Today, MMORPG.com writer Bill Murphy continues his look at the Open Beta of the Russian-made MMORPG, Allods Online.

As mentioned in my blog this week, I've been playing a lot of Allods Online. There's a lot to say about this game, which could conceivably at first be merely dismissed as another clone of Blizzard's megahit. Surely enough it shares some of the common features of World of Warcraft, but come on... so do a lot of games that came long before the big mama-jama of MMOs.

At a certain point we'll have to stop pointing fingers and calling games a clone of this and that and accept that there are commonalities across the genre. Besides, I'm not one to brush off a quality gaming experience merely because it's derivative, and thus I've been enjoying my time with Allods. Enough that I've decided to throw caution to the wind and write up a second impressions based on my second sitting with the game. Why? The first couple hours with any MMO are usually clouded by newness and what's spiffy in the game. I've consistently found that the second time I sit down to play a game for a good length of time is usually when some of the more bothersome traits stand out.

Read Open Beta Impressions 2.