Blizzard has announced a 'technical alpha' for its upcoming Heroes of the Storm which brings together characters from the developer's World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Star Craft franchises.
This is the first time players have been invited to try out the game and Blizzard intends to monitor play usage to better equip its infastructure for the full launch and to ensure that the studio's hardware systems are capable of supporting the game as its player base expands. Blizzard previously faced severe problem in its servers when they launched Diablo 3 on PC.
Explaining why the trial has been given technical alpha moniker, Blizzard wrote, "Since we’re focusing on our support systems for Heroes of the Storm right now, we’ve dubbed this testing phase the “Technical Alpha” or Tech Alpha, for short."
As for who's invited:
"We’re going to kick off this initial Tech Alpha phase with a very limited number of participants and continue to expand the pool of invited players as our testing needs evolve and grow over time."
Initial access to the alpha will only be available in the US with the exclusion of some select international press sites and Blizzard community contributors.
If you've signed into Heroes of the Storm beta profile page on Battle.net and performed a system check there's a chance you'll be asked to join but Blizzard stresses that those with access will be quite limited to begin with.
Those who get to join the alpha will not have to sign a non-disclosure agreement meaning they can share their impressions on blogs and streams freely.
