How does the skill system work?
Characters have access to a huge variety of both class-specific skills (class skills) and general-use skills, called professions. Class skills are determined by your character class and are an integral part of your character. For example, a warrior's sword skill, axe skill, and mace skill are all considered class skills. There are also a wide variety of professions available to all players regardless of class, allowing players to customize their skill set. Examples of professions include alchemy, blacksmithing, and herbalism, to name a few.

Can you tell us more about professions?
Professions are learned from various trainers around the world. Some professions will be rare and hard to find trainers for, while others will be much more common, with trainers located in multiple cities. Professions can be broken into two tiers: primary professions and secondary professions. Players can learn a maximum of two primary professions. In order to learn a new primary profession, a player must unlearn one of his or her existing primary professions first. Secondary professions are less versatile and robust than primary professions, but there is no limit to the number of secondary professions you can learn.

How do you improve your skills and professions?
Players improve their class skills through a combination of usage and leveling. Class skills related to a character's class abilities, such as a mage's frost skill, which improves his frost spells, automatically increase when a character levels. However, weapon and defense skills only improve through usage. Thus, in order to improve your ability with swords, you must equip and fight with a sword. Professions operate similarly. In order to increase your skill level in a profession, you must use it. For class skills, even those that you increase manually, your character level dictates the maximum skill level you can have in a particular skill. For professions, your profession rank - apprentice, journeyman, expert, and artisan - determines your maximum skill level.

Is there a way to retrain talent or skill points?
Yes. If you unlearn a profession, you can return to a trainer and relearn it. However, your skill level will be rest to zero and you must increase it yourself.

Do skills atrophy if they aren't used?
No. Once you learn a skill, it's yours for life unless you decide to unlearn it.

Is a Hunter who trains in bows and rifles better than say a Warrior who also trains to the same level in said weapons?
Both classes have the bow and rifle skills; however, the Hunter has unique class abilities that improve or enhance his attacks with bows and rifles. These additional abilities are what ultimately make Hunters more powerful with ranged weapons than Warriors.

Can players create their own items using trade skills?
World of Warcraft features a wide variety of professions that let players gather resources from the world to create numerous unique items. Players can make bags, bandages, weapons, armor, potions, and many other things.

What kinds of fish can you catch with the fishing profession? Are there special items, treasure chests, or S.O.S. bottles that you can catch while fishing?
In addition to a wide variety of different fishes, players can also catch things like lockboxes, crates of engineering supplies, unique armor, and weapons. However, the chances of this happening are exceedingly rare.

How many professions can a player master on an individual character?
A player will be limited to two primary professions. You can have as many secondary professions as you want.

How do the World of Warcraft gameplay servers relate to Battle.net and/or the Diablo Realms?
The World of Warcraft servers utilize an entirely new network architecture that has been designed from the ground up specifically for this style of gameplay. We created this next-generation architecture by incorporating our knowledge of multiplayer gaming with our numerous Battle.net and Diablo experiences.

Where are servers located?
World of Warcraft servers are located around the globe in order to support our worldwide gaming community.

How many players will you support?
Players are divided into several Realms, with each Realm comprising a complete version of the game world.

How many Realms will there be when World of Warcraft is released?
We will have as many Realms online as necessary. As the population within the game grows, we will add more Realms to the initial base. Others will be held in reserve and will be set up the moment they are needed.

Will there be a limit to the number of players on a Realm?
Based on our experiences in the beta test, we now have established an optimal number of players per Realm. This number is in the thousands, but manageable enough to foster a sense of community and to prevent overcrowding.

Can players select what Realm they play on?
Yes. However, you must choose a Realm that is located within your geographical region. For example, North American players must select a North American server, and European players must select European servers. Some exceptions will exist. Australian and New Zealand players, for example, will connect to servers on the U.S. West Coast. The regionally specific servers are there to improve game performance and provide the best online experience possible.

Are player names unique on each Realm?
Yes. In order to promote individuality, World of Warcraft features an advanced naming system allowing players to create a unique name for their characters on each Realm.

Are there player-vs.-player (PvP) servers where players can fight other players from anywhere in the world?
Yes. In fact, all servers allow some sort of player-vs.-player combat in varying degrees. There are normal servers, where player-vs.-player combat is mostly consensual; you do not have to engage in PvP gameplay if you do not want to, but it does exist for consenting individuals. Then there are devoted player-vs.-player servers where the excitement of PvP combat is always possible and players can be plunged into PvP battle without warning. Visit our online guide on Realms type for more information.

Are there Realms specifically for role-playing?
Yes. We want to ensure that role-players have the best experience possible in World of Warcraft. To that end, we also offer role-playing servers with special rules that promote role-playing and staying in-character. See our Realms type page for more details.

Can players have characters on more than one server without paying additional fees?
You are billed by account, not by character. There is one monthly fee to play World of Warcraft and it allows you to create multiple characters on multiple servers.

Will players be able to host small (8 players max), temporary servers on their own machine?
We do not allow players to run their own servers for World of Warcraft. A massively multiplayer online role-playing game demands a high level of server security and a well-connected community to flourish and evolve. We are focusing all of our networking efforts on creating such an environment.

Questions and Answers regarding the official PvP Rankings page

When is the page updated?
The page is updated every Tuesday during the weekly realm maintenance.

How many players are listed for each realm?
The top 1000 players are shown for each realm.

Why am I unable to find my name on the realm I play on?
Only the top 1000 characters are listed for each realm. If your character isn't shown, it doesn't rank in the top 1000 - keep fighting!

What is the "rating" and how is it calculated?
A character's rating translates directly into their rank, and how far into that rank they are (ie: a rating of 65,000 means that character is the highest possible rank 14 character). Each character's rating is calculated by how many honor points they have, compared against all other characters on that realm.

In game, my standing displays something different on the web page?
In game, the standing displayed is that characters standing for the previous week. The standing on the web page displays a character's overall, lifetime standing.

I have more honorable kills than someone else. Why does that player have a higher standing than I?
Honorable kills are not the only factor that determines a characters standing. The honor points a character receives from honorable kills are added to other factors, including honor points received for completing objectives in battlegrounds, to determine overall standing.

Do you plan on listing more than 1,000 players per realm?
Not at this time.

Do you plan on adding more features?
Yes. We have plans for additional features for the World of Warcraft community web site. This is only the beginning.

Why is my guild name incorrect?
There is a bug affecting certain characters that is causing the wrong guild name to appear. We are working to resolve the issue as fast as possible.

Recently, I moved off a realm but my character is still displayed on the old realm?
This is a bug. We are working to resolve the issue as fast as possible.