Mr. Musgrove with the Washington Post pinged me for a few comments on the WAR launch, and to additionally familiarize himself with the genre. I stand by what I said in his article … with the additional note that I think WAR will be the #2 AAA game in the US marketplace, not worldwide.

Among fans of this genre, the buzz about Warhammer is good, said Michael Zenke, lead blogger at the Web site Massively.com, a site dedicated to news about online world games. “Hopes are riding very, very high with prospective players of this game,” he said.

Zenke has spent many hours exploring the test version of the game this year; it’s kinda like Warcraft, he said, but there are enough enhancements to make it compelling. “They’ve taken the framework that Warcraft has perfected and copied it over as best as they can, and then they’ve taken a lot of those game elements one step further,” he said.

Warhammer will be the No. 2 title in the genre within six months, he predicted. Considering the success of Warcraft, that’s high praise. “There’s no such thing as a World of Warcraft killer,” he said. “You can’t just turn off 10 million people’s interest in the game.”