Every few years, a massively multiplayer online game hits the
marketplace with an enormous splash, creating waves for the rest of the
industry. This year, gamers have been lucky enough to have two
monstrous games hit in the same summer: href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aoc" target="_blank">Age
of Conan and target="_blank">Warhammer Online. While Age of
Conan has seen a variety of issues since its launch, it's now WAR's
turn in the spotlight. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye jots down
his first impressions of this immense title and tries to give gamers
his reasons why he grew to really enjoy his WAR experiences.

Although Ultima Online had plenty of competitive
elements and Dark Age
of Camelot was built on this sort of competitive gameplay, neither of
those games had truly captured the sort of hectic, instant gratification
type of competitive gaming that so many players enjoy in games like
Halo and Madden NFL Football. Realm versus realm warfare was different,
and it instantly took my dark, gloomy thoughts about Warhammer Online
and turned them on their ear. The game was built for competition, and
the players could feel it as soon as they jumped into their first
scenario.

• target="_blank">To read the rest of our WAR first
  impressions, click here!