We knew it was likely happening soon, and now Blizzard has confirmed that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands alpha invites are indeed going out this week. These alpha invites are being sent to longtime WoW players with active accounts in “good standing” (you’ve never been banned, in other words), and some creators, journalists, and Blizzard friends and family.

　　Blizzard provided a rough idea of the content included in the alpha to start, and what will be added in the weeks and months following its release…

　　When the alpha servers go live, we will have the full level-up experience in the zone of Bastion available, along with its dungeon, the Necrotic Wake. Testers who are interested in checking out our revamped new player experience can play through the Alliance version of the new zone and tutorials. We’ll aim to roll out new content on a regular basis throughout the test cycle—later in April we hope to offer the zone of Revendreth, as well as a look at Torghast, Tower of the Damned, our endless dungeon experience. We will continue to unlock content such as zones, dungeons, and endgame questlines when they’re ready for feedback, using template characters as needed to focus testing and feedback on specific parts of the game.

　　Once Blizzard has rolled out all of Shadowlands content to alpha testers, they’ll launch the beta. You can sign up for said beta, right here.

　　Interestingly, Blizzard has also admitted that dataminers will no doubt find tons of secrets hiding in the alpha’s code, including details related to endgame stuff like Soulbinds, Covenant Sanctums, and crafted legendary items. Blizzard warns a lot of this stuff is in flux, so anything dug up should be taken with a grain of salt. That’s always a good policy, but it sounds like it’s going to apply doubly here.

　　World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will arrive sometime later in 2020. Anybody expecting an alpha invite to show up in their inboxes?