One of the elements that players most liked in the unofficial Cosmos enhancement for World of Warcraft was the regional auction system that took the place of the unwieldy "Tradechat" system. Blizzard clearly took a few lessons from that because theyre implementing a series of "Auction houses" that players can use to trade items back and forth. At the moment, auction houses can only be found in each races capital and trade is restricted to members of that players faction. The town of Booty Bay, however, also has an auction house where Alliance and Horde players can trade with each other. While this system isnt as versatile as the regional one developed in Cosmos, it does have the advantage of being official and therefore part of the eventual final game. It also works automatically with the games postal system and theres a possibilty that Blizzard might institute a regional auctions system based on fan affection for Cosmos.

The third major addition in the patch is what looks like it might be the final change to the controversial "Rest" system. The system now only has two tiers - Rested, which nets 200% experience, and Normal, which gets 100% experience. The "Rested" state only lasts for about 30 "bubbles" or 1.5 levels of play, and players can only gain back one "bubble" per 8 house of logout time. Effectively it eliminates the Rest system for players who log on every day, while giveing more casual players a chance to keep up with their friends.

Finally, the patch adds a whole host of minor tweaks to the game. Theres a new "Guard" system that allows players to call for help from NPC guards when enemies attack a village. The games level cap has been raised to 50 and new quests and points of interest have been added. The most immediately obvious change, though, is the impressive graphic update the game has recieved. The games maps now look more authetically "hand-drawn" with larger labels for major cities. Player corpses now decay into race-specific skeletons. The most impressive change, though, comes when players die and the whole world because a ghostly gray. Its remarkably effective and may be the beginning of the promised "ghostly" adventures.

If youd like to check out some footage of World of Warcraft in action, check out the various movies available on FilePlanet and continue checking in with GameSpy for hands-on details.