It's finally arrived.

Mythic Entertainment's much-anticipated, much-delayed fantasy MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Backed by EA and licensed from Games Workshop, this sword and sorcery challenger to the highly-competitive genre of multiplayer RPGs generated high expectations.

This hype is not entirely baseless due to the massive success of the Warhammer 40,000 PC strategy franchise.

As the title sounds, this game is all about multiplayer online gaming and while it could be played solo, the fun is definitely framed in networking and party quests.

With just a few days after its release, this makes it difficult to give the definitive word on how solid the online experience will be as the MMO titles take time to mature and content will always change.

Many of the beta players complained of lag and I am sure I wasn't alone in having some frustrations before I could run the full game on my PC.

I resorted to finding a player-submitted update patcher and installing the 200MB of updates - all in the lieu of a patch which arrived the next day for beleaguered Warhammer standard edition purchasers.

The interface is very detailed and RPG players will make good use of the resolution and view distance.

The engine so far works well although the frame rate is variable, but in the end it's the quests that will determine how satisfied you are.

It's only early days yet, and it's going to have be totally satisfying to lure gamers from the massively popular World of Warcraft which boasts 10 million paying subscribers.

I'm definitely giving it a chance.

In the game, you take on roles as dwarves, warriors, elves and others and side with the "Empire" faction or as a member of "Chaos."

There are 20 classes which is four less than in the original game.

In familiar fantasy game style, you get assigned quests to get rewards and loot to buy better weapons, armour or spells, which gives you a tougher monster in the next mission.

Online in teams, you can get control of areas and claim them for either faction.

Realm vs realm gameplay is a drawcard for this game, whereas solo players will find endless options for creating and refining items a more worthwhile pursuit.

The graphics, while not groundbreaking, do a great job of bringing a fantasy tabletop strategy game to life.

The environments are deliberately darker than those of WoW.

This is a deep game said to have around 200 hours of playable content.

It's solid and built off the namesake of a leading franchise, it brings focus back to fun and invites players to join guilds and build communities but it will struggle to oust the hordes of WoW fanatics.

It is fair to say these are early days and this game has a lot of development focus so we'll see how things go in six months time.

It's great to have a worthy alternative.

MadGamer rating: 8 /10