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Blizzard Entertainment has announced that closed beta testing for Cataclysm, the highly anticipated third expansion to World of Warcraft, is now underway.
Testers will be tasked with aiding Blizzard by providing feedback that identifies bugs, balance issues, and content polish issues. Of course, testers will get a sneak peek at all the new content as an added bonus!
For those of you living under a rock, Cataclysm represents an effort by Blizzard to explore "horizontal" development. Typically, major game expansions, and especially World of Warcraft expansions focus on "vertical" development: new levels, abilities and content that for the most part override previous challenges.
While Cataclysm will feature new content and a small level bump from 80 to 85, the key feature of the expansion is that of reshaping the entire Old World of Azeroth utilizing much of the knowledge that Blizzard has learned since launching the game back in November in 2004. Knowledge that is easily reflected in the quality of content featured in The Burning Crusade and subsequently in the Wrath of the Lich King expansions.
Veteran WoW players will have a reason to go through it all again (perhaps as one of the two new races!), and Blizzard hopes that new players will be hooked that much more by the improvement in content quality at lower levels and throughout the 1-60 progression.
