World of Warcraft Updated Hands-On Impressions - The Talent System Returns

For some time now, massively multiplayer games have let players create their own characters to adventure in a persistent world alongside hundreds, even thousands, of other online players to fight monsters, acquire treasure, and gain experience levels. And for some time now, players have been awaiting the release of World of Warcraft, the online game that will take place in Blizzard's fantasy-themed Warcraft universe, which is populated with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and undead creatures, among others. The game is still in a beta-test state, and we've continued to follow its progress as a number of changes have been introduced recently. The new changes include both major and minor additions and tweaks.

The eBay-like auction houses have made commerce in World of Warcraft much easier to conduct.

Some of the minor changes are a new mouse-movement scheme and a revamped version of "rest state"--a system that grants "well-rested" players a bonus to the experience points they gain. The new system does not award bonus experience for players who have been playing the game for hours on end, but it does add a bonus for those that take a day or two off from playing the game--to simulate a way for "casual" players, who may not necessarily play the game every day, to still make decent progress with their characters. But note that these and other features are all subject to change because World of Warcraft is still being tested.

One of the more significant new features recently introduced to the game is auction houses, which have a very user-friendly, eBay-style interface. Auction houses seem to draw inspiration both from the auction houses of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI and from the bazaar terminals of Star Wars Galaxies. You can list an item at auction for a nominal fee (based on how long you want the auction to last). Also like on eBay, you can set a buyout price if an impatient buyer wants the item immediately. You can even search for auctioned items using a host of parameters (such as category, level, and name) to find exactly what you're looking for. Once the auction is over, the winning bidders receive their bounty in the recently added in-game mailbox system.

Blizzard has also had the foresight to include a COD (cash on delivery) feature for the in-game mail. Thus, once your item arrives in the mail, you are required to pay the money in order to add the item to your inventory. Not only does this COD feature make sense in the context of an auction house, but it also allows players to easily barter items amongst themselves without too much coordination.

The talent system resembles the skill trees of Diablo II--you can spend points to customize your characters in different ways

Much ballyhoo has also been made about the reimplementation of World of Warcraft's talents system, in large part because a rudimentary version of talents was included in (and then yanked from) the first version of the beta. Talents have finally made their triumphant return, and they're much more complex and customizable now. Essentially, a class has several ability hierarchies arranged in a tree format, similar to the skill tree featured in Blizzard's hack-and-slash action RPG Diablo II. There are three tabs, each with a separate set of talents that are designed to differentiate character classes (you gain one talent point per level, and each ability costs one point). Like in Diablo II, some abilities require you to reach a minimum level in a particular previous talent on the same path, while some will require a given level in more than one path. The mage, for instance, has talent trees for frost, fire, and arcane magic. Early level talents increase the range and effectiveness of your spells, for instance, while the later talents will provide entirely new (and seemingly very powerful) abilities.