I’m just getting started playing WoW and I kind of understand the Talent Tree, but perhaps someone could give me a brief explanation as to how it works.

First thing to learn is... "THERE'S THREE PAGES OF TALENTS!!!" My first ten or so points went directly into Balance because I never noticed that there were other tabs on that page... :|

Ok, now that that's out of the way...
Talents are kind of like "bonus skills" that you get as you level - one per level after 10. They're Blizzard's answer to "character customization" - not all druids will be the same, some will be better at feral (shapeshifting) combat than others, while some will go towards nuking, and others towards healing.

It sorta works - in the end game most druids are usually spec'd for healing, although with the recent DPS changes to feral I know quite a few have gone that path. There's really only two or three truly viable builds out there, so probably not quite as much customization as Blizzard hoped for.

As you're leveling most people sink points into Feral as you'll probably spend a lot of time in the various forms. After that, Omen of Clarity is a big favorite at the lower levels, and probably the best "Bang for your buck" at that particular cost level. At 60, you'll most likely end up Restoration spec'd with Innervate. You can change your talent point distribution by going to see your class trainer - cost goes up each time you change it, up to 10g IIRC.

The best talent tree builder I've found is unfortunately on the IGN site:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View

Thottbot has one as well, but it's sort of annoying to me and doesn't have all the ease of use that the IGN version has.

Thanks for the information, its starting to come together now; there is a bit of a learning curve, however it’s starting to make sense. The Strat guide has been very helpful too. Thotbot is pretty good; IGN seems to be a little easier to navigate as far as talents/builds.

Overall the feel of WoW reminds me of my first days of EQlive; I never got that feeling in EQII. WoW has the character, personality, flexibility and finesses that allows me to play my Druid the way I’d like too.

I wasn’t sure if I’d find a game that would give me that same sense of enchantment and immersiveness as EQlive did back in the day, but WoW has hit it on the head. It’s unfortunate what has happened with EQII.

I actually look forward to playing WoW, it’s a great feeling.

I have a question about Talents. I am leaning towards Restoration and Balance. I know it is best to map out your tree path in advance.

My question is when you start spending your points, how do you start spreading them between your talent tree. For example i have 5 points, would I put all 5 points into Improved Mark of the Wild or would it be better to split between Improved Mark of the Wild and Improved Wrath? How does everyone do this when you are further into the tree? Max out the talent first or spread the points?

levelling up i generally filled out the entire points of a particular talent before moving to another one.

While Improved MotW is a great talent to get, you get more bang for your buck out of it later on than early. Furor gives a nice return early on, I would recommend 5 points in that over IMotW. That being said, the first point I would spend would be in Nature's Grasp...

I agree with Falloraan about Furor. It generates 10 points of rage right off the bat which means you hit the mob once and you can already Maul.

And then once you get ferocity, you can fire off maul as soon as you shift to bear.

http://www.thottbot.com/?ti=Druid

Also a good talent builder.

My Druid is on a PvP Server and I don't see many builds for PvP Druids that uses Feral.

Many pvp builds will include restoration to Nature Swiftness, Balance to Swiftshifting and Feral to Feline Swiftness.