WoW: the Burning Crusade - Alpha Leak

I’m a new poster on the UG network, here to expand its coverage for all ya folks to be informed with! You’ll likely see a good amount of World of Warcraft and Nintendo news coming from me!

Word has it, that an Alpha version of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade (due for a US/AUST release Winter 2006), has been made available by Blizzard just late last month! And this seemed to be one of those words of truth! However, this is NOT a public or actual BETA tester type of opportunity, but a present for employees to give to their loved ones. This is the “Burning Crusade Friends and Family Alpha Test” program (or the TBC FAF).

With this program, employees direct their selected friends and/or family members to the BETA home, where he/she can download the Alpha client, which is similar to the test client in the way of usage. To keep the public at bay, Blizzard has made it manditory that anyone wishing to experience the joy of the alpha, will need to “Upgrade [his/her] Account”, thus allowing access. To do this, the person must have a alpha expansion key to active such an upgrade, which is given by Blizzard employees.

Now, the users where to keep quite and not share any keys, oops! Apparently, one did the opposite and thus a “leak” has now been made allowing almost anyone an opportunity to join in on the experience. Now, I will not go into detail on how to do this or suggest you do so, as we are against it. However, an insider has contacted us saying he is one of the people selected to enroll in the alpha and sent nine teaser, low[ish]-quality screenshots for all you WoW addicts out there. These are of the character creations, both the Draenei (new Alliance race) & Blood Elf (new Horde race) starting zones, and the gate (dark portal) to Outland.

Our insider has noted that this isn’t a complete alpha, by far, so changes can (and most likely will) happen. He also adds that even incomplete, the expansion has a “must buy” fun factor to it.