I'm in the WoW Beta Test!

[Dark Jaguar]

This is a nice artistic decision. As you may or may not know, if you play a game like this, you'll be finding yourself dead fairly often, so I thought this was at least somewhat interesting.

<img src="http://www.tcforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=947&stc=1">

As you can see above, the spirit healer in the current beta is a grim reaper looking spirit who's figure fades out of existance around the neck area up. It's a nice artistic thing in and of itself, but it really doesn't scream "healer of the world". Seems more like a figure interested in KEEPING you dead actually. Indeed, a few NPCs with the same model are wandering around the Undead Undercity.

Anyway, Blizzard has replaced this healer with someone a little more befitting the part.

<img src="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/images/death/ss03.jpg">

Now THAT'S a spiritual healer! This is a being that actually looks like it would be ready and willing to perform miracles to heal the heroes of the world (and in an MMORPG, just about every single person wandering around is a great legendary hero (well, actually the game's story when talking to NPCs is meant to give each player the impression that they are special and unique in the world, destined for greater things than the average warrior, but you know that's just what everyone hears :D)). For that matter, the world when dead appears even more different now, making it even harder to get any sort of free scouting when dead (they already made it so you can't see any NPCs, PCs, or monsters when a ghost, until you are within ressurection range of your corpse that is, in which case they let you see stuff and choose where in that range you come back so as to make sure you don't come back just to die again). The whole world seems almost totally blued out now, which is fitting. Also, the whole style of the non-corporeal side of the world is quite different now. I like it.

Anyway, I think a slight change to the text and this will be a great, though purely visual, change.

Oh yes, it seems Blizzard has plans to actually encorporate special quests you can only get in ghost mode. You may actually want to die just to go on these special ghost related quests. I don't think any fighting will be involved when you are non-corporeal though :D.