Time to check those spam folders if you signed up, as the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Closed Beta has kicked off!

IRVINE, Calif. – June 30, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the closed beta test for Cataclysm™, its highly anticipated new expansion for World of Warcraft®, has begun. The company has started issuing invitations to participate in the testing process to a wide range of players from around the world who signed up via their Battle.net® accounts. While enjoying an early look at the game, beta testers will provide valuable feedback to help Blizzard Entertainment find bugs, address balance issues, and polish the new content.

"Our focus with Cataclysm has been to build on the knowledge we've gained through the previous expansions to deliver the best, most compelling World of Warcraft content for our players to date," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Gathering focused feedback during the beta test will go a long way in helping us reach that goal when we launch Cataclysm later this year."

Cataclysm is the third expansion for World of Warcraft, the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world. The first two expansions, The Burning Crusade® and Wrath of the Lich King®, each shattered PC game sales records upon their release. In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races -- worgen and goblins -- will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they'll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world.

If it's like past closed beta invites the roll-out will happen over a few days so if you've not got an email yet, there's still hope! promoted forum item

Time to go sacrifice another goat to the gods of beta.

Wonder how long its gonna take for invites :( I've got 2 bnet accounts, one has SC2, so maybe I can get beta on my WoW one.

Yer same .. 2 accounts. fingers crossed.

I only have 1 battlenet account but it has 4 wow accounts attached to it, that means I have 4 times as much chance to get in right?

No Khel, it's one change per b.net account :(

Meh, Iv had an account since the alpha friends and family, I might see if the new race cutscene videos are in yet

my account is cancelled i wont get it :(

so does the beta force you to use new characters or do you import your old ones?

You can do both, start new toons, use blizzard toons or use your old toons

installing cataclysm now. got an email about 2 hours ago :P

I'm guessing you can't get in with an inactive account?

Wait what? i've had a key and been playing for almost a month. But NOW the beta has officialy began?

MoSFX - you are incorrect.


My WoW Account has been inactive for about 4 months now and I received an email invite about a month ago. If anything I think they would target people who have left to try suck them back in.

How big is the download? If it's not going to get my ass capped I might try it out.

Was it an email stating that the Beta has been added to your Battle.net account? or did it give you a key or something similar asking you to click on some link to log in with your WoW details to access it?

The Official Blizzard Cata beta email just tells you that you've been added & the game has been added to your B.Net account - So log into B.Net and see if it shows up there. If it doesn't show up, then it's a spam/phishing email.

MoSFX - you are incorrect.


My WoW Account has been inactive for about 4 months now and I received an email invite about a month ago. If anything I think they would target people who have left to try suck them back in.

How big is the download? If it's not going to get my ass capped I might try it out.

it's currently downloading 2 gig worth so far. left it running

Yeah mine was legit, just logged into bnet and it's there, downloading the mac client now.

I'm not sure if it's the same but after downloading the 2 - 3gb of actual installer data, I then had to spend 3 - 5 hours getting patches painfully slow at 100 - 350kb.

OH FFS, just realised that when I quit wow I deleted the bastard from my laptop. :(