World of Warcraft’s game director, Ion Hazzikostas, has announced in a lengthy blog post on the game’s website that the initial alpha-testing version of the game’s upcoming expansion, Shadowlands, will begin rolling out to certain players sometime this week. Before you get your hopes up too high, dear reader, I should note Hazzikostas asserts that this first wave of alpha invitations will specifically be going out to “long-time WoW players with active accounts in good standing, as well as Blizzard friends and family.” There’s another potentially important part to that quote, though, but I’ll come back to that momentarily.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, Shadowlands is World of Warcraft’s eighth(!) expansion pack. It was announced this past November during Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon event, and its plot will see player characters sent to the various realms that essentially compose the land of the dead, for severe lack of a better description.

From what’s been revealed about the expansion thus far, it seems it’s once again left up to us lowly mortals to eventually put a stop to some big baddie who wants to ultimately seize control of the titular Shadowlands. Players will reportedly become part of one of four factions, known as “Covenants,” whose momentous power will assist us in taking down the aforementioned villain, whomever (or whatever) that ends up being.

Within the primary blog post I’ll be referencing throughout this article, Ion Hazzikostas provides players with a quick rundown of what they can expect in the first few alpha versions of Shadowlands. To begin, the initial leveling zone called Bastion and its accompanying dungeon, known as the Necrotic Wake, will be available for alpha testers to explore. Hazzikostas explains that a second zone, called Revendreth, is planned to be available for testing later in April as well.

I’d rather not spoil the entire rundown of the initial Shadowlands alpha that Mr. Hazzikostas provided for the lot of us within this article. To that end, I suggest having a look at the aforementioned blog post for yourselves if you’re so inclined. Additionally, for those of you who might be interested, I’m currently working on an exceptionally-lengthy editorial which contains my thoughts on the majority of thing that have been announced about the expansion’s content up to this point. I’ll get that article finished and published as soon as I can.

On a final note, I mentioned I would return to the quote from Ion Hazzikostas I referenced at the beginning of this article. I wanted to return to that specific quote because of the portion of it which I intentionally omitted. You see, Hazzikostas stated that the first version of the Shadowlands alpha will be sent out to, in addition to the previously-mentioned “long-time WoW players and Blizzard friends and family,” a small number of content creators and journalists.

Considering my self-proclaimed status as Phenixx Gaming’s unofficial Azeroth correspondent, I can’t help but hope that I’ll somehow be listed among these content creators and journalists. If that happens, you have my word that I’ll bring you as much content about the alpha, beta, and even release versions of Shadowlands as I can as the moment I’m allowed to do so.

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