Wrath Alpha

The Family and Friends Wrath of the Lich King Alpha started a few days ago apparently. A copy of the patch notes was released on World of Raids:

Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Friends and Family Alpha. The list below contains information on the current available content available for testing and general information. This information is subject to change.

General
• The continent of Northrend is now available! To travel there, visit one of four transportation masters in either Orgrimmar, Undercity, Theramore,or Menethil Harbor.
• Transportation between Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra can be found at the Tuskarr villages in those zones.
• NPC Transportation Locations
Horde:
Undercity to Vengeance Landing (Howling Fjord)
Orgrimmar to Warsong Hold (Borean Tundra)
Alliance:
Menethil Harbor to Valgarde (Holwing Fjord)
Theramore Valiance Keep (Borean Tundra)

World Environment Zones
• The following zones are available for testing: Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Hills

Dungeons
• The following dungeons are available for testing:
Howling Fjord: Utgarde Keep (70-72)
Howling Fjord: Utgarde Pinnacle (80)
Borean Tundra: The Nexus (70-72)
Grizzly Hills: Drak’Tharon Keep (74-76)

Classes
• All Classes are available for play. Spells and talents will be available for testing past 70 for the following classes: Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior
• The Death Knight Hero class is now available for play.
Creating a new Death Knight will start you at level 55 in Eastern Plaguelands.
No starting quests are implemented though Death Knight abilities will be available for testing.
Several Death Knight talents, although they will appear on the talent pane, are not yet implemented.

Professions
• The following tradeskills are available to train up to 450: First Aid, Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning.

Its looking to be sweet. This means that the game is pretty much getting close to being done. Just the 76-80 and endgame materials remain to be finished, from what I've heard (again though, that could be mistaked) and some of that might already be done, just not released for the Alpha.

Thats a good sign of where they are in development, like you said sounds like they're pretty close. Maybe we will get the game sooner than expected?

Ohhhhh.....Nice
Cant wait.
Now I just gotta get my shadow priest to 70 before the xpac, then I can play her in the new bracket aswell.
Exciting stuff

And a few awesome images and a video.

Arthas in the Alpha data:


Frostmourne:


Death Knight Creation (shown with a pink haired gnome for some reason):


Found these all on World of Raids forum, figured you guys might all want to see them. The images are really small, so go click on the gallery and look at them in there, they're really sweet.

Awesome vid, cool to see what all the different races look like in the DK armor. I think whoever's account that is will be in trouble though if blizz finds out lol, in the terms of the alpha it said not to release anything or even tell people you were in the alpha.

Yeah, they're probably in trouble, and the video won't be up for long, but still, its sweet that they bothered to show it to us.

Everyone should check out my thread on the deathknight video from alpha also forgot to mention it has a info mined version of SW and accourding to alpha right now there is a ship yard that has been built onto the back of SW to get u out to northrend

***NEW PATCH NOTES FOR ALPHA***

Here is the list of Death Knight Changes in the recent Alpha patch. This should open up the door for a whole new round of mathcrafting. Taken from the WotLK Wiki.

Most places mentioning “Runeblade” changed to “Rune Weapon”
Death and Decay damage changed to (100/121/190/241)+0.039*AP and random component removed
Death Strike deals 60% weapon damage
Icy Touch cooldown reduced to 4 seconds
Blood Tap - Level 55, Costs 15% of Base Health
“Immediately activates a Blood Rune and temporarily converts it into a Death Rune. This rune counts as a Blood, Unholy, or Frost Rune. Lasts 30 seconds”
Chromatic Rune Mastery - Replaced by Death Rune Mastery - “Whenever a rune activates, it has a 2% chance of converting into a Death Rune.”
Degeneration - DOT Stacks up to 3 times. “Unable to be healed by periodic heals” effect removed
Mind Freeze - cooldown increased to 10sec and duration increased to 4 seconds
Death Coil - Works on undead enemies
All presences have 1 second cooldown, but won’t trigger GCD
Butcher changed to Butchery
“Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate 10/20 runic power. In addition you generate 1 runic power per 3 sec.”
Scent of Blood - charges reduced to 2
Mark Of Blood - Cooldown removed, can only be placed on enemy
Vendetta - Heal reduced to 3%
Sudden Death renamed to Sudden Doom
Blood Rune Mastery (NYI) - proc chance changed to 10%
Unholy Rune Mastery (NYI) - proc chance changed to 10%
Heart Strike renamed to Obliterate, 150% weapon damage + 300 per desease
Merciless Combat (NYI) changed
“Your Frost attacks do an additional 20%/40%/60% damage when striking targets with less than 20% health.”
Pestilence renamed to Infested Corpse
Crypt Fever - stacks up to 3 times
Ferocious Dead - added “Death Pact grants a heal over time effect for 15 sec equal to 50% of the amount healed”
Lichborn - 15 minutes cooldown removed, 5 minute category cooldown added (shared with what?)
Frozen Rune Weapon - Also has a chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Frost damage
Frost Strike - changed: “A strong attack that increases melee damage by 200 and causes your attack to deal Frost damage. Has a 30% chance to freeze the target.” GCD removed
On a Pale Horse - changed:
“You become as hard to stop as death itself. The duration of all Stun and Fear effects used against you is reduced by 10%, and your mounted speed is increased by 10%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.”
Midnight Sun replaced with Unbreakable Armor
“Whenever you use a Frost Rune, you have a 5% chance of increasing your armor by 30% and your Parry chance by 30% for 10 sec.”
Chillbanes - renamed to Chilling Focus. Effect changed to 25%/50%/75%
Shadow of Death - Duration increased to 45 sec
Corpse Explosion - changed
“Unleashes all available runic power to cause a targeted corpse to explode for 12 Shadow damage per 10 runic power to all enemies within 20 yards.”
Improved Icy Touch - changed
“Increases the damage done by your Icy Touch spell by 5%/10%.”
Blade Barrier (NYI) - duration reduced to 8 seconds.
Howling Blast - changed
“Blast the target with a frigid wind dealing 719-782 Frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals triple damage to frozen targets.”
Frozen Dread Plate replaced by Frigid Dreadplate
“Enemies who hit you in melee have a 5% chance to become unsettled, decreasing their attack speed by 50% for the next 3 swings.”
Will of the Necropolis - effect changed to 10%/20%/30%
Hungering Cold - NYI removed
“Unleashes all available runic power to eradicate all heat from around the Death Knight, freezing enemies within [???] yards and preventing them from performing any action for 2 sec per 10 runic power. Enemies are considered frozen, but any damage will break the ice.” Stun renamed to “Frozen.”
Summon Gargoyle - “The Gargoyle remains until the summoner runs out of Runic Power.” changed to flat 1 minute duration
Wandering Plague - Changed “This damage will not cancel spells normally cancelled when targets take damage.” to “This spell ignores targets with effects cancelled by taking damage”
Glacier Rot - Hungering Cold removed from affected spells
Spell Deflection - changed to “You have a chance equal to your Parry chance of taking 20%/30% less damage from a direct damage spell.”
Dance of the Dead - renamed to Dirge
Deathchill - Changed to
“When activated, increases your critical strike chance with Frost spells by 100% for the next 6 sec.”
Blood Gorged - changed to
“When you are above 75% health, your melee damage is increased by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%.”
Tundra Stalker - Howling Blast removed from affected spells list
Anti-Magic Field replaced by Anti-Magic Zone - “Places a large, static Anti-Magic Zone which can protect any party members inside it. The Anti-Magic Zone absorbs 75% of the damage dealt by the next harmful spell. Absorbs a limited amount of damage”

by the way i also just say some tauren female in deathknight T7....almost threw up the gear looks awsome....on everything but that.

See the deathknight T7 at Death Knight Tier Armor (T7?) | DeathKnight.info

That is pretty ****awesome Thanks for posting all that info up too.