Burning Crusade Beta Nears

The closed beta for Blizzard's hotly anticipated Burning Crusade expansion nears as the company begins contacting testers.

After rumors began to circulate that Blizzard was contacting World of Warcraft players in-game about the Burning Crusade beta, an employee updated the official forums with news about the lucky testers. "The players we plan to invite to the closed beta test have a rather broad demographic, including PTR contest winners, BlizzCon attendees, some raiding groups, and other guilds and individuals as well," said Nethaera, a Blizzard representative. "Since the expansion will contain a lot of content for a variety of play styles, we're definitely going to be accounting for that as we test the content."

Blizzard also warns players not to hand out their account names or passwords to supposed Blizzard employees. Oh, and don't bug them. "By the way, please don't contact Blizzard to request an invite into the closed beta test. The invitees have been predetermined as discussed above and will be contacted in due time. Also, for those who do receive invites, we will not be asking you for your password or account information, so don't be fooled by any scams."

With a closed public beta for the original World of Warcraft lasting roughly six months, it's hard to say if Blizzard will make their anticipated late 2006 release for the Burning Crusade.