World of Warships Officially Launches In Two Weeks

[Fanghawk]

World of Warships Officially Launches In Two Weeks

World of Warships, Wargaming's long-anticipated naval strategy title, officially launches on Sept. 17.

We all knew <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e32014/11722-World-of-Warships-Preview-Fights-on-the-Mighty-Seas>World of Warships' release date was coming in, like a storm on the horizon. You could practically smell it on the waves. (Or make an educated guess <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141424-World-of-Warships-Launches-Global-Open-Beta>when the open beta launched last July.) Now we finally know when Wargaming's naval strategy title will arrive: Sept. 17, 2015. The finished game includes four ship classes, American and Japanese tech trees, and over 80 historical vessels from across the world.

"Based on our Open Beta success with World of Warships, Wargaming is poised to launch our next big game," Head of Global Publishing Fred Menou said in a statement. "With 2 million participants and the average player spending 3 hours a day in game we have an armada of sea captains ready to take the helm of the ultimate naval combat game."

In case you missed our previews, World of Warships is a free-to-play, online wargame bringing World of Tanks gameplay to the open seas. Two teams assemble a fleet based on real-world Cruisers, Destroyers, Battleships, and Aircraft Carriers, and pit them against each other in a battle for supremacy. Wargaming has gone to great lengths to make World of Warships accessible to new and old wargamers alike - and <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/previews/14250-World-of-Warships-Open-Beta-Preview>from what we saw of the beta, it seems to be paying off.

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Like Wargaming's other MMOs, World of Warships is free-to-play with ships that can be earned or purchased in-game. You'll be able to download it from the official site on launch day.

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[mad825]

It "Launches" in the same sense that they just remove the Beta tag despite the revision version clearly indicates it's still in Beta.

World of Tanks hasn't even reached 1.0 yet.

 

[pookie101]

its not a bad game. battle ships and cruisers shooting it out at long range while dangerous destroyers dodge shells trying to get close enough to launch a spread of lethal torpedos and above it all carrier aircraft dogfighting

 

[Kotoriii]

They really need to add the German ship tree soon. Just two nations right now makes the game boring and binary really fast. I seriously thought they would launch the game when more content was added.

 

[Zaydin]

They really need to add the German ship tree soon. Just two nations right now makes the game boring and binary really fast. I seriously thought they would launch the game when more content was added.

The German cruiser line is being added next month, and the Tirpitz is going to be available for purchase around launch time.

 

[Makabriel]

So we can't call it WoW... WoWS?

I liked WoT enough, may give this a shot.

 

[Wiggum Esquilax]

Just limit your expectations, there's still a great deal of balancing to be done.

Low tier Japanese carriers run roughshod over opposing fleets.
Mid tier American cruisers armed with semiautomatic 6" guns fire napalm HE shells incinerating anything.
High tier Japanese destroyers torpedo snipe from behind the protection of cloaking devices.
American carriers are phenomenal if the enemy has plentiful carriers and destroyers, but become liabilities against cruiser heavy teams.
Battleships are at least consistent, in that they all start out terribad, but gradually become competitive by tier 5.

Don't get me wrong, WoWs can be great fun. That said, there's definitely ships that you'll learn to dread, either because they're on the enemy team, or because they're on yours.

 

[Kaymish]

ive been having fun playing WoWS i just unlocked my first carrier but am sick to death of being set on fire all the time its so bad ive main lined all fire suppression skills and equipment mods

 

[Lightspeaker]

Just limit your expectations, there's still a great deal of balancing to be done.

Low tier Japanese carriers run roughshod over opposing fleets.
Mid tier American cruisers armed with semiautomatic 6" guns fire napalm HE shells incinerating anything.
High tier Japanese destroyers torpedo snipe from behind the protection of cloaking devices.
American carriers are phenomenal if the enemy has plentiful carriers and destroyers, but become liabilities against cruiser heavy teams.
Battleships are at least consistent, in that they all start out terribad, but gradually become competitive by tier 5.

Don't get me wrong, WoWs can be great fun. That said, there's definitely ships that you'll learn to dread, either because they're on the enemy team, or because they're on yours.

Yeah, they've been having problems with balancing with carriers in particular since CB.

IJN carriers are fully capable of blowing the living hell out of damn near any ship on the ocean, the bombing capability is utterly insane. But that's IF the bombers can get there. If there is so much as a sniff of US carrier fighter cover at any appreciable interception distance then it does absolutely nothing and there's absolutely no way to compensate for the disparity in fighter capability...IJN fighters just die if you try to interfere with the enemy CAP. On the flip side most US carrier bombing capability comes to little more than a light tickle in comparison to the IJN bombers.

Personally I lay the blame firmly on the relative inability to customise loadout. Back when I played Navyfield a crucial part of learning to Captain a CV was picking appropriate pilots and balancing your loadout right. If you were playing a nation with weaker fighters then you could tweak and adjust. Either cutting bombers for more fighters to allow you to flood and overwhelm superior enemy fighters or to just accept the relative weakness of your fighters an drop them for a bigger bomber loadout (or even a bombers-only loadout; rarely advised, but fun sometimes). The point is you had options to allow you to try different ways of playing to compensate.

In WoWS you're fixed to specific loadouts. You can't take extra fighter pilots and aircraft to overwhelm your opponent's stronger aircraft, for example, you can only pick from the loadouts available. Which typically means in the US case taking as many fighter squadrons as possible and in the IJN case just taking as full a strike package as possible because your fighters are less than worthless if there's a US CV in the game. And if there isn't and its just all IJN CVs then it just becomes a game of "hunt the CV" to get a first strike to wipe out an enemy carrier before they get one of yours.

Fun game but by the gods they really need to rework how carrier loadouts are setup. Or fix the relative balancing between fighters and bombers for the two nations.


Also you'd have thought they'd have done something about the "firestorm" effect of fast firing guns with HE by now. :-\