WoW's global conquest continues: Russian version imminent

Blizzard will begin testing a Russian version of World of Warcraft next week. The first phase will be called the technical alpha, and will focus on "the technical aspects of the game." Never would have guessed! After that, the localization beta will commence. Blizzard has invited all its Russian-speaking subscribers (of the European version of WoW, presumably) to participate. A Russian-language forum will launch next week as well. There's a fancy flash-powered Russian teaser page already.

Even though the Massively staff includes folks of several nationalities, we unfortunately don't have any Russians on the team to analyze this. We're talking about the country of the great novels The Brothers Karamazov and The Master and the Margarita, the films of ultra-weighty director Andrei Tarkovsky, and the experimental, unforgiving, plague-themed video game drama Pathologic. Is Russia going to be receptive to the lightness that is World of Warcraft? Oh, hell, probably so!

[Via WoW Insider]