Blizzard Entertainment invited me to test World of Warcraft: The War Within Alpha. There are a few things you should know right away when you log into the Alpha.

You can create a Level 70 character equipped with iLevel 467 items. You have an item in your main inventory bag that can create new weapons and trinkets of the same iLevel, and isn’t consumed. The Chest of Playtest Equipment also provides gold and consumables: such as food, water, potions, and phials.

You must apply all talent tree points before heading out to the Isle of Dorn.

Before you travel to the Isle of Dorn, however, I recommend traveling to Valdrakken via the Portal Room in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Once you enter Valdrakken, the Reknown UI appears in your minimap border, granting you access to the Skyriding Talent Tree. All 20 glyphs are available to unlock the entire Skyriding talent tree options.

This will allow you to travel The Ringing Deeps smoothly with 6 vigor bubbles and fast vigor regeneration to fly the zone.

The Looking For a Group tool doesn’t seem to be working at the moment unless you have at least a second player in a group. You might have to use the general chat or trade chat to find other players. The Darkflame Crest dungeon entrance seems to be non-interactive in the current build (11.0.0.54361). This is a bit annoying because if you can’t interact with the dungeon entrance, the campaign questline is abruptly halted until a patch fixes this issue. The quest requires you to open a gate with a key which then unlocks access to the dungeon entrance. At the moment, that gate doesn’t exist, thus you can’t use the key to continue the campaign questline.

You will have to explore and complete other non-campaign quests in the meantime.

Currently, testers can only explore The Ringing Deeps. The other zones are locked and teleport you back to Stormwind (Alliance) or Orgrimmar (Horde) if you enter the nearby zones.

While exploring, I found at least 3 methods to ascend to the surface of the Isle of Dorn.

A) There is a very long staircase in Isle of Dorn that you descend in dynamic flying mount. The staircase is in the shape of a spiral that descends to the next zone: The Ringing Deeps. Along the way down, there are Ohn’ahran-like tornados that help you boost your flying speed or maintain it.

B) The second entrance is an elevator inside a thin tower near the Opportunity Point flightmaster. When you stand on the elevator platform, look nearby for a lever. Clicking the lever teleports you to the surface of Isle of Dorn — as seen in the map below.

C) I am not sure about the third one. There is a large hole in the ceiling of The Ringing Deeps, far in the south, at the Abyssal Excavation. You can see foliage from the surface. However, when you fly to the top of the ceiling, nothing happens. You can’t fly through the hole. I’m assuming this might be another way up to the surface. There were three exits in Zaralek Cavern (The Dragon Isles). So it fits the trend.

DELVES

These are the Alpha maps of the other zones. You might notice some sort of stone-brick gate icon. There are at least 3 per zone. Some of these are hidden in small caves or buildings.

These are gates into Delves. Similar to Scenarios. Here is a very early-development UI images. Gameplay video here.