It’s Midnight alpha Eve (well almost), with the invite-only alpha build going live imminently with an announced set of content phases, and the public beta is probably starting about 6 weeks later. As with some previous expansions, the Epic Edition guarantees access to the beta before the end of testing. Typically the minimum period of time that you will have beta access is two weeks, subject to server status, guaranteed access does not mean guaranteed access to the entire duration of the beta period.

Blizzard have said that alpha invites will go out to community veterans, press, fansites, Blizzard family and friends. If you don’t plan to pre-order the Epic Edition you are still eligible if you sign up on Blizzard’s sign up page.

So if you beat the odds and got into the beta… what do you do next?

Firstly, you need to check if the invite is genuine. Blizzard will never send you an email telling you to click on a link to get access. To tell if you’re actually in the beta, your best option is to go to your Battle.net launcher and in the World of Warcraft game menu, under the game version in the Under Development section will be an entry for Midnight beta. It will give you the option to install and launch the game if your account has been flagged for access. If you win an access key though an influencer’s or press promotion, they will send you a license key code to be redeemed through the Blizzard Battle.net account page, via the Redeem Code utility.

Do not click on links even if you are expecting a key.

Remember: Beta is not Early Access

In software development terms, an alpha client is a feature incomplete version. Beta is generally feature complete but is expected to have bugs, may have some minor tweaks to how features function, or potentially be unstable. A release candidate is a version of the application which is believed to be in a complete state and could be released into production unless a last minute major bug is discovered.

Both alpha and beta clients are still in active development. The clients may be unstable, features may be turned on and off without warning, there will be bugs and placeholder items or models. The servers can be restarted or taken down without warning, and can be offline for days at a time. The servers can be reset and your progress deleted multiple times during the beta progression. You will sometimes encounter bugs that may mean your account or characters are locked until the bug causing the lock is fixed. There are no Game Masters or Customer Service resources on beta — the expectation is that everyone will behave constructively.

Any progress you make on the beta realms will not be carried over to the retail servers. At the end of the beta period the servers will be closed and you will no longer be able to log into those characters. Early Access, however, is access to the complete game a few days early, and your progress will carry over when the expansion launches.

Reporting bugs on test realms

The function of the test realms is to test. If you encounter a bug, please report it — that’s why these realms exist.

There are several different ways of logging errors.

• Client crash – if your game client crashes entirely you should be automatically presents with a crash log dialog box asking you to submit an error report. It will automatically capture information about the error code and the game state at the time of the crash. These dialog boxes will normally give you the option to include a short comment about what you were doing at the time of the crash.
• In game bug reporting tool – any time you are on a test server, Blizzard provides you with a big bug report button which you can freely drag around the screen. This will launch the in game bug reporting tool, it will automatically capture information about your server, character name, current location, class and specialization. It will give you a dialog box with only 255 characters to describe your problem.
• In development forums – If your account is flagged for beta access you will have the ability to post in the Midnight Alpha/Beta forums which will be located as a sub-board on the In Development Forms. If you encounter a bug that needs more space to explain than you can fit in the in-game bug report form, or if you have identified a workaround to a known issue, post it here. Sometimes the workaround can help pin down the cause of the bug.

I understand that bugs can be frustrating and you just want to play the game, but the entire point of beta is to find bugs and report them so they can be fixed before launch into Retail. Don’t assume that someone else has reported the bug — other people might make the same assumption.

So you got into beta, now what?

Depending on the current available features, you will either be asked to create a new character or you will be given the option to copy a character from the retail environment. Depending on what you choose, different testing paths will be open to you.

Character creation

At various points of beta you may be restricted to creating new character only. These may either be a template character that has been pre-leveled to an appropriate level for the content being tested in that phase, or a new level 1 or 10 character. Template characters normally start with level appropriate starting gear and consumables.

It is common that early phases of testing only allow use of template characters. While most people will want to test the new end game content, testing of older content can also be important, so feel free to roll a new low level character to test how the class changes impact leveling.

Character copy

Once character copy is unlocked, you will have the option to copy an existing character across from live. Copying the character will bring across your current inventory and equipped items, though it normally doesn’t retain any transmog choices. You can copy a character as many times as you like, but they must all have unique names, you will be asked to rename the character before logging in the first time.

If you want to copy across your achievements, mount, toy, and pet lists you will need to copy across your account data. Note this will then be applied to all characters on the beta servers going forward as this is account/warband level data, and you can’t choose to erase this information once copied across. If you plan on testing anything where you’d need these items still locked, like acquiring a pet or mount, you will need to test them prior to copying this data across.

Blizzard may wipe these copies at their discretion, including the account data. They typically let players know before doing a server reset, but depending on why they are resetting the servers you may have minimal notice.

Useful NPC hubs for beta players

To assist in using test time productively, Blizzard typically provide an NPC hub in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar to provide cheap or free consumables, gear, profession reagents, access to profession trainers, and a teleport to the current questing zones, dungeons, and sometimes other features.

We don’t yet know where these NPC hubs will be for this expansion, and the scope of the provided resources. We will update this section once we know.

Addons and UI customization for beta players

It is common that alpha does not have access to third-party addons, and that the first few weeks of beta also block addons. This is to ensure that any issues encountered in game are caused by the Blizzard game client and not a broken addon. A significant component of the Midnight feature set is the replacement boss mods UI updates, so this may extend the duration of the addon block. We won’t know until Blizzard announces that they are available.

Macros

Macros will still work and can be useful to work around some issues you may find in game. The Blizzard forums have a couple of helpful posts explaining macro basics and some base templates for common macros.

Here are some macros you may find helpful – note these may need to be tested and updated once we have access to the Midnight client as Blizzard does change the available commands periodically.

Use Extra Action Button — if you want to keybind your extra action button to make it easier to use.

/click ExtraActionButton1

Exit vehicles — sometimes you can get stuck in the vehicle UI, this macro will help.

/script VehicleExit()

Your current location — Get your coordinates and map ID, useful when logging a bug report on the forums or if sharing information about interesting objects or NPCs you have found in game.

/run z = C_Map.GetBestMapForUnit("player"); pos = C_Map.GetPlayerMapPosition(z,"player");
print(C_Map.GetMapInfo(z).name, C_Map.GetBestMapForUnit("player"), math.ceil(pos.x10000)/100, math.ceil(pos.y10000)/100)

Addons

Blizzard have indicated that they are still going to support addons for the foreseeable future. At some point during the beta process addons will be enabled. I typically keep the number of addons I use on beta to the minimum.

The addons I tend to run on test environments are:

• BugGrabber/BugSack to capture error messages
• TomTom with PasteNG to be able to plot the location of quest objectives or NPCs of note

How to get Early Access to Midnight

Pre-purchasing the Epic Edition gives early access to the expansion, according to the pre-order page the minimum duration is 3 days. Actual play time subject to possible outages and applicable time zone differences. Certain endgame features will not be available during Early Access periods — this is expected to limit some player housing features.

Progress during Early Access will carry over to the game once the expansion launches.

General alpha and beta strategy

Beta access is only for a limited period of time, so it can feel a bit overwhelming. Going into beta with a plan based on your normal playstyle can be helpful. If you like to level alts, then maybe create low level characters and test the levelling experience. If you like to run instances, then maybe plan to level via instances and leave questing for live. Are you a professions auction house goblin? Then plan to test the heck out of professions. Don’t assume you will get to try everything, and maybe not all test phases will be interesting to you.

If you are fortunate enough to get access, have fun, but remember that test environments are a shifting sand. They can be unstable and be erased or vanish at any time. And if you are not lucky enough to get chosen, don’t worry — you will get plenty of time to play on live when the game launches, and we will do our best to report on what’s coming so you can be prepared to make the most of it.