By: Jarno Kokko Jul 16, 2008

Word is making rounds that just as the 2.4.3 patch hit the live servers, the "Friends & Family" Alpha phase of World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King ended - and the Beta is coming soon. There is nothing official yet, but rumors indicate a late July or early August start for the Closed Beta phase. July 23rd is a rumored date that floated around during the Worldwide Invitational, and it was quoted together with the July 3rd date for the start of the "opt-in" for the Beta - which turned out to be accurate. Participants for the Closed Beta will include contest winners, people with the BlizzCon beta key, and random players picked from those with active World of Warcraft subscriptions who have opted-in at the account management pages. No invites have been sent yet, and I'm sure we'll hear it the moment Blizzard starts dishing them out.

Interestingly according to the sites who specialize in leaked Wrath of the Lich King information, there were very few updates to the Alpha build during the test phase - last one was supposedly over a month ago. As development surely didn't take any breaks, expect a flood of new information about the expansion as soon as the Closed Beta starts - there is bound to be a new build with tons of new content that wasn't included to the test builds during the Alpha.

If the Beta starts by early August, that's yet another strong indicator towards a launch in November or December.

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