You like surfing the web, right? I bet you also enjoy playing games, don’t you? What if I told you there was now a way to do both at the same time. Enter WebLords: Shattered Domains, the video game that allows you to battle for control of your favorite websites. I got the chance to get some hands on time with WebLords, and while I can’t claim to be queen of the Internetz just yet, I will say the game is intriguing.

WebLords, created by Electric Bat Interactive, is a layered-reality game, or LRG. Essentially the game is housed in a toolbar you download for your browser of choice and then you visit your favorite websites as you normally do. By hitting the “battle” button on your WebLords toolbar, you are transported to a tactical battle screen where you fight over dominion of that particular website. For example, let’s say you’re here, on MMOSite.com. You begin the “battle” and find out that there is someone who has already claimed the website and is defending it. You lay out your units on the battlefield, wait for the timer to count down, and then the units battle it out to see who wins or loses. If you win the match, the website is yours, and it is your job to defend MMOSite.com against any oncoming challengers.

Once you take control of a website, you also gain the resources that website contains. Larger sites seems to have more resources, and are thus more valuable. I suppose this is one way to keep people from building their empires using sites like Joeschmoeslawnmower.com. Once you begin collecting resources you can start expanding your empire. By hitting the appropriately named “Empire” button on the WebLords toolbar, you are taken to your empire’s home screen, and you can start building structures that will enable you to upgrade units you have and start creating new units. As you play the game you also level and equip your hero, the avatar that represents you in battle. Although I wasn’t sure exactly how the hero interacts with the gameplay, it was fun to be able to equip the shiny new armor I received whenever I won a battle.

WebLords has a distinctly Travian feel. It’s a game designed to be played over the course of a workday, something you tab back to between meetings and conference calls. While you can play on your own, the only real way to survive is to ally yourselves with powerful players. I imagine this is the sort of game that would rely heavily on clan systems. And despite being hailed as a new genre in gaming, WebLords still appears to most closely correlate with the slow time RTS’s like Travian. What Travian has that WebLords does not have is a sense of completion. WebLords, although interesting in premise, has no ultimate goal. You gain power and supremacy over various websites, but from what I can tell that doesn’t actually get you anything. Without an end goal in some shape or form, the game ends up getting less interesting the more you play.

Currently there doesn’t seem to be a distinct level or ranking system in the game, leading to uneven battles where one side gets crushed and is left without the resources to rebuild. You see, once your units are all killed off in battle and you lose control of websites, you’re left with nothing with which to work with – you’re up an online creek without a virtual paddle. Perhaps there are strategies – or perhaps the aforementioned clan system – that would enable you to recover from grueling defeats, but as it stands now the game sort of feeds the rich and starves the poor.

Now if WebLords implements even a rudimentary matchmaking system, that would be something else entirely. If I knew, for instance, when I logged into start a battle, that my opponent was level 115 and I was at level 3, I might be more inclined to move onto an easier match. Suddenly joeschmoelawnmower.com isn’t looking so bad.

Ultimately, would I recommend WebLords? Definitely. There’s a clear market out there for PvP games, as we’ve seen on a variety of Facebook games out there. They call this a Power Casual game, and I can see how it would work for those who have the time and personal resources to play a game like this. In fact, it might do well if it were tied to the Facebook friend system, as it is that sort of network that is required to compete in a game like this. In the end though, WebLords is not my cup of tea. I was much more interested in the Empire building, and the leveling of a hero, two aspects that take a decidedly back seat to the PvP battles. Granted, this game is still in development, but as it stands now, I think I’ll just remain queen of my own blog. It’s safer that way.