World Of Warcraft: Gamespot: Beta Impressions

Gamespot has recently posted their new, Beta Impressions, quite a few new screenshots and an article with nothing really new in, yet a good read.

Our first hour and a half or so was spread thin across all the available character races and most of the different classes. Distinctions between classes seem readily apparent. For instance, our night elf warrior cannot use spells, but he gains "rage" as he successively hits his opponents. The rage meter gradually runs down, but while it's in the red, you can use it to execute various powerful special moves. Meanwhile, our female human warlock (Wait! Aren't warlocks all supposed to be male?) could use magic to aid her defense and attack foes from afar, as long as she had sufficient mana, which would gradually recharge. Our dwarven paladin packed a mighty warhammer right from the get-go and could dish out significant damage with it, plus he could use a couple of holy spells.

In the wintry areas in which the dwarves and gnomes start out, we noticed some cool graphical details, such as how characters leave footprints in the snow and how vapor can be seen wafting from characters' mouths as they breath. Little touches like this, along with some hilarious social animations (Night elves can dance hotter than Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights!), really reminded us that this was a Blizzard game. In fact, we're really impressed with just how polished the game seems already. Granted, maybe it's just the front-end and low-level content that feels like it's done, but the game exhibits that overall level of polish and quality that's generally lacking from many other games of this genre.

Gamespot: Beta Impressions