Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

After all that hassle, after the searching and tweaking and file replacing, there's a really good looking, enjoyable game. Now, I've only had a few hours with one character - Anomandir the Swordmaster, on the Lustria Oceanic RP server - but I enjoyed every minute. There's no wolf slaying or rabbit skin collecting in WAR - from the get go you are thrown into vast conflict, killing the hated Dark Elves who are invading your lands.

Even at first level, you suddenly feel very epic, very capable. Part of this is the look - the game's designers have done a great job of bringing the Warhammer world to life. The Swordmaster, for instance, is a figure in flowing white robes bearing an elegant two handed sword, not some rusty hunk of metal. Every level offers up a new skill early on, so even at level five (hey, that patching rigmarole took a lot of time!) I've got five attack options.

The ancestral enemy - Dark Elves!

Speaking of combat, each class has a unique way of using those talents, too. The Swordmaster must chain attacks together to attain different levels of balance, each of which unlocks more attacks in growing dance of elegant destruction. It sounds hyperbolic, but the game mechanism actually makes you feel the part.

We've barely scratched the surface, of course, and haven't even looked at public quest and PvP combat, so far I'm liking what I see an awful lot.

Expect more updates on the game next week, as we begin to fully explore the Old World and all it has to offer.

Two Swordmasters cutting a swirling path of bladey doom.