wow Is Shadowlands Alpha Coming Next Week?

[Stan 5,240]

It seems Shadowlands Alpha has been delayed due to the coronavirus lockdown and the work-from-home policies implemented by Blizzard. Towelliee recently teased on his stream that a dataminable Alpha client could become available as early as next week around Monday/Tuesday. Blizzard also increased the frequency of new builds, hinting they might want to have a playable Alpha up soon.

Encrypted Shadowlands Alpha Builds

All Shadowlands Alpha builds are currently encrypted, meaning we aren't able to datamine them at this time. The work-from-home policies were implemented on March 14 and Blizzard released the first Shadowlands Alpha build since the policies were in place on March 17. Below, you can see a list of the most recent builds (taken from wow.tools). The last two builds (33874 and 33915) were released just two days apart, suggesting Blizzard might want to have a playable Alpha up soon.

• March 17 - 9.0.1 Build 33644 > 9.0.1 Build 33710
• March 25 - 9.0.1 Build 33710 > 9.0.1 Build 33819
• March 31 - 9.0.1 Build 33819 > 9.0.1 Build 33874
• April 2 - 9.0.1 Build 33874 > 9.0.1 Build 33915

Dataminable Alpha Next Week?

Towelliee said on his stream that we can expect a dataminable Alpha build early next week (April 6/7). The actual Alpha should become available a few days or a week later.

On the MMO-Champ forums, he said Alpha has been pushed back numerous times and that Battle for Azeroth F&F Alpha started five days after the first client was pushed decrypted.

Quote

What can I tell you it's been pushed back 3 times now. I can easily tell you when it isn't happening. And easily tell when it is well before the public knows. None of the content creators will risk blurting out the date. You may think we are dumb but not THAT dumb. Anyways look out for week of 6th data mining early week alpha late in week. FFVII REMAKE rip (Source)

April 1st was a really a strong possibility but as of now won't happen. I am thinking leaning toward hype train starting up 6th. 8/9/10 looks really really really good barring any setbacks. (Source)

Monday woukd be the earliest we see it. After that Alpha is whenever devs wanna bring up the servers. I think from BFA first data mining to playing was 5 days, I don't expect it to be 5 days.

-TowelRapaport #WoWsheet

(Source)

Obviously, nothing has been confirmed yet and we'll need to wait until next week to figure it out!

[Lithari 194]

I remember when content was not datamined until you actually experienced the content on release.....but sadly, impatience has changed that.

[Calysia 229]

The first Alpha build was 9.0.1.33411 and was released Feb 20/20 with a second one released Feb 26/20.