WoW Dragonflight's closed alpha is live, here's how to get in

World of Warcraft's next expansion, Dragonflight, has entered the first of several playable tests ahead of a planned release by the end of the year.

You can opt in to participate in these previews by navigating to Dragonflight's product page and scrolling to the "Beta Opt-in" button at the bottom. Once you've received confirmation that you've made it in, these instructions on the WoW forums outline the relatively simple steps to switch to the experimental version of the game from the Battle.net launcher. Crucially, pre-purchasing the expansion won’t guarantee beta access the same way Overwatch 2's Watchpoint Pack gets you an automatic spot in that game's tests.

As outlined in a tweet from the official WoW account, this is "phase one" of Dragonflight's pre-release testing. This July alpha includes the new Azure Span zone, the Dracthyr race, the Evoker class, WoW's first revamp of its UI in 18 years, and also tweaks to some pre-existing classes and professions.

Blizzard has adopted a similar approach here to its long sequence of limited-access previews of Overwatch 2. In a group interview with PC Gamer, WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas indicated that there will be multiple rounds of testing on Dragonflight, so don't stress too much if you aren't brought in for this initial alpha. You can also check out our preview of the brand new Dracthyr race, as well as our interview with Hazzikostas on some of the big picture design decisions going into the new expansion.