Over the past few weeks, it has become apparent that the World of Warcraft beta will not be available within the fourth quarter of 2003. The development team is currently hard at work testing the alpha version of the game, and we look forward to bringing you an outstanding beta in early 2004.

Our goal is to always make the best games possible, and a critical part of the development process includes the public beta test. This means that we will not release the final product or any other component of the game until it's ready. Rather than release an inferior candidate to meet a specific date, we have chosen to further test World of Warcraft internally until we feel the game will allow for a productive beta test.

Announcements concerning the beta test, along with additional details about the game, will be released in the near future. We encourage you to check our official Web site www.blizzard.com/wow for further updates. Thank you for your continued support and patience

Article courtesy of blizzard.