For the million plus Warhammer fans worldwide, it's been an embarrassment of riches lately with so many Warhammer titles slashing their way to the PC. Add one more: Mythic Entertainment'sWarhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. While the Warhammer universe has its roots in tabletop strategy gaming, Reckoning is a massively multiplayer online game for anyone who ever wanted to join the fracas in person.

How you join it is up to you. Enter the fray as a common, beer-swilling dwarf and fight your way to the top until you are a fully decorated Dwarf Lord. Go from scrawny to brawny as one of the hooligan Orcs. Or, make up your own "Elves Gone Wild" story as a Dark Elf - the sworn enemies of the aristocratic High Elves.

Warhammer is definitely about war - there are no happy endings in this dark, gritty world (and, being an MMO, possibly no endings at all). Choose a race, and a grudge comes prepackaged along with your DNA. Realm-vs-realm combat is the centerpiece of the game. Join the Order as a Dwarf, High Elf or one of the human-ish Empire, and you'll automatically get three races on your not-so-best friends list: Chaos, Orcs and the Dark Elves - the Races of Destruction. This instant identification of allies and enemies should make for some bombastic gameplay.

Warhammer Online: AoR 's producer Lance Robertson explains that every aspect of the game is geared towards the greater war in some important way, from individual player-vs-player skirmishes to the more random player-vs-environment encounters, on through to the realm-vs-realm events. Every battle you fight will combine with the ongoing ebb and flow of this massive conflict.