Alpha Testing has begun!

[Vephriel]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/13645405

Hopefully beta comes along soon after, I'm dying to get more info.

[cowmuflage]

Kewl

[SylviaDragon]

/camp next to inbox. come on Beta invite. pick me pick me.

[SylviaDragon]

double post time! Not sure if this warranted another thread or not, but they just released some info on Alpha.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/134234 ... ned_glyphs

One of the big things I'd like to draw attention to is this:

One of the most difficult abilities to decide to cut was Aspect of the Hawk. It began to feel fairly meaningless, since it was used virtually all of the time in combat, so might as well have just been passive. We decided to cut Aspect of the Hawk, and bake in its benefit to the other abilities. The remaining aspect abilities are all utility only, and are being moved off the stance bar and made toggles.

I knew a few hunters have been asking about the aspects and this is our answer.

Not sure how I feel about glyphs. I was never too serious with my inscription mage but I imagine there are some players who will be miffed about the money loss.
Also the change to mining and herbing is a sweet an sour thing for me. yay for easier leveling but I can only imagine what this will do to the overall price.

[Xota]

A lot of pets have lost their abilities, pretty much all CC abilities are gone*. Hyena loses it's attack speed buff. Sporebat's buff now includes attack speed, iirc. And I think the -armor debuff pets could do is gone.

I eagerly await to see what all those are being replaced with. Hopefully some new stuff instead of just giving all those pets pre-existing buffs. But I am going to miss silithid's webs though. I even named mine Webs, so people knew exactly what to expect when it was chasing them.

The alpha test is employees, friends, and families. If anyone is any of those, and there's no NDA, let us know about pet abilites.

*Warlock pet keeps its cc though, but it's on a 30 sec cooldown. No idea if ghoul keeps its once a minute stun.
And a level 100 hunter ability gives our pets more skills, I hope there's more buttons on the pet bar for them.

[Agravaine]

Cataclysm's Alpha started on May 3rd and Closed Beta on June 30th... can't find that data for the other expansions, but if that's any indication, they might start WoD Closed Beta by June.

Still feeling kind of whacked over the head by the 6.0 changes, but speaking for myself, I've adapted before and can again.

[Raiyen]

I am already eagerly awaiting to hopefully get my beta invite. I got into MoP's beta which was awesome since it was the first time I was in one.

But yeah, I feel kinda overwhelmed with all the changes to hunters. I am indifferent though until I play around to see if I like the changes or not .