Get on the Burning Crusade beta

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 March, 2006

By playing WOW insanely lots.

Want to beta-test World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade? That's handy, because Blizzard's running a contest in WOW to choose people to do just that. Smashing luck you stopped by really isn't it!

Actually there are three contests, and the point of all this is to help stress-test new server hardware to Blizzard can make sure it's up to snuff. The first of the three is all about racing to level 50. The 1000 quickest in each region - or simply the 1000 who do it if there aren't more - will qualify for a BC beta spot. The second contest takes place on the Honour Contest Realm and is called Battle for Warsong Gulch. Capped at level 19, 500 players from each region split between Horde and Alliance will fight it out and whoever has the highest honour at the end is in the beta.

Finally, for those of you who like running alts, is a real timesink: get as many level 25 characters as possible. All you have to do is run characters up to level 25 over and over again. Once you've filled your ten slots, you're advised to just delete one or other of the ones you're done with and keep going as it'll all be counted up. And, if you can still bear the very sight of WOW after all that (and four times the population of earth apparently can), then you'll get to go off on a Burning Crusade at some point.

The only stipulation is that you have to do all this between March 7th and March 27th - apparently it's open to anybody with an active account in Europe, Korea or North America.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 6 years ago

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  • Halo.Jones #1 6 years ago

    Won't be long before someone dies from playing WoW too much to get in to the beta...

  • terminalterror #2 6 years ago

    I notice it isn't open to China. Encouraging excessive play would really go down well there :)

  • Dizzy #3 6 years ago

    Oooooohhh shock horror! Blizzard awards stuff to insane grinding! Do these guys know any other sollutions?

    "Dude... we need an Epic event in 1.9 patch"
    "Err.. let the players grind for "war" ingredients"

    "Dude... we need to upgrade players tier 0 armor in next patch"
    "Woah! let them grind for the tier 0 armor AND then let them grind for the upgrades"

    "Dude.. We need a beta test competition"
    "Err... grind?"

  • Pogle #4 6 years ago

    Although I understand their need for beta testers to actually be committed, I'm still with Dizzy on this.
    And to think this was originally sold as casual gamer friendly too.
    Since the core of the devs left Blizzard they've turned to the darkside and going more and more into the hardcore world and they'd do well to remember the rest of us who are alienated by their content direction and their attitude.

  • MrChuckles #5 6 years ago

    Makes perfect sense to me.

    If you want to test levels 50-60 which supposedly take as long to get through as 1-50 does, then recruit the people who will get to 60 the quickest. Then you're testing period will test more of the game faster.

    Just don't expect the social channels to be full of people who can actually communicate effectively :-)

  • Carlo #6 6 years ago

    Guild will buy a sub and ask all their members to contribute some of their time to getting this done.

    ...Actually...

    /goes to BM's Guild

  • Kami #7 6 years ago

    The beta would be rather interesting... but this "competition" aspect puts me right off.

    I actually rather pity the people who get in on this beta... they'll demonstrate that they have way, way, WAAAAAAY too much time on their hands...

  • Hunam85 #8 6 years ago

    hows about get fucked, why cant i just send them my name and a smile and get in the old fashioned way....

  • DanForinton #9 6 years ago

    Um... What kind of quality of tester are they going to get from this?

    And are the people who attain their beta places by these feats of endurance really the kind of people who should be testing products?

    Bizzare. I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the development meeting that came up with this genius plan. Although I suspect Dizzy might well have got the abridged version about right.

  • Khab #10 6 years ago

    Yes, yes. As someone with a full-time job, I feel more and more that I'm not the kind of player Blizzard wants for their game. Which is a bit curious.

  • yagisencho #11 6 years ago

    Um...no thanks.

    And I loves me some WoW.

    But no thanks.

  • Orange #12 6 years ago

    I loved WoW and will be back playing it eventually.... but the cynical approach to encouraging grinding is such a turn off. Dizzy is absolute right, and that whole "war effort" thing was really scraping the bottom of the idea barrell.

    What's even funnier is that when my old server had finally collected the materials needed to trigger the event, the server crashed over 20 times at least from start to laggy finish, effectively ruining any fun and immersion for anyone who went or had an interest.

  • Royal Fool #13 6 years ago

    The only stipulation is that you have to do all this between March 7th and March 27th - apparently it's open to anybody with an active account in Europe, Korea or North America.

    Well, no. It's only open to:

    Participants aged 15 or more residing in:
    France
    Belgium
    United Kingdom
    Luxembourg

    Participants aged 18 or more residing in:
    Germany
    Austria
    Sweden
    Finland
    Denmark
    Norway
    Ireland

    That's a part of Europe, but far from whole of it. Yes, it's mostly to do with "gambling regulations" and blah-blah-blah... but it's also always pretty easy for lazy lawyers to hide behind those excuses.

    Personally, as a resident of a major European country that isn't on this list, I am rather disappointed.

  • Aga #14 6 years ago

    Obviously they want to have those with a lot of time and dedication to be on the beta. What would be your alternate way of choosing beta testers?