Blizzard began the closed tests of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic on Tuesday (23). According to the company, the beta phase is only available to invited players. To have a chance to participate you need to register via the official WoW Classic website. The expansion did not get an exact release date, but is scheduled to come out later this year.

I understand nostalgia. I also understand the urge to feel pain in order to feel something, anything. The original World of Warcraft Classic vanilla release was enough for me. It’s a neat little playground to do things like taking down raid boss Onyxia with only one warrior and one priest. That sounds entertaining. But trudging through the Dark Portal into Outland to re-experience what expansions were like before they were fun? Not so much. The thought of going back through the Draenei and Blood Elf starting areas one more time makes me queasy. But hey, if you’re cool with it, that’s cool.

Beta testing for WoW Classic's first expansion began this month, Blizzard revealed over on the game's forums (via Wowhead). While still a closed beta, you can sign up to be chosen for beta testing by hitting opt-in over on the expansion's store page, adding your name to the pool of players randomly chosen to receive testing invites.

Once selected, the beta should appear alongside your other WoW installs in the Battle.net launcher. Beta testers can choose to create a new character, or carry over any of their existing WoW Classic characters.

Once you’ve been added:

    Open the Blizzard Battle.net App and select World of Warcraft from your Games list.
    In the selector above the Play button, change your Game Version to In Development: The Burning Crusade.
    Click Install to install the Beta client. This becomes a Play button when ready.
    Click Play to log in to the Beta, and select any of the available Test Servers.
    Create a new test character, or copy over a character from your live WoW Classic account using the Copy Character button.
    Enter the game and test the content!

Players who do not want to advance to the content of The Burning Crusade can keep the characters only in the base version of the WoW Classic. In this case, the maximum level will remain 60 and you will not be able to access the expansion areas or meet with other people who have chosen to update the game.

If you’ve already opted in, just update your graphics card drivers and the Battle.net app, choose the Burning Crusade beta from the World of Warcraft drop-down menu, and commence feeling your soul being slowly sucked away. If you’ve not opted in, there’s a webpage for that.

Overall, WoW Classic is excellent for any veteran players or newbies looking to get in on the action. Just watch out as this game can become a grind with all the leveling and gold farming, so be sure to check out z2u.com for some awesome deals to make your gaming time more efficient. We offers all players WOW Classic Gold safely and legally. You can gain the Gold amount you like through buying WOW Classic Gold from z2u.com.