"World of Warcraft." Try saying it out loud, and get used to the sound of it, because you'll be hearing it often in the foreseeable future. The title alone speaks volumes. Though Blizzard Entertainment is still hard at work polishing up its highly anticipated real-time strategy wow gold game, Warcraft III, for an early 2002 release, the company officially announced this brand-new product in the Warcraft franchise at the European Computer Trade Show in London on September 2, 2001. If all you knew about World of Warcraft was its name and that it would ship some time after Warcraft III, you'd wonder these two things, in this order: What's World of Warcraft? And why would Blizzard develop another Warcraft game so soon?

This preview will answer those questions, in that order, but will also reveal all the major details of this work in progress. Still, the project is but a year old, and its release date is undecided--and thus some of its details are as yet either undetermined or undisclosed. This preview will at least identify them as such. However, by the conclusion of this preview, you will still have more than enough evidence to conclude for yourself that World of Warcraft promises to be one of the most important massively multiplayer online role-playing games ever imagined. Simply read on and see.

World of Warcraft will let you create a persistent character who will live, learn, and fight in the land of Azeroth. You'll have plenty of options even at the outset--namely, Blizzard has already announced three playable races (of an indeterminate total number) that will be featured in the game. These include both male and female wow gold versions of the stalwart humans; the fierce orcs; and the massive taurens, a bull-like race that will first be seen in the forthcoming Warcraft III. These characters look extremely impressive already, as does the rest of the game, if only from a visual standpoint, thanks to the game's striking visual design. Read on to learn about how appearances will be important to World of Warcraft.