World of Warcraft Preview

With Blizzard’s World of Warcraft slated for release later this month, Yahoo Games Domain has released an updated preview of the MMORPG. Check it out:

Aside from paladins, hunters are the only class without “talents” yet. These are an additional hierarchical system for advancing your character, similar to Diablo II’s skill trees. Like other skills, talents can be “unlearned” to retune your distribution, but it’s currently unknown whether this feature will make it to the retail version unchanged.

Another recent Diablo II-inspired addition to the game is the idea of durability for weapons and armor. As you strike and receive blows, your gear takes damage and will eventually become unusable. It can be repaired in towns by NPCs, but not by players in the field, so “camping” particular areas for long periods has become less convenient.