How do you compete against the behemoth that is World of Warcraft? That's the question that MMO developers have been asking themselves for the past three years: how can a new IP (intellectual property) find a foothold in an arena dominated by an all-conquering giant? The simple answer: be better than WoW. Do what it does, but do it cleaner, faster, and more enjoyably.

This is the simplest answer perhaps, but by far the hardest path. There are, of course, other options: acquiring a license helps - look at Age of Conan or Lord of the Rings Online - as does having an established name attached to the project, Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa for example. But what if none of these avenues are open? How then can a fledgling game have any hope of survival? Then the developers have to choose that hardest answer and take a risk: they have to do something different. And different is exactly what Warrior Epic is trying. It may be dressed in the same capital F Fantasy clothes as its older, larger brethren, but underneath lies a dissimilar kind of beast altogether; underneath lies something new.

At the core of Warrior Epic's gameplay is the Hall, a base of operations that's customisable by you and acts as a hub for the quests and adventures that you can expect to undertake. The twist is that you, the owner of the Hall, are never seen. The characters that you control, ranging from the brutish Pit Fighter to the more sophisticated archery and spellcasting classes, are heroes who wish to work for, and align themselves to, your Hall. In other words, rather than rolling a specific type of character at the start of the game and then grinding your way up to level whatever, your ultimate goal is a Hall populated by a great number of different heroes, each at your beck and call, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It's an intriguing move and one that sets up a certain amount of tactics and planning before each quest begins.

As well as this major difference, Warrior Epic refrains from the open world, server-based approach of WoW and instead focuses on small, five player, instanced dungeons. Such dungeons are accessed via a game list, familiar to anyone who's ever played an online game, which shows player numbers, the quest engaged in and various other pieces of information that the player might require. It's entirely possible to solo your way through all of the missions that the game has to offer, but for the whole experience you need to group together with other players. Prior to entering a dungeon you'll find yourself in a chat room where you can engage with other players and find allies for your adventures. In essence, Warrior Epic has boiled down the basic interactions of an MMO into one bite sized chunk. Rather than messing around with avatars and capital cities, Possibility Space has stripped down this part of the game, saving both time and space.

There's a strong PvP aspect to Warrior Epic; Halls can group together to fight each other for the ownership of a specific region in the game, for example. This PvP is reached via the Hall in the same way as quests are accepted; there are no random encounters with player-controlled enemies - as with the rest of Warrior Epic, there is a time and a place specifically set aside for violence towards other people.

The graphics are far from breathtaking, but they're functional and well put together. Whilst there's none of the flair of Age of Conan or the design and humour of WoW, Warrior Epic has set itself different goals altogether. The game aims to be playable on low spec systems, opening up the experience to those whose computers can't handle the more commercial end of the market. This leaves the game looking uninspiring and blocky, full of identikit loot containers and a lot of repeated textures. The developers seem more than willing to sacrifice aesthetic frippery in order to get as many people as they can online playing the game. The sound too suffers due to this ideal, but it's passable and pleasant enough without ever really intruding.

Warrior Epic is a little game with a lot of heart. It's free to download and the technology behind the downloading process means that you need only a tiny file to start playing whilst the rest of the game downloads in the background. A small fee gives you access to some special character classes and equipment, but this isn't necessary, unless you're a completist. The greatest problem that I saw in this Beta stage was that in trying so hard to be something different, Warrior Epic has ended up feeling odd. The controls at the moment are too simple, essentially a point and click system that ignores the keyboard entirely, the camera is unwieldy and the user interface is far from spectacular - but these are problems that can be ironed out through testing. It's the game itself, the core mechanic of different heroes for different situations, that just doesn't sit right. By subverting too many of the standards of the genre, Warrior Epic tends to lose its way, not really sure whether it's an RPG, an MMO, a zoomed in RTS or any other acronym you can think of. It certainly has promise, but it needs to decide what it is - and what it's trying to do - before it can turn that promise into a game that can duke it out with the big boys.

Previewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).