Greetings & Salutations Comrades!
So, ‘Wargaming.net’ has been on a role these last few years with hits like World Of Tanks, World Of Warplanes, and World Of Tanks:Blitz. It seems like it was only a matter of time before ‘Wargaming’ would decide to take MMO gaming to the high seas and within a year after World Of Tanks:Blitz was released in 2013, World Of Warships entered a Global Alpha phase. Originally titled ‘World Of Battleships’, it is certainly intended to be the final piece in the world of war trilogy created by the company. As of March 12th of this year, closed beta testing had begun upon completion of the closed alpha testing and as of April 9th, pre-order packages that included premium warships and access to the closed beta test had become available for purchase by players.
I was fortunate enough to have been in attendance at a presentation conducted by representatives of wargaming.net at PAX 2014 and caught an early preview of the game.
As a fan of the previous games (I fight battles for at least 1 hour a day 5 days a week in World Of Tanks:Blitz), I can tell you that from the preview alone ‘World Of Warships’ most definitely measures up to the previous games and I believe will also surpass them overall. As with the previous games, the battles will take place in a variety climates and locations including the Arctic, Atlantic, and the Pacific. It appears that changing weather patterns will be included as well adding a whole new ‘difficulty’ factor to the game. The ships appearing in the game will come from the U.S. Navy, the Soviet Navy, Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the Japanese Imperial Navy, and the Kriegsmarine. The Regia Marina (The Royal Navy Of The Kingdom Of Italy) and the Marine nationale (the National Navy of France) will also be featured. The brief glimpse I caught of the game at PAX involved an aircraft carrier and a battleship and as near as I could tell, use of the aircraft carrier does indeed include use of the ships onboard compliment of fight and bomber aircraft! Destroyers and cruisers are also slated to be featured in the game.
However, submarines and torpedo boats will NOT be included.
(Personally, I’m hoping that ‘Wargaming’ will surprise us down the road and create a while separate submarine game) Players will also be able to form divisions and fight as teams like the platoons in ‘World Of Tanks’ and the flights in ‘World Of Warplanes’.
Battles will be conducted with 3 possible goals:
- Destroying the enemy completely
- Capturing the enemy base
- Protecting a specific locationBattle damage will be based upon two factors the success percentage experience from the crew to deal with fires and injuries plus the survival rate and performance of the crew as a whole.As of now, there is no set release date other than late 2015 for PC so we won’t be manning our battle stations for sometime. You can catch videos of the tests on YouTube.
