Behind closed doors with Blizzard...

Gamesdomain has been treated to a private showing of WoW and has written a new preview. The three page article goes into detail about character classes, pets, mounts, skills, groups, raids, pvp and more. Here are the details:

Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence and Spirit are confirmed character statistics.

For the time being, mounts provide a bonus to armor while travelling but can not be used in combat.

Players will need to accumulate Special Points (SP) to "unlock" secondary skills.

Secondary skill points can be un-learnt and SP can be re-invested.

New tradeskills confirmed: cooking, tailoring, mining, leatherworking.

The penalty for death remains at a reduction in character statistics for a period of time.

Summonable creatures will be able to be re-summoned after 5 minutes if they are killed, they have their own control interface for commands such as "heel" and "attack".

Taming is a core skill for hunters, and tamed creatures will be able to be named and will level up with your character.

The rewards for quests are shown before you undertake them.

The druid class can shapeshift into cat form, and gain attack speed and a clawing attack, or, into an unobtrusive animal native to the area, such as a small rabbit.

Mages will be able to summon elementals.

Multiple components are required for most crafting and alchemy recipies. Menus store recipies for viewing anytime.

There will be over 100 dungeons to explore initially.

Some quests will allow players to choose their own reward from a list.

When asked about possible new races: "There will be playable evil races, very evil races in fact".