MMORPG.com's Jon Wood has been playing the Closed Beta for Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online and today shares his impressions of the early game from the perspective of the Chaos and Empire realms.

Well, the time is upon us and it seems as though that pesky NDA has been lifted. While my time in WAR has been short due to other commitments and circumstances beyond my control, I do have some observations about the game and the functions that I have experienced thus far:

While I have to be honest and say that I haven’t really had a chance to do any extensive testing, but I have dipped my feet into the world enough that I can offer some initial insights to those of you out there who may not have had the opportunity to get your hands on it.

First of all, I’m going to take a minute to talk about the art style of the game. There are critics out there who say that Warhammer looks like WoW. While the stylistic concepts may share some elements, the reality of the visual gameplay is quite different. WoW, in maintaining the look of previous incarnations of the franchise, is a more animated-looking take on the visual design whereas Warhammer take a grittier, more realistic-looking approach.

Check out the article here.