Alright, don't get your hopes up to soon. Breathe in, breathe out. Stay calm, don't freak out. And stop screaming with joy. Okay. Better now? Good. So here's the news.

Yes, the European WoW site has opened up to the registration for the beta of the upcoming second retail expansion pack Wrath Of The Lich King very recently. So you can sign up there with your active accounts (via your account management menu) and then begin to hope for the best. But that of course doesn't mean that you will get an access to the beta. To be honest, you might need some real luck to get one. We have the slight impression that there are pretty many gamers taking part in the sign-up. This impression is heavily supported by the fact that the european WoW site has currently crashed down. It most probably did this for a good reason: too much traffic. With over 10 million WoW players, this is no big surprise.

This sign-up still doesn't mean that anyone (except everyone working for Blizzard) has even the slightest clue about when the beta is finally going to start. Everyone thought that this would be announced on the WorldWide Invitational last weekend, but then Diablo 3 decided to crash the party. But so much can be said: We definitely seem to be getting closer.

There is no beta opt-in available on the north american main site however. We don't have an explanation for that, so for the moment we suggest that you just consider yourself lucky if you have an account on one of the european servers of the game. If you haven't, it might be worth a try to keep the american site up all the time and hammer the F5 key on your keyboard repeatedly. The sign-up option will probably soon be availabe there as well.

UPDATE: Press F5 one last time, the beta opt-in was also made available on the american site now. If you register for playing the beta, please do remember: don't give your account data to anyone else than Blizzard. There are no beta e-mails going out just yet, so don't fall for any email scams. We also know by now that the beta selection process will be random, so if you register for it now or tomorrow won't make any difference. It's not first come, first serve; you will really just need to send some prayers and hope for luck.

Thanks for your attention. That's all. You can now start freaking out again. Good luck.