Is Warlords of Draenor Already in Early Alpha?

Spent a lot of time today playing 5.4 arena then immediately playing 6.0 arena. Man what a difference. Looking forward to people's reaction.

— Holinka (@holinka) February 7, 2014

Holinka is the PvP designer so it makes sense that he is testing his designs but 6.0 is said to be the new build for arena going forward which includes several major changes. These big differences include the removal of certain abilities, the stat squish, changes to crowd control and a rework of how health and damage scale. All these core gameplay changes have been slated to happen in the upcoming expansion.  Although Holinka being able to test these isn't confirmation of an alpha it is likely that these tests are part of one, or certainly being done as a prelude to one.

It has been suggested that the Warlords of Draenor pre-orders will appear with the launch of patch 5.4.7, which is currently on the PTR, so an alpha in progress now seems accurate. After all it is unlikely Blizzard will release a pre-order for Warlords of Dreanor before it is even in early beta.