All of us here at MMOBox are avid World of Warcraft players, and it’s safe to say we were getting very very bored with the game and we aren’t all that excited by the upcomming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. So we began our own little quest to find a game that holds our interest long enough to keep us well and truly occupied to the same standard as WoW.

Enter Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

I have to say that when we heard a few months back that content was being cut from the game, our interest in the game died faster than a batch of Sea Monkeys.

However, we still got our pre-orders in and the game arrived on Septeber 17th, the day before release. September 18th was go live and we’ve more or less not put the game down since.

There were reports of other players having issues activating their keys and logging in to the game, fortunately for us, we didn’t actually get the chance to play until about 6PM GMT. I say play, I actually mean being able to login and download the almost 1GB patch - not a good start. A 1GB patch on day of release is taking the piss a little bit, however, with the wonders of broadband today, I had it downloaded in about 35 minutes.

We’ll cover character creation in a full review later this week, but it is suffice to say it’s just the same old system - race, sex, class, name and customization.

I created my Destruction based Dark Elf Sorcerer, Lanael on Karak-Norn and I was away. It’s been a while since I’ve played a caster, last time I played one full time it was when The Legend of Mir 2 was all the rage, since that other MMO’s and their casters have done nothing for me. I was pleasantly surprised by the effort Mythic have put into all of their classes in WAR.

The Sorcerer, even though mine is currently only rank 11, is so much fun to play it’s unreal. The skill animations are worth watching and even just the first 10 minutes of gameplay are much better than Warcraft. Right now, I’m not sure if that’s just because I’m so bored with WoW or if it’s genuinely good.

The servers are still a little laggy, but we’re coping and you’re never short of people to help out with Public Quests.

Visually, the game is stunning and cutting content from the game has allowed the Mythic team to concerntrate on areas that matter to MMO players.

I’ve only briefly played with crafting, but even that is fun and so involved.

In conclusion, first impressions are very good. I’ve never had such a good first impression from any game, I’ve even cancelled my WoW Subscription.

A full review is to come.