Warlords of Draenor: Closed Beta, New Details Announced

It’s a big year for Blizzard Entertainment–November will mark the 10th Anniversary of World of Warcraft and the 20th Anniversary of the Warcraft series. In anticipation of the upcoming  World of Warcraft expansion, “Warlords of Draenor,” Blizzard Entertainment announced this week that the expansion will soon move into closed beta testing, along with a few other choice tidbits of information.

Closed Beta: While no official start date for the closed beta has been announced, Blizzard says it is “in preperations” and encourages players to opt in on their Battle.net account beta profile. Make sure your hardware specs are up-to-date!

Pre-purchase: The WoD expansion will be available for pre-purchase soon, with standard digital and Digital Deluxe options (a physical Collector’s Edition is also in the works). Pre-purchase of the digital editions gets players the exclusive pet and mount to use in-game right away.

Level Boost to 90: Now available at the time of purchase of a pre-order. That’s right, before the actual expansion release. Players who pre-order the digital version of WoD will be able to immediately boost one character on their account to level 90. In regards to the change, Blizzard said: “based on feedback, many of you [players] would like a chance to get acquainted with a new class before heading out into the expansion.”

Blizzard is also in the process of evaluating ways to allow players to boost multiple characters to 90, including alts played on other realms/factions; plans to test a feature that allows players to purchase a character upgrade directly are in the works.

WoD was announced at last year’s Blizzcon, to a wild reaction from the crowd. The expansion will take players back to the Outlands of Draenor–way back, to the time of the Iron Horde.

You can see the entire announcement here. Watch the trailer below, and let us know in the comments what you think about WoD, Blizzards announcements and that level 90 character boost!