…For MMO players who've finally tired of World of Warcraft: Lord of the Rings Online
So, you've spent so much time in Azeroth that you can count it in actual, real-world years and you reckon you've put someone at Blizzard's kid through middle school? Why not head over to Middle-earth and hit some orcs in the ugly box with a big, ol' axe? Then have your character play a little song about how badass you are. No, really. Do that.
Second option: Tabula Rasa
You know the thing WoW doesn't really have? Big, nasty ray guns, like the ones in this sci-fi MMORPG from the guy who created one of the most revered RPG series of all time. It was called Ultima.
…For the desktop general: World in Conflict
Like the brilliantly cheesy '80s flick Red Dawn, this medium-scale real-time strategy game imagines what would happen if a hostile, communist USSR took over the US. In the movie, it ended up with Patrick Swayze, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Gray, Charlie Sheen and C Thomas Howell all escaping high school, becoming guerilla resistance fighters, and mostly dying. In the game, it ends up with fast-paced, town-scale RTS warfare that looks so good you almost don't want to use the tactical nuke on it (but you totally do).
Second option: Supreme Commander
Existing on a grander scale than most other RTS games - the battles cover an entire planet at once - this early '07 sci-fi wargame must not be missed, and recently got an expansion pack: Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
