When I first saw the front page of HeroesWM I was very impressed; the front page graphics are up there with the best I have ever seen. Once you get into the actual site and complete registration you then find out the front page is a bit of a deception. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics of HeroesWM are still of high quality, but nothing compared to what they have on the front page. When you select a character you have the options of Knight, Necromancer, Wizard, Elf, Barbarian, Dark Elf, and Demon. Each character faction also has a separate character for both males and females. Each faction also has their own sets of soldiers such as bowmen for knights and druids for dark elves.

The layout is very well organized. All your navigational links are lined up across the top, each one opening a new page with more options. I was pretty surprised at how easy things were to find at HeroesWM as that has always been a huge turn-off for me with other battle/RPG sites.

With battling you have each player on a side, or more than one on a side for a group battle. Each player chooses a certain area on the battle grid and individually places their soldiers. There are different battle “arenas” for each faction who started the battle; a few of which can be found under the images part of this review.

Your goal in HeroesWM is to increase your level and abilities, gain new soldiers, and earn gold. Other than the two games battling is the only way to obtain these goals, which tends to become a bit boring with the site. After each battle, if you lose some of your soldiers, you must wait until they regain their health.

Each battle you win or lose gives you experience points and skill points. If you battle a computer opponent, whom you occasionally find while exploring, you can also win gold on top of your points. To gain a level you much collect experience points. Once you meet a certain goal, your character’s level goes up by one point. Each time you reach a new level you are given points to increase your abilities which range from attack to luck. Your abilities in the game affect the number of points your soldiers take during battle.

Gaining new soldiers is also a benefit from battling. You can recruit new soldiers from the castle, but each level has a limit. Once you reach level 2, for example, you can then build a farmer huts. Having built this new feature you are then allowed to recruit more soldiers to your army.

HeroesWM is not C.O.P.P.A. compliant as the content of their game is mainly based at older members. They do take strides within the game to ensure some safety with their members by having moderators assigned to each chat feature of the game, allowing you to block other users, and also by having chat filters.

From what I noticed, the chat filters do not catch everything. Some cuss words go straight through the filters, while others are caught automatically when posting. If the filter does catch something inappropriate you are given a 15 minute ban from the forums and live chat, but not from the chat in battle.

They also do not have a filter for outside links, with seemed to cause some havoc on the forums. I noticed multiple users spamming referral links to other sites. There are several moderators assigned to monitor the forums alone, so when someone broke the rules a staff member quickly took care of the issue.

Each individual battle can be considered a part of gameplay, but aside from that they also have a card game and a roulette wheel, both of which can earn you gold.

I greatly enjoyed the card game, though I cannot say it is an original idea as I have played relatively the same game on flash game site. The point of the game is to build a castle, demolish the castle of your opponent, or collect resources such as ore and mana. As you play the game you gain points, just like with battling, which in turn increases your game level. The higher your level the longer the game is. When you first start, for example, you must build your castle up to a height of 50, but later on that height increases to 150. You are given a set number of cards; some give you resources, build up your tower, or destroy the tower of your opponent. The game is quite entertaining, and I think I enjoy the card game itself just as much as battling.

Roulette is pretty self-explanatory. You wager 100 gold or more on a certain number, color, etc. The wheel spins every ten minutes and if you win, you receive gold. The amount of gold you receive is based on the odds of winning on that spin. Like with choosing red or black, you have a 50/50 chance, so if you wager 100 gold you would win 200.

The majority of the HeroesWM community is great, though with every site you have your group of older members who are rude to newcomers. When I started my first battle I was at a total loss of what to do, but I quickly found someone to explain things to me, as well as allowing me to win a couple battles against them to get the hang of things. The good part of the community greatly outweighs the bad, which is where the friends list comes in. This is just a simple list of people that you add as friends so that you can easily mail them and view their profile.

I only had to contact a staff member once during my review of HeroesWM, but the staff member quickly replied to my mail and answered all the questions I had. One thing I really appreciated with the site is that you can easily find a staff member list on the forum. That has always been a pet peeve of mine with online sites, never being able to find a staff member if you needed one, but I am glad HeroesWM has this sort of list readily available to the members.