As of 6:00pm PDT, the World of Warcraft stress test beta has come to an end. The past week and a half proved extremely helpful to us in evaluating the performance of our game infrastructure under heavy loads, and we hope that all of the stress testers enjoyed their sneak peek of World of Warcraft during that time.

With the end of the stress test beta comes the end of the stress test contest. We'll be notifying the 576 winners (top 3 players of each class, of each faction, on each of the 12 stress test beta servers) as soon as possible, and in addition to those winners, we will also be selecting as contest winners not just the 48 players who would have won had the contest ended at the original deadline (top 3 players of each class, of each faction, across all stress test beta servers), but an additional 96 players who were next in line at that time (next 6 players of each class, of each faction, across all stress test beta servers).

Should any of the players who would have won at the original contest deadline also be among the 576 selected based on the updated Sunday deadline, we will select the next person down on the list to avoid having duplicate contest winners. That makes a total of 720 players moving on into the closed beta test! All contest winners will be notified by Blizzard as soon as possible, so please do not contact Blizzard to inquire about the contest results.

Thanks again to all of you for participating in the World of Warcraft stress test beta. We look forward to seeing you again online in either the closed beta test or the upcoming open beta test, as well as in the retail version of World of Warcraft when it launches later this year!