Azeroth, the world of Blizzard's famously popular WarCraft games, is brought to life in this ongoing, online adventure, welcoming thousands of player-controlled Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Trolls, and other creatures to explore its lands and exploit its secrets. While many other persistent-world RPGs have offered the basic premise of good versus evil in a fantasy realm, World of WarCraft has the advantage of featuring the series' familiar incarnations of good and evil, and of being based on an established fantasy world beloved by gamers since the success of the original Orcs & Humans in 1994. At its launch, the game is set four years after the events of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos. The war-weary peoples of Azeroth are beginning to rebuild, but toward an uncertain future. World of WarCraft offers a total of eight playable races. Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Night Elves make up the Alliance, while Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, and Undead represent the Horde. Classes available to player characters include Paladin, Rogue, Priest, Hunter, Warlock, Druid, Warrior, Mage, and Shaman. Some classes are exclusive to characters of certain races; only Humans and Dwarves may become Paladins, for example, and only Tauren and Night Elves may become Druids. Other classes, such as the Rogue or the Priest, may be assumed by characters of almost any race. Each class is gifted with a selection of distinct, supernatural powers, many of which will be immediately recognizable by veterans of the WarCraft real-time strategy games. The persistent, online version of Azeroth is home to six major cities, which also may be familiar to fans of earlier WarCraft games. Each city serves as a hub for quests, character services, and player interaction. A city's taverns are good places to find other, like-minded adventurers. Special combat areas, where player characters can test their battle skills against one another, are also reliably found in cities. If they can make the right connections, player characters may even be able to obtain relatively inexpensive travel from one city to another -- on the backs of winged beasts such as Griffons and Windriders.