In the midst of all of the press surrounding the imminent release of that other Blizzard game, you may have forgotten that World of WarCraft‘s Cataclysm expansion is set for release mere months later. Well, thankfully for the game’s 11 million subscribers, Blizzard hasn’t forgotten about their little cash cow, and announced earlier this week that closed beta testing has begun for Cataclysm.  As with the recent (and still ongoing, despite a few weeks’ hiatus) StarCraft 2 beta, invitations for inclusion in the closed beta are being sent out via email to those who have created Battle.net accounts and selected to opt in for beta test participation.

In the past, closed beta invitations for Blizzard games have been issued to a wide range of players. A good deal of random luck is involved in being selected for participation, but owners of flame-spewing death machine computers, high profile players, and members of the gaming press seem to have the best chances. Of course, there are ways of guaranteeing selection, such as attending BlizzCon–attendees are given automatic inclusion in Blizzard beta tests as part of the goodies package bundled with tickets. There’s a reason tickets for the convention sell out within hours of going up for sale, after all. Those lucky enough to have been selected for beta participation need only log into their Battle.net accounts and download the beta client from there.

World of WarCraft: Cataclysm is expected to hit stores in November of this year, but it wouldn’t be a Blizzard game without the caveat that the game will release “when it’s finished”, and that an official release date will be announced “Soon™”.*

*Soon™ is a registered trademark of Activision-Blizzard, and use without expressed written consent will result in Robert Kotick personally deleting your World of WarCraft characters.

[Via: Blizzard]