World of Warcraft Editorial

Apple.com is offering up a "Character's Eye View" of World of Warcraft in the form of a six-page editorial. They cover several aspects of the MMORPG, with plenty of helpful tips and screenshots to go along with it. An excerpt:
Blizzard hosts three types of servers: Role-Playing (RP), where players are encouraged to make their characters act and talk as their races do; Player vs. Player (PvP), where players of opposing factions can freely attack each other, but only in the contested areas of the continents; and Player vs. Environment (PvE), which is the standard version of the game, one where Alliance and Horde characters can attack each other only if their NPCs are attacked first. On none of the servers can characters in opposing factions talk to each other unless they learn those languages, which only happens at very high levels.

No matter which type of server you join (you can create characters on all three, if you want), your character progresses through levels the same way. As he grows in power, he accumulates talent points that he can redeem for incremental advantages. In addition, he can use the money he earns from quests, as well as from selling items he obtains during quests but doesn't want to keep, to learn class-specific skills and work his way up in two of the nine professions available in the game: alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, herbalism, mining, leatherworking, skinning and tailoring.