From the World of Warcraft beta page (which I can’t link directly because the brainiacs at Blizzard don’t know how to create proper permalinks):

In September, Blizzard held a stress test beta for World of Warcraft to help tune the game’s network infrastructure. Over 100,000 participants signed up for the stress test beta and connected to our servers to help us analyze performance under heavy loads. In conjunction with that, we ran a small contest as a means of allowing a large selection of dedicated stress testers to continue on into the closed beta test. The 720 players listed represent the winning stress testers. These characters achieved the highest level of experience for their race and class, per faction, on the server on which they were created. Congratulations!

… why do gaming companies consider a beta account (read: an opportunity to work for them without pay) a reward? a contest prize? I guess it would be a reward for me if I considered, say … a stay at a labor camp a vacation.