Game Mechanics Data

[Midnight]

First of all I used to read the LL regulary back when I played Diablo2 and always loved it for it´s great great community that gathered facts about D2 the Chaos Sanctuary and later on the Areat Summit page didn´t cover so I was amazed when I found out that there´s a forum for WoW at the LL. I really hope it´ll develope as well as the forums for Diablo and Diablo 2 did.

Now my question is of exact that nature. As there´s not nearly as much documentation about the Game Mechanics of WoW (yet?) as there was for Diablo 2 (at least I didn´t find any) I´m curious about what hard facts about those have already been "decoded" by the community or revealed at some hidden place by Blizzard.

How exactly does armor work?
How exactly does defense work?
How exactly does the hit chance calculate?
How exactly does the damage calculate?
a.s.o.

[Artega]

I can't give specific formulas for this, but judging from what I've read over at the community site and the various tooltips:

Armor reduces damage taken, a lot like it works in Warcraft III. It now tells you how much it reduces damage by, but only versus a creature of your level. It's assumed that higher-level creatures will do more damage to you, and lower-levels will do less.

Defense is part of what determines whether or not a creature misses you, level difference (if there is one) notwithstanding. I believe the skill Defense also factors into your ability to Block and Parry, but I'm not certain about this.

Your chance to hit creatures is your Attack (not Power) versus their Defense, and a level difference makes a HUGE difference here. While you shouldn't have major issues hitting creatures a level above you (at least, not at the low levels), a creature three levels above you is going to be very hard to hit. If you DO score a hit, the creature may Parry (it doesn't say this - it just registers as MISS) or Dodge.

The damage you deal to the creature is your Power versus their Armor, and this is also affected by a level difference (if there is one.) As far as I can tell, Armor reduces damage taken by a percentage, and not an integer value.

[Midnight]

Thanks for the answer. I didn´t expect specific formulas yet. If there had been any it´d have meant I´d been lousy at searching it. ;)

I hope we´ll find out more detailed information about how it works in the future though. Maybe eventually even Blizzard will make a more precise page for all these things too if they´re no longer subject to constant changes as they naturally are in a Beta.
I´ll try to contribute as much as possible myself too.