It is typical that as I was starting to update some graphs and writing a “Alpha continues on” post that the beta started!

… which means I get to update a gaggle of graphs and do a predictions post. But more of that later.

In the mean time I can say that I was lucky enough to be in the first wave of beta invites. And I’ve worked out my concerns in To beta or not to beta, that is the question; whilst I’ll copy my main across to have a brief poke, I’ll run the beta as horde to preserve my alliance side questing experience for live.

An important point about the beta:

THERE ARE NO BETA CODES*

If you get an email offering beta codes then just ignore it. The place to check on if you’ve got a beta or not is on Battle.Net.

But what should you expect to see?

When you go to Battle.Net, click on the account summary (top right of screen). Once you’ve authenticated you’ll have the full summary up, which will have you account details on it.

If you’ve got beta access you’ll have something like the entry which I’ve highlighted in red. If you click on it, you’ll go to a screen like the one below:

Yay! You’ve got the beta! So, how to get to the game. Notice the “Install / reinstall the game” part I’ve highlighted in red? Click that and you’ll get a screen like the one below:

You can then download the beta client installer – again highlighted in red. The program you down updates the Battle.Net client so it supports the beta client. It’ll start automatically and will start to download the full client.

The above is the sort of thing you can expect to see – notice how close the “Playable” is to the start. I could’ve kicked off the start of the beta client after about 5mins of downloading and had it download in the background. I’m guessing this is thanks to the new game format they’re using now.

* technically this isn’t entirely true as Blizzard did give out beta codes at a game development conference, but apparently those codes aren’t active yet and you’d know if you had one of those or not as they came on a nice piece of card as a physical object. Not an email.