Blizzard Entertainment, developers of the hugely popular World of Warcraft (WoW), has given their 7.5 million subscribers a great deal of new toys to play with this holiday season.

 the deployment of this update to the servers was a bit bumpy, the wait has been worth itHere are some of the most popular additions to the game:

New Player vsPlayer reward system

WoW's previous system of player versus player combat involved a ladder-type system where players could only advance at the expense of other playersThis created a brutal competition which demanded unreasonable amounts of playing to reach the top tiers of advancementMost players would never be able to achieve these goals, simply because of the massive time investment.

The new system rewards you daily for your performance by giving you "honor points" which act as currencyInstead of rating yourself against your fellow players, points may be accumulated and spent on the rewards you chooseThis allows players on all schedules and time budgets to earn rewards at their own pace, and gives everyone a chance to enjoy some of the finer pieces of equipment offered.

New Talent Trees

WoW allows players to individualize their characters by awarding them "talent points", which may be spent to enhance certain aspects of a character's spells and abilitiesEach of the nine player classes has received a complete revamp of their talents and spells, and all across Azeroth (WoW's virtual world), "Tree-form" Druids, "Felguard" Warlocks and "Dragon's Breath" Mages could be seen enjoying their new skills! Keeping things new and interesting is the cornerstone of a successful online game, and with content like this, WoW will maintain its stranglehold on the MMO market.