Beta!

Thanks in no small part to your testing and feedback, the Warlords of Draenor expansion is ready to officially shed the alpha label and move on to the beta testing phase!

Our next step is a huge stress test on the Assault on the Dark Portal intro experience we opened up on Wednesday. We’re inviting a TON of players to the beta, but we’ve temporarily restricted access to Draenor for now. We’ve also wiped characters from the alpha, so you’ll need to create a new one, or copy your character over from live realms*.

Today at 2 p.m. Pacific, we’ll respawn the NPCs that teleport you to Draenor (Archmage Khadgar, located in the Trade District in Stormwind or the Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar). We’d like to get as many people as possible logging in and trying out Tanaan to stress test the environment and make sure everything works. If you have a chance to jump in, please join us!

*We're testing our new in-game Character Copy feature, which is available for players with NA accounts only at this time. Players with EU accounts will need to create template characters for the time being in order to access Draenor.

06/27/2014 11:17 AMPosted by Luxaura

Thank you for inviting me! I'm both proud and excited to have the chance to participate. Are there going to be notes stickied as to what is available when each new area opens and is available for testing?

That's what this "please read" thread is for. :)

06/27/2014 11:31 AMPosted by Sabelas

I am venturing a guess that since Alpha wasn't under NDA, Beta is also not under NDA?

Correct!

06/27/2014 11:42 AMPosted by Metrolol

06/27/2014 11:31 AMPosted by Antaya

That's the entire point of a stress test. It's putting the server under the exact same strain it'll go through on launch day.

Makes sense under normal circumstances, but when we are build #2 through an alpha test that took a full week to get on servers because of stability issues, you would think this would not be the target time.
Especially considering there was already periodic crashing yesterday before all this happened!

The launch of beta is the best chance we have to slam the servers with as many people as possible, because a huge wave of invites have gone out and everyone should know the start time. After today it's not as likely that we'll get this quantity of people trying to test the same areas at the same time. And that's the point. If it's an inconvenience to you to worry about whether or not the realms will handle the load, I'd only offer a reminder that this is a beta test.

06/27/2014 11:43 AMPosted by Doubdan

I'd appreciate if you could put up some notice before you wipe my toons next time...

I'm not sure what that would've helped you accomplish. :p

06/27/2014 12:18 PMPosted by Omegal

When will the new NA char copy be enabled? It's still "in maintenance"

Character Copy is enabled and accessible on the Character Selection screen within the game client, not on the website.

That said, some people might currently be receiving "Copy Failed" errors due to the high volume of people attempting to use this feature.

06/27/2014 01:23 PMPosted by Metrolol

I totally understand, and even though it is inconvenient, I understand it is your reserved right as a company testing their game but you don't feel this would have been better down the line when things are actually worth slamming?

We waited a full week for this build, and I DCed at least 10 times just yesterday before the "stress."
Just seems like build 2 of a public test isn't the time for this, but hey I'm along for the ride, so I am happy enough.

It does seem like the servers going offline every 10 seconds has stopped, which is great news.

Firstly, it's not build 2. We've gone through many alpha builds by this point, including prior to inviting non-Blizzard employees. Also, there will be additional stress tests on new content as it's added to the beta, but as I said this is our best opportunity to push everyone into the Tanaan intro experience. We've invited far more people to the beta than were in alpha, characters have been wiped so everyone is starting in the same place, 2 p.m. is the official launch of the beta, and so on.

I have a question: I got an email confirming I was invited (Thank you guys sooo much btw <3) and when I see the available accounts/realms thingy on the dropdown box above Play, all I see is the Alpha. Do I install that and it will instantly be the Beta or do I have to wait until "Beta" appears and download that?

alpha is the beta. labels just havent all been updated install it

Correct!