WOW Cataclysm Testing to Start in April
Many people wonder when will the beta of Cataclysm will start, it’s time to (try to) answer that question!
As far as I know, the Beta is supposed to start in April. At this point it’s not very clear if there will be a Friends & Family Alpha, if there is one it hasn’t been widely advertised internally.
This is probably why Blizzard decided to spoil the Cataclysm Prologue in 3.9 a few weeks ago and waaaay before it’s deployed on live servers. They’re not huge fans of spoilers and the only reason to do it is to make sure people know what’s going on when they eventually play on Beta servers.
From a technical point of view, I guess it also explains why most of the assets for both Patch 3.3.5 and Patch 3.9 have been deployed with Patch 3.3. It’s probably much easier to maintain a Beta and a Live build at the same time when you don’t have to deploy tons of files just because you had to add something on live servers.
Of course, this is a pretty risky news because Beta tests can be postponed if something funny happens but as far as I’m concerned, it should definitely happen in April. If the beta lasts as long as WotLK’s you can expect a release of the expansion in September/October, most likely before the Blizzcon.
And before someone smart posts in comments, I do realize it’s not hard to predict that. We all know that Cataclysm will be released in 2010, we all know how much time a beta test takes and we all know the beta will start in April/May/June. But I’ll just pretend it was an April’s Fool joke if I’m wrong, you can do that in May.
From mmo-chamion.com