World of Warcraft: The next expansion, Shadowlands, will not be released until later this fall, but during a live stream today, Blizzard announced that the beta will begin next week. As with previous expansion betas, this is a great chance to participate and try out new zones and dungeons ahead of the launch.

Beta invites for Shadowlands will be sent out next week, and to participate, you will need to turn on the option to receive beta invites on your Battle.net account management page. To play the beta, you will need to download a special client from Battle.net's launcher.

During the livestream, game director Ion Hazzikostas explained some details about the changes that players can expect, especially those participating in the closed alpha test that began in April.

One of the biggest changes is that Torghast, Shadowlands' endgame roguelike dungeon that changes each time you enter, will no longer limit the number of times you can play it each week. This is great news, as many of WoW's coolest content in past expansions has been limited by similar restrictions, which tended to get very annoying.

The beta will also be a fairly complete experience. Players will be able to level up to the level cap, and Hazzikostas said the beta is "feature complete," but (of course) there are plenty of bugs.

We'll have more on Shadowlands later this week.