See what I mean? We're not even out of the first paragraph and WoW has already taken over this review. This past year, we saw a handful of games come out that were alternatives to the Orc, Troll and Fairy orgies of today's MMO market. RF Online, Tabula Rasa and Pirates of the Burning Seas are some names that come up when we try to find fantasy MMORPG alternatives. Another thing that comes to mind when you mention those names is the fact that they are all MMORPG community failures. Sure, people play them, but they are the die hard, hard core pirate wanna be's, hard up Star Wars Galaxies Sci Fi Fans and Anime fans who want an MMORPG to call their own.

This week, a game called Requiem: Bloodymare seemingly popped out of nowhere like a16 year old girl showing up at your door to say "You don't know me, but 16 years ago, you dated my mom...". We've been so accustomed to the false hype created by the likes of Sony, EA-Mythic and Funcom, blasting us each day with gameplay videos preceeded by over over zealous Englishmen who will tell you anything so you buy his game or the promise of a glorious MMO world where chicks (played by men) run around without shirts all day.

To actually review a game that is in beta does not serve a game any justice, unless your intent is to just rip the holy shit out of it because of misguided management, an over abundance of bugs or to tell everyone that is is just plain old crap and you want to help us save $50.

When a game like Requiem: Bloodymare comes along though, it gives disenchated and jaded MMORPG players like myself something real to look forward to, something different and fresh. Horror fans have been left out in the cold as software developers find new ways to reinvent gnomes and dwarves on a daily basis. Ok. Yes, I know Hellgate: London is out there, but can we really call it an MMORPG? Besides, that game is full of epic amounts of failure.

Requiem is a Korean MMORPG. OMG, I said the K word! It is set in a fantasy world where years of DNA and Genetic warfare has turned the world into something not so different than it really is now, a world full of unstable beings with genetic defects bent on destroying one another. Enough of back story, if you want to know the background of the game, go google it for Christ's sake.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Requiem is the WoW killer, because every MMORPG review at some point has to compare the game to WoW. I'm not even going to recommend that you go get a Fileplanet subscription and download it. What I am going to say is that Requiem is a breath of fresh air in the dying MMORPG world. It doesn't deliver anything groundbreaking and can hardly be called next generation, but it offers gamers a chance to experience an MMORPG from a somewhat new perspective. Not as a glorious adventurer trying to save the Empire or as a Holy Paladin traversing the lands to quell evil, but as an ordinary guy just trying to survive in a fucked up world.

I'm also going to tell you that as both a Beta and as a Korean cross over, Requiem has pleasantly surprised me. After playing the game for several hours, I was glad to see that there really were not many bugs at all. If you would compare Vanguard's early release and beta to a cockroach infected low income housing project, you can say that Requiem is like finding an ant crawling on the watermelon at a family picnic. It's not a big deal that will ruin your day.

The one selling point about Requiem is that they use the Havok engine. At first, i thought Havok is a nice touch to an MMORPG. I remember playing the DDO beta and enjoying smashing coffins and watching the pieces shatter and roll around. Implementing Havok into an MMORPG is an all around good idea and you can't go wrong with it, but you really have to use it for more than death sequences. Hopefully as the game progresses, we will see better use of the Havok engine.

Havok is used during combat in Reqiuem. When you kill an NPC, the final killing blow sends pieces of the NPC flying around and leaves the NPC's lifeless corpse flopping and flailing on the ground, covered in blood.

Requiem is full of MMORPG in every way. It's full of "Get 10 Rocks" sorts of quests, but it also has a few bright spots, including DNA, Nightmare mode and soloability so far at the lower levels.

If you want to find something new and somewhat refreshing, I recommend atleast giving the Requiem beta a chance. If you've been sitting around waiting for a good MMORPG to come out and want something free to occupy your time with, you might want to just head over to FilePlanet and download the beta client.

I don't know for sure if I can see myself playing Requiem, but the game has been intriguing enough to keep me going on day 2. I usually quit MMORPG betas after playing for just a couple of hours.