Blizzard, developers of World of Warcraft have issued a post at the Battle.net forums explaining exactly how a version of their WoW alpha appeared on the Internet.
According to the company then, in order to accelerate the testing process, they recently allowed a small group of external testers to play the game. During this process, a collection of files was leaked to the Internet. While these files contain alpha content from the game, Blizzard claim, they are not fully playable and therefore do not convey the experience that World of Warcraft will provide when it is released.
Even so, the World of Warcraft developers insist that they are ...currently investigating this matter and will take serious action against those involved.
In the same post, Blizzard announced that the WoW beta testing phase is about to begin and that they will be accepting public sign-ups at the end of this month. Also included in the same post is the following request by Blizzard : As always, we appreciate the interest and enthusiasm that players around the world have for World of Warcraft, and we look forward to delivering a massively multiplayer game unlike any you have ever experienced. Until then, we ask that you refrain from sharing any content that doesn't come directly from Blizzard Entertainment.
For the original forum post in Battle.net follow the download tab above.
