The Alpha build for World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth, the seventh expansion due to hit Blizzard's behemoth MMORPG later this year, is finally available for testing.

While few currently have access to the Alpha build, those that do have been able to datamine all sorts of information on Battle for Azeroth. Amidst a sea of new items, races, creatures and the usual spell/skill changes, there is one string that managed to catch our attention.

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GXAPI_D3D12 (New) - DirectX 12

It's pretty self-explanatory, really. From the looks of it, DirectX 12 support might be on its way to World of Warcraft with Battle for Azeroth.

This could turn out to be a massive performance boost as the game has historically been CPU bound, though it is also true that the old engine may not be able to fully exploit the advantages of the new API.

Below you can find the official description and feature set of Battle for Azeroth, likely due to hit live servers at some point between September to November.