Dstroy, a resident of Finland, was kind enough to translate into English a recent World of Warcraft Q&A session conducted by Gamesmania and has posted it at Infoceptor's WoW forum. The Q&A, which features Chris Metzen (the creative director of World Of Warcraft) contains quite a bit of new information, including notes on game interface features, the target audience and the process of character creation.

The interface for WoW currently sounds very promising, though of course no detail should be considered "final" until the game actually ships. Currently, players can choose between a 1st or 3rd person perspective when playing. Simplicity also seems to be the name of the game. For example, the mouse cursor will change into a symbol when mousing over something that can be interacted with, indicating when a player can fight, pick-up, etc.

This simplicity translates over into the battle system as well. Battles are described as being fast-paced, with many similarities to Diablo II's style of combat. Here's a clip from the Q&A:

One energy bar shows you how near death you are. If you kill a monster, the game changes into Loot mode where you can take stuff from the monster. In many ways the World of Warcraft battle system is a lot like the Diablo 2 system. Behind a simple outside there is a very complex system. Because of this you can jump in fairly quickly, but you will need some time before you know all the tricks and details. This is also the general design concept for World of Warcraft : Fast to jump in and a long but steady learning curve.

Infoceptor - World of Warcraft Q&A

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