World of Warcraft Preview

Game Over has put together a preview of World of Warcraft, providing up-to-date information about several features that have been added to the game over the past few months. An excerpt:

During my last preview I mentioned skill points, which players can use to learn tradeskills (such as mining and alchemy), and talent points, which players can use to enhance their combat abilities. At that time players could learn just about any tradeskill they wanted, and talents weren’t yet available. Now Blizzard has balanced the skill points much better (my level 50 character is only a miner and blacksmith), and talents are slowly making their way in. Currently, only mages and warriors have talents, and with the next patch supposedly rogues and priests will gain theirs as well.

World of Warcraft is shaping up pretty well. Blizzard still needs to introduce the hunter class, they need to finish creating the world, and they need to balance the classes. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but I think the balancing part in particular is going to be difficult. Not only does Blizzard have to weigh in how powerful classes are against NPC enemies in the game, they have to consider how well classes fight against each other. Right now mages, for example, can turn invisible, and that’s a huge bonus against other players. Should it stay? Should it go? My guess is Blizzard isn’t going to tune the classes too much until they all are implemented and have talents, and that might not be for months. I’m still projecting a Christmas release for the game, but I wouldn’t bet any money on it or anything.