WoW Battle for Azeroth Beta has begun, first wave of keys have been sent out, more to come

The latest expansion for venerable MMO World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, has left alpha and begun beta testing. Blizzard has sent out the first wave of keys to players that have opted in to the beta, with more expected to be distributed soon.

The level cap in the beta is now 120, and while characters have been wiped from the alpha, there are “no additional character wipes are planned for the duration of the beta”.

According to WoWHead, Blizzard is also keeping track of of changes that affect addon developers, so that any you use can transition smoothly when the new expansion drops. As well, the command “CancelUnitBuff” doesn’t support cancelling by spell name anymore.

Battle for Azeroth is scheduled for a full release in August, and features many new playable races including Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne for The Horde and Lightforged Draenei and Void Elves for The Alliance.

Opting in to future beta tests is done through your BattleNet account. All you have to do is go into your account settings and click “games & codes”, then “beta profile settings”. You can select from a list of Blizzard games that you’re interested in, like Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo, StarCraft and, of course, Warcraft.