Warhammer Online: It Doesn’t Suck!

In my capacity as The Mercury’s official gaming geek I so rarely get to talk about PC games. I think World of Warcraft is the only game I have permission to discuss, and let’s face it: The majority of the other PC games out there would bore you pretty people in your quest to hear about Aesop Rock’s pet squirrel.

Here in the magical land of Blogtown, PDX though, I make my own rules, so today I want to tell you all about Warhammer Online — the first massively multiplayer online game that actually gives Blizzard’s mega-hit a run for its (immense) money.

First, details: The game went live on September 18. A boxed copy will set you back the standard $50 and a monthly subscription to play the game will run an additional $15 each month. It’s almost a prohibitive amount given our rapidly collapsing economy, but if elves, orcs and swords give you a hard-on, it’s completely worth it.

The game asks you to choose from one of two factions, Order or Destruction. Once you’ve aligned yourself with either the bad guys or the slightly less bad guys, you choose a character, mold them into an aesthetic representation of your latent Dungeons & Dragons fantasies and enter the vast world.

Unlike recent failures in the genre — Age of Conan, I’m looking at you — WAR eschews totally realistic graphics for a more simple style. You won’t need an awesome computer to run WAR, and even so the game looks fantastic. The musical score is typical epic, sweeping, Lord of the Rings-type stuff, and it all sets an excellent mood for the game’s key feature: Its player-versus-player combat.

World of Warcraft allows you to kill opposing players, yes, but WAR does it with style. The game pits forces of players against one another that often number in the hundreds, and destroying an enemy force grants you control of an actual, palpable area of land. Though you can easily play the game only to hit the maximum level — 40 — the true aim is ruling the entire game world.

Since most people interested in this sort of game would have already fallen in love with World of Warcraft, it’s probably good that playing WAR is almost exactly like Blizzard’s game. The controls are the same, questing is set up the same way, and earning and using weapons will also be instantly familiar to WoW fans.

In the end, I doubt any game could actually top WoW’s 10 million subscribers, but those looking for an alternative to Blizzard’s game should give WAR a shot. It comes with a free month of gameplay, so other than the initial $50 investment, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Plus, Dark Elf women are total foxes. There’s something about dark blue breasts and pointy ears that holds a universal appeal in a world where flesh and blood women so rarely try to immolate the nearest unicorn.