World of Warships Test – First Impressions

Posted on by

So, I got a key to the WoWs weekend (many thanks Io36 and Dom1n) to try out the first official non-alpha-tester client and decided to try it out. Before we start however… I’d love to tell you about the graphics and mechanics and make a video, but I can’t, because there’s apparently a NDA. Hell, I didn’t sign any NDA! But okay, whatever, enjoy this generic picture of some ship instead of ingame screenies – and my description :)

Personally, I never followed WoWs too closely and stopped following it around the time of Gamescom (and afterwards, with that leaked footage and all that). The reason for my drop of interest was the lack of official gameplay footage – the fact that WG kept releasing these Q&A’s without actually showing what on earth are they talking about annoyed me. Plus, there’s one more thing – I am not that big of a fan of ships. Probably has something to do with the fact that I live in central Europe, known for its distinctive lack of seas (as far as I remember, Czechoslovakia ever only had one warship and that was only a large patrol boat or something).

But why I am writing this: I assume that some people, who are alpha testers (hell, I know a couple myself) will read this and will shake their heads at me not knowing things they take for granted. Well guys, this is how an average Joe Player will approach the game. I mean, there aren’t THAT many ship fans around. Ship games are (and always were) a gaming niche and it cannot be expected for this product to be successful, should only ship fans play it.

And one last thing – I do completely and fully realized this is essentially still an alpha (as in, not even beta). I will take it into account in my comments.

Anyway, to World of Warships.

The installation of the client was smooth and went fine. The PC requirements of the client are actually higher than those of WoT, which is surprising to me, since the only thing you see in the game are the sea, a couple of bare islands and the ships. Maybe the amount of polygons on the ships plays a role? Oh well. Logged in… and there’s the hangar. Or port. Whatever. Took me a while to set the graphics correctly (the game did put everything to minimum for some reason, which is not something I’d expect on a relatively new PC), but no matter.

PC requirements (sorry, using Russian screenshots, but I guess it’s understandeable, the right side means recommended):

c1izsW1ODwQ

So, basically you start with two ship – Japanese and American one. And from that point on, it’s like WoT. Only there are no crews (yet, I assume) and everything in the port, the UI I mean, is very streamlined and nice. I really like the WoWs UI. Sure, many elements are probably missing yet, but it’s easy to use and orientate in. Me gusta! On the other hand, the music is very generic and I switched it off immediately.

Each ship has a bunch of modules, that basically improve its performance, from the number and caliber of guns to speed, maneuverability and (that’s new) range of fire. What I discovered later on (after a few battles) was that there is a system of player progression – for example, you don’t start in random battles straight away (as in WoT), you play coop against bots on tier 1 and THEN, after you gather a few battles you are allowed to join the PvP randoms. Otherwise, not much else to see there I’d say, so I just went on and clicked the big shiny “battle” button.

The gameplay

I played a few battles. After three or four or so, I was ready to write a real hatched job, because let me tell you, I HATED the game. But I had a break, a cup of tea and after five minutes of silently repeating the “it’s an alpha” mantra to myself over and over, I returned and it didn’t turn out so bad in the end.

Basically, it’s like WoT – same format, roughly the same UI, same goals (two teams of ships, bases etc.). Only on tier 1 it takes you five minutes to reach the enemy. I shit you not, five fucking minutes. I guess this is what would happen with tanks if the player-requested “REALLY BIG MAPZ” came through. Luckily, the controls are very simple – you go forward, you turn left and right and there’s a “reverse gear” too. Gunnery… I don’t know. Without too many details, it’s something like the “battle assistant” arty mod. Quite intuitive and easy to grasp.

But what I really hated is the graphics. Yes, it’s an alpha, but why bother making the ship textures so low resolution? This is made worse by the fact that the default view that you start the game with has the camera positioned somewhere above the frontal deck and frontal turret, which looks about the same as in WoT on low details. I REALLY hope this is just the alpha version and that this improves. Sure, epic gameplay doesn’t require epic graphics – we all know that (I still think the old Balur’s Gate II is one of the best games ever made), but the problem is, if you spend first three to five minutes of every battle just staring at your ship’s lowres turret with rectangular gun (low polygon count) after playing Dragon Age Inquisition on full details… it just kicks you right in the teeth. The sea looks like made from plastic and the worst part of the graphics is the gunfire. Have you seen the movie “Battleship” with its cool effets? Well, WoWs is NOTHING like it. WoWs has this “poof” thing, like a small wisp of black smoke when firing. The explosions don’t throw debris around, ramming has no effect (the ships just “bump” into each other).

I really, really hope this is really some sort of “alpha” graphics and they seriously (and I mean seriously) improve this aspect of the game. I’ve seen two maps (they really look the same to me – which is understandeable I guess), they are both just a set of bare islands. Very minimalistic (okay, on maximum details I hoped at least for a bunch of trees). By the way the screenshot above? The game looks in effect much worse – there’s a reason there’s apparently a ban on screenshots.

With that being said, after a few more battles, I think I got the basics and the gameplay is actually surprisingly relatively good (in contract with the graphics annoyance). There’s nothing really fancy or hard to understand about it (although I do suspect it’s much more difficult to master). You simply sail your ship and you shoot stuff with guns or torpedos (the test covers only destroyers, cruisers and battleships). Hitting someone is actually not that hard (you aim via “sniper mode”, which has a stabilization, eg. doesn’t sway and it also “follows” your target – hard to explain, but it’s a VERY cool feature). Navigation in 2D space is not that hard (was a huge problem for me with WoWp), but you really have to be careful where you are going, because if you stop, you are totally fucked and everyone will shoot you. My newbie mistake was not seeing where I am going in the sniper mode and I twice or three times ran into an island, because I spent all my time in sniper mode.

There are two (I think?) modes in the test – basically random battles and some sort of “encounter”, where you capture some zones. In general terms they work fine. Dodging the torpedos, seeing where you are going and shooting stuff is pretty difficult actually. Oh and one more thing, these modes have this REALLY annoying weird voice announcing events in the game (like when someone starts capping), it sounds like the announcer from Unreal Tournament or something. I hope that’s a placeholder, because it sounds totally out of place in a ship game.

One map has these fog zones, it’s exactly what you suspect it is – you disappear with them, it’s like WoT bushes on sea. Actually, speaking of disappearing, that’s another thing I did not like. WoWs has what I assume is something like the WoT spotting system with all its advantages and issues – namely, ships disappear. You are tracking a cruiser 9 kilometers away from you and is suddenly simply vanishes. I haven’t figured out what the rules for that are, but yes, it happens. Oh and there’s one really cool thing – the big map. It’s perfect. I wish we had that in WoT, because it really helps you to orientate. Good stuff.

As for the movement of the ships – well, I was on a sea ship only once in my entire life, so I am hardly an expert – but as far as I can tell, the ships are moving much faster than their declared speed (logical, as real life ship speeds would make for a very poor battle). The faster ships (upgraded tier 2 Japanese) however feel almost like racing motorboats, the acceleration is outrageous. I guess that’s a design decision, can’t really argue with that, this game is NOT a simulator or anything. However, the speed of some of the ships is still quite low (especially the heavier ones), which – in combination with large maps – leads to one effect: if you choose where to go poorly in the start, not only will you not have time to switch sides, but if you run into enemy lemming train, you are totally screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it (it’s like going with a Maus along and running into an entire pack of Maus heavies), which is especially annoying after 5 minutes of just sailing forward.

Conclusion

Despite all that, as I said, the gameplay is generally simple and okay. The game will definitely not be just for “ship fans”, the fact it’s so easy to control will make it accessible to everyone. But… after spending like 20 battles in the game or so, my feeling from the test is… I don’t know… blandness. It’s neither the joy I felt when I started with World of Tanks, nor the way I was repulsed by War Thunder tanks or WoWp. It’s… nothing. The battles are fine, but they won’t make your blood boil (this is where really good graphics would help a lot). One thing I can appreciate is that the developers learned from WoT and it’s obvious they gave some mechanisms a lot of thought (that “tracking” in sniper mode for example).

If I was to name three things that need to improve before release, I would definitely name the graphics, the “disappearing” of ships (sometimes it looks quite odd) and perhaps the speed of the battles (spending too much time just sailing around is boring for someone used to WoT battle times). I do not see any inherent flaws in the design, only things that can (and should) be improved. Upon release, this could actually be a pretty good game.

With that being said however, I really cannot see this game to be any huge commercial success. It’s certainly better than Warplanes, but to become the next company flag-bearer? No. I think it’ll be a niche thing, something many WoT players will try out, but will return to WoT (or other games) after a while.

But then, I haven’t seen the aircraft carriers yet, that should be interesting :)

149 thoughts on “World of Warships Test – First Impressions”

  1. Met you in 2 games last night SS but unfortunately couldn’t sink you since we were on the same team. ;)
    The fog thing is a destroyer ability like repairs.

      • SS, IMO, it’s “trap” from the devs.
        They don’t show the best of their job before the beta.
        Remember how WG talked for monthes about Havok and promished tons of things? and then Gajin released it first? (Absolutely no link between WG promises and Gajin reaction. Lol.)
        Devs know Gajin employees are watching their job and don’t want such stuff to happen again.

        • Well, its exactly opposite: Gaijin did it first, then WG scared about this, promised a Havok and better graphic.

          • Nah, Gajin did it after WG announcement. But could’ve talked about it before too – I don’t follow their dev diaries and stuff.

            Also, on the topic. The start is little sluggy in WoWs. But as soon as I got to 3+ levels I liked the game more than WoT). It’s actually rather deep.

        • “WG talked for monthes about Havok and promished tons of things? and then Gajin released it first?”

          Could have sworn that’s only for minor items that have crumble physics and shooting buildings still isn’t viable

          Then again, I haven’t seen WT players on youtube that are willing to try and shoot through buildings

      • remember… ‘it’s just an alpha …’ was the exact same thing everyone said before World of Warplanes went to beta….

        then many people silently cried. They both smell of the same shiny crappy models that barely works in WOT and seem to fails miserably when let out of bigworld.

      • lol, a lot of people would have!

        but as far as wows goes, i doubt im gonna be a fan, i mean, i rage at wt regularly about historical inaccuracy (well, for the aircraft), and wows looks like even more arcade than wot. i dont dislike wot because i knew nothing about tank combat before playing it. air and naval combat im an enthusiast about, thus i very torn between the great performance and terrible historical accuracy for the wt British line. but hey, i may give wows a go, if when we public people (not alpha testers) can get into it again.

  2. for me,, it’s not that bad,, i like although the smokescreen tend to making me rage,, control is simple,, whenever you start you need to plan your route,, well,, i enjoy using Kongou for some reason,, the aiming,, 17km,, hell i can’t do that in WoT,, even that nice 8 shells salvo that sink enemies Haku,, about the RNG,, nahhh,, it’s INSANE long range after all,, tend to miss,, and about the credit,, well,, you see,, sinking your tier 5 is like using tier 10 tank with no hit,, and getting killed too

    anyway,, the torpedo bulge didn’t do much,, even it’s only one torpedo

  3. For an early Alpha its much better than WoWp ever was. Also this is mostly a stress test.

    Carriers add a lot of depth do the game: Cruisers’ AA capabilities come into play. Destroyers become more important with an extra valuable target to hunt. Battleships gain a powerful enemy – torpedo planes and bombers. Though carrier gameplay itself is a bit meh at the moment, bit like WoT arty – which I never liked.

    Still, with CVs added into the mix the game becomes much more hectic and pace picks up a bit quicker than WOT (but never quite reaches that level).

    Also pace heavily depends on the class, destoryers see much more action than slower ships. In general and unlike WOT changing ship class is like playing a totally different game.

    • With the range of the current japanese battleship Kongo, you get action right from the start, load, snipe targets at 18km+/-(into enemy spawn)

      • To make this game sing there needs to be proper missions on large maps lasting at least half an hour not just as series of sand pit games. Certainly for the higher tiers.

  4. I really like the game, graphics indeed are a bit crappy especially in the port. Nice that I met you in game SS

  5. The game is not even feature complete and you tear it apart based on graphics and polish, which comes last in any games development cycle…

  7. They will never achieve the success of WoT and while ambitious of them to attempt land , air and sea titles…Its really not working out is it. Land took off and was a big success and a trend setter, Air cashed in a burning ruin..and sea I can’t say but it will not reach the success of tanks…. Plus personally ships are really boring to me…and slow… and an open sea is not much of a tactical map.

    But WG is invested and in progress, so they cannot somehow cancel WoWs and focus all effort on making WoT better.

    Which is why they have to go to the next step….OPEN WORLD TANK MMO’s!

    • “Which is why they have to go to the next step….OPEN WORLD TANK MMO’s!”

      You mean the first step. It’s called WWIIOnline, which btw you wouldn’t like particularly the ancient graphics. You can down load it and try it offline but there is a f2play version if you really want to get pwned.

  8. Ship games used to be much bigger, mostly submarines, but got backstabbed by developers and publishers a few years ago. Namely “Silent Hunter 5″.

    The Silent Service and Silent Hunter game series were pretty epic for the last 20 years or so. They catered both simulationists and casual “I wanna torpedo the Bismarck”-types, by allowing you to set your difficulty from casual to simulation. In Silent Hunter 3 you were able to turn off all helpers, had to really calculate torpedo solutions with a silhouette book to identify targets, check for flags to not shoot allies, etc. Or you just turned your weapons officer on and told him to use his brain. The german campaign from SH3 was completly open from 1939-1945, with ports and nation affiliation changing according to history. Silent Hunter 4 made you play the muricans from Pearl Harbor to Tokio, supported by gorgeous mission briefings. Both games were heavily supported by huge mods, of which some are still being developed further (“Living SH3″, for example).

    Then Silent Hunter 5 came in 2010 and it was a total disaster. An unfinished, DRM-infested joke that earned nothing but hatred from the fans. Ever since I haven’t seen another big ship game.

      • 東京 is variously spelled Tôkyô, Tokyo, Tokio etc. in different languages and romanization systems.

        • It’s NEVER pronounced “Tokio”. Tokio can be a name for a person, but it’ll never point to the city.

          It’s about as stupid as trying to justify “kamakazi” as “variously spelled in different languages and Romanization systems”.

    • Silent Hunter 1-3 series remains my favourite method of spending hours slogging across a wide open sea, desperately trying to catch an oil tanker or troop ship. Genuinely needing to use your brain to work out how to get in amongst the convoy in a decent firing position, only to get pinged by a destroyer and spend half an hour lurking on the bottom, eventually surfacing to find yourself all alone.

      Similarly, MS Combat Flight Simulator has yet to be surpassed by War Thunder (let’s not mention WoWp), although the whole engine seems oddly similar to CFS.

      • One of the newest big games with ships is battlestation pacific which is great game (not simulator)

    • Yeah,SH games were great also the Battlestations games are good and i hope WoWs will become something like new MMO version of Battlestations:Pacific(still hope they will add subs)

  9. I’d hate to be “THAT” guy, but everything in here is in violation of the NDA.
    SS, i’d recommend that you go to the world of warships forums,
    look for, Rock, Paper, Scissors Test Weekend then Announcements.
    Divulging any information on gameplay is breaking the NDA.

      • When you got a key and input it with your account, you had to read an EULA, that EULA was the NDA and the conditions and consequences of breaking it. One of those was up to a $100,000 fine.
        When you input your key, it says (and i quote)
        “Activating Your Key
        After you’ve run the gauntlet and secured your key, it’s time to head to the link below and follow the directions! Please keep in mind that there is a non-disclosure agreement and an embargo on any media impressions or reviews at this time.”
        Under that there is the “activate you key” button where you input your key and “sign” the NDA.
        Want more proof? http://worldofwarships.com/en/news/common/rock-paper-scissor-test-weekend/
        http://worldofwarships.com/en/content/docs/user_agreement/

        • Yeah because they are really going to be able to enforce $100,000 fines. Other than banning their NDA is junk and unenforceable.

          • An NDA is a legal contract, on equal terms with any other legal binding contract. Breaking it and causing intellectual property damage is punishable by law in every country, and fines are common place in those punishments. Their “junk” NDA could very well cause SS big problems if something is done. I’m just warning him of what’s possible.

            • An NDA is not a legally binding contract and neither EULAs, ToS’ or whatever else you’d call them have any legal value. Did you sign your name anywhere on them? Did you even identify yourself in a legally valid manner (passport, driver’s license)? No, you did not.

              WG also cannot fine you anything because they are not a government agency, they are a foreign business. They can attempt to sue you in the very worst cases (eg. the guys leaking to FTR) but it’s still entirely up to local laws and legal practices if they’d get anything from you. A youtube vid with 50 views and 5 subsribers will be laughed right out of court because they still have to prove you did 100k in damage to their image, work and so on. There are also some inherent problems in giving out random keys on 3rd party websites and expecting that a person being able to navigate menus requiring 4th grade English would also be able to understand English at a legal contractual level. They can and will ban your account, though.

              Someone like SS could get in trouble but that’s only if he leaks it here on FTR, being a mass medium of sorts (same reason why the FTR vid guys got sued). Showing your friends screenshots or upping a youtube vid with no views and basically no subs is a different ballpark entirely.

  10. Those KanColle fags, I mean fans, would fap at the very thought of seeing their treasured Jap ships on a WoT like manner. WoWS gonna have very limited stability thanks to those nerds.

    As for the texture… it’s always been WG’s weaker side, their bad texturing of 3d models, together with terrible music and sound… and obviously their development team haven’t played Assassin’s Creed Black Flag before cause if they did, they would be able to put excitement in to the ship to ship engagement.

  11. i still don’t have a clue when to use HE or AP

    also i just found a 5p on the floor thing are looking up for davo

    • AP for long range since it can penetrate the deck armor,, deck armour is one of the ship weakspot (hell it will be easier to beat the crap out of british battlecruiser using long range plunging shells) and HE for close combat (0-5 or 6 km depend on the gun),, since AP can’t do anything against those armor belt

      • The exact opposite of what the guy above wrote.
        HE at long range, AP at short range like 3km and aim for waterline.

        • well you can hit the engine compartement but it still hard,, i prefer to hit the area near the smokestack with HE since it can disable the secondary gun (seriously,, it’s annoying),, sometime it can damage the engine,, and btw,, 11k damage on a unlucky Haku from 18km away with long range plunging fire

  12. If you compare WoT closed beta graphics and current WoT graphics, this game looks decent for an alpha version.

  13. damn 3rd time i tried to play this game just hangs on the Big Race loading screen. What am i not doing right? My pc is more than enough for this and i got fiber internet.

  14. NDA is meaningless if you don’t sign it. Even ticking a box is meaningless because they have just cut and pasted what seems to be an alpha NDA in which you must state your name and details.

    • You must be new to the world of Wargaming.net where they make the rules, they enforce the rules, they are the appeal court.

      Being legally right carries no weight when WG delete your account.

    • I am one, and i must say you cant really compare it 2D vs 3D but i will try:
      (Havent played BBs jet only CL and DD)

      1. Its much more of a slugfest than NF you need like 60+ Hits to take out a CL.
      2. In NF there always was a Battleline and people used their range, here i cant see anyone using his range.
      3. In the moment you dont loose HPs for ramming an Island
      4. When you ram an enemy, you and him take dmg, like in Wot, not like in NF when you just pass through. Havent seen friendly ram dmg yet.

      Better to compare it to Battlestations Midway.

      • you do lose HP if you ram an island, you just don’t lose very much unless you got at top speed. I lost 30% (5000) hp when I ran my cruiser into an iceberg at top speed…

      • I love taking 13km+ shots with my Kongo battleship, getting closer is something I try to avoid, especially those pesky destroyers. D: Range is a big target’s best friend.

      • Nope, it can’t, dx9 requires state validation while rendering, in dx11 most of the state validation is on loading times and also requires less work to do the same stuff

  19. “It’s neither the joy I felt when I started with World of Tanks”

    Well said SS. And that is KEY ASPECT. If an alpha or beta makes your extremly “thirsty” for the next battle, tank, etc that means SUCCESS.

    And that was exactly what World of Tanks did to hundreds of thousands and then millions of players. Alpha started it nicely but then beta hooked the sht out of people It got them sucked in!

    Like i always said from the beginning : this game is a waste of money and an epic fail. Imagine if all the WoWS modelers were put instead to work on HD tanks.

  20. “I really cannot see this game to be any huge commercial success.”

    I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it will take a long time before making any small success in Europe: at the moment only American and Japanese Navy have been implemented, and they announced next will be Soviet Stronk Navy which I suspect it will be total bullshit because they have to appeal russians and we all know that russians love when historical accuracy says they’re stronger than anyone, but still I don’t know how big is (and can be) their interest in battleships anyway. On the other hand you have some other nations in which the Navy has a bigger history behind their backs (doesn’t actually matters how well or badly they performed during WWII, I’m talking from a cultural point of view), but I hardly see the Royal Navy or the Regia Marina implemented before two-thousand-never, which could act as a drivetrain in Europe even if they’re relatively small audience pools.

      • Kriegsmarine had a great battleship, and its uboats made history (too bad they’re not in the game ;) ) but I don’t really recall any important naval history in its past, while England built a global empire with their navy, which can leave a more deep trace inside one nation’s culture, thus improving the chances of finding a potentially interested audience.

        Anyway the point remains: the principal European branches (Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, and Regia Marina) were ignored from the start, by the devs and so Europe will do the same with this game.

            • “before they enter beta”
              they might add more nations during beta, before launch.

                • The French navy is planned too, there are supposed to be 5 nations when it enters beta.

                • Five nations means, U.S.A., Japan, CCCP, England, and France? No Germany, nor Italy? *sigh* Hope they get into the game before the final relase.

                • 5 nations when it enters CLOSED beta, nothing says they won’t add it during the CBT phase.

                  5 nations at CBT tells us how far away that is…

          • German navy is not just the Kiegsmarine, in WW1 it’s the German High Seas Fleet, it was huge, fought the Battle of Jutland, and frankly, I am very much looking forward the the ships if the German Battleline. The Austro-Hungarian Navy, and the South American Dreadnoughts.

            Truth is though, the American and Japanese Navies are the two best choices to start with. WG got it right.
            Appy

        • Bismarcks were overrated. You seem to be forgetting something big. Remember that the biggest battleship fight ever was between the UK and Germany.

    • National release order as we know it is:
      Currently: USA & Japan
      Then:Russia, UK, Germany then either Italy or France, with the later coming after it.
      When they will come has not been confirmed.

  21. For me, the biggest reason why I can’t bring myself to like WoWp/WT planes and WoWs is the lack of sense of mobility. When you are in plane up in the air, the terrain below you moves very slowly and you just don’t feel the speed. The only moments where I felt truly “fast” were during dogfighting. As for WoWs, the ships are simply sluggish, it takes an eternity to go anywhere and because the terrain on which you move is almost empty water you don’t even feel that you are moving. A half a minute to turn the ship and complete ridiculous reverse speed makes the gameplay rather slow and uneventful. Also, I can’t come up with any tactics in this game expect “go forward, spot enemy, turn you side to them, smash LPM for a few minutes, win/lost”. You cannot reverse into cover, you cannot flank, hell, with aircraft present you won’t be even able to camp. What can you do? Serious question, I got the Weekend Test access but I got no enjoyment from this game whatsoever.

    • I can flank just fine in my destroyers and I’ve never found the need to reverse into cover.
      You should try something else than the battleships.

      • Was playing cruisers, aren’t they supposed to have medium mobility? Maybe I will try to research some destroyers.

        No need to reverse into cover? Then what do you do when going around an island and meeting a fat battleship happily spamming everything it has at you?

        • I observe to make sure that I don’t run into a fat battleship. and if I do run into one, i certainly don’t have time to kill my forwards momentum and reverse into cover before he oneshots me. Your best bet is to try to close the gap, torpedo him and hope he goes down.

      • No, they are not. But tell me, HOW are the ships supposed to play? Because, honestly, I have no idea at all.

        • Not like arty like I see people do… I see more people stopping and starting to reverse every time they get hit or camp at max range with their battleships while the enemy team caps.

      • How is it not a clone?
        WG sees this sort of F2P model works and they decide to go along with it, only expanding the vehicle selection.
        The core tetris complexity of the gameplay remains in all 3 World of “X” games.

        The fact here is that WarGaming =/= World of Tanks, therefore they CAN make clones of it. Which is exactly what other companies are trying to do as well.
        And they all suck at it.

      • no?
        this is world of swiming tanks
        and the other is world of flying tanks

        they are mostly the same because tanks in wot doesnt behave like tanks, planes in wowp or ships here :P

    • This isn’t a WoT clone… I’m in the beta weekend… It has the same concept but the gameplay is very interesting…. It certainly is different.

      • Because World of WarSHIPS is World of TANKS clone….Logic over 9000 :D
        Like saying table is copy of chair – it too has the same concept :D

  24. Seriously SS, if the client size was 5gb bigger because of high res textures you’d be complaining about how long it takes to download the whole thing.

  25. I’d just like to say that ramming does indeed make stuff happens, it just seems to be toned down for teammates. I ran my 1% hp ship into an 40% hp enemy ship and both of us sank, combined with the kill messages “xCaptainObviousx sank by XXX”, “XXX sank by xCaptainObviousx”

  27. Hungary – another landlocked country in central Europe – actually had an admiral as their head of state before/during WW2.

  29. i went just 2 battles, but i really like it :) i dont care of graph, im playing min. in wot aswell, so i focused on the gameplay, and i really really like it, but im no a warshipfan :))

  30. please read at the bottom of the page, you are breaking NDA by posting this stuff.
    http://worldofwarships.com/en/news/common/rock-paper-scissor-test-weekend/
    After you’ve run the gauntlet and secured your key, it’s time to head to the link below and follow the directions! Please keep in mind that there is a non-disclosure agreement and an embargo on any media impressions or reviews at this time.

    http://worldofwarships.com/en/content/docs/user_agreement/

    if you don’t want to get into trouble, i suggest that you take this down before you get ban from wows

  31. This is a Direct Breach of the Non-Disclosure Agreement That you, and every other tester who has signed up for This game so far whether it Be Alpha or Weekend Beta Tester, Has Signed.

    Please refrain from talking about gameplay or really about anything from the game unless you’re on sanctioned Warships forum sections such as the Beta Weekenders Section, or Alpha Section., or the Official Alpha TS.

    I’m a bit upset that you would break the NDA so blatantly, SS.
    GGWP $100,000

  32. funny how WG gets all the non-gamers e.g people that only game in life was WoT to play their other shitty games, and be excited about crap graphics… and this is their niche to get all those millions non-gamers to play their fascist/communist (chose your historic retardness) game. nice.

  33. The only ship games I ever played were the Silent Hunter series. I love commanding a submarine, having to use stealth to strike. If they won’t introduce subs in WoW, I’m not gonna even try it.

    Besides, AW beta is supposed to be a few months away, I’m gonna wait for this one and then completely forget WoT ever existed. Like deleting a bad chapter from my life.

    • How do you want to use stealth in 15 vs 15 battle? You are spotted all the time unless you are deep under water or on the edge of the map, everyone targets you primarily.

      Seriously, subs don’t have anything to do with encounters like WoWs offers.

      • I said “The only ship games I ever played were the Silent Hunter series. I love commanding a submarine, having to use stealth to strike.”

        After that I said “If they won’t introduce subs in WoW, I’m not gonna even try it.”

        What part of that you don’t understand ? Are you capable of reading and understanding english or you’re just trolling around ?

  34. Incidentally just today SideStrafe posted alpha test footage of “Naval action” sail ship game. It seems like developers see a market potential for ship arcade/simulator games.

    • That video got me interested and then I bought it after I saw Garbad in the forums was going for it. I always liked sailing ships; Archeage also has naval battles.

      Hopefully there is no arty.

  35. “Generic picture of some ship” Yeah, right, don’t tell me you don’t notice something HIGHLY unusual with that ship… namely the 3 gun turret being ABOVE the 2-gun turret. HARDLY generic in that sense (not some minor thing like superstructure shape either…).

    IIRC that should be a Pensacola-class cruiser… checks wikipedia… it is!

    • Yep. Bad idea from a topweight perspective but made sense for that fine cruiser hull. Treaty cruisers are odd ducks.

  36. seriously though SS…. with your standards of expectation Im reallly clueless why you are still playing wot.. graphics is fine to me, maybe a hardware bug on your rig… gameplay is great though.. cant really judge from playing tier2… in wot a mere thought about tier1-4 makes me sick… the real action comes from carrying tier 6-10.. i was still able to get some really cool looking battles that i enjoyed the hell out of and unfortunately today i also got full “siema” teams

  38. Haven’t tried it yet.I still hope it is a good game.

    No offence SS,but your WT review was complete crap,so I can’t really take your world on it. I’ve seen some videos on YouTube and the game looks fine,the graphics are definitely not near as bad as you complained.

  40. Perhaps WG needs an ‘outside’ studio like WG Seattle (formerly Gas Power Games) to make something to stand up to WoT in popularity? WG seems to be a bit of a one-hit wonder, despite the massive profits they have made, they’ve been incapable of making another hit.

  42. the long setup is fine IMO, then again I am a simple being, I do not feel as though instant engagement is necessary, the barebones feel lets me gauge for myself, and leaves a bit more for experimentation, clunky, but charming :D

    hopefully we don’t get gun dispersion and the stupids from WoWP CBT, they basically ruined the game after alpha ;-;

  43. I could see some of the videos people is uploading to Youtube, and it looks promising.

    A couple of things are really stupid (the map cluttered with small islands, ships sailing backwards), but in general I liked what I was watching.

    I wonder if WG will encourage the “flotilla” aspect (as opposed to platoons in WoT) of naval warfare, since the number of potential users is far lower than WoT, in my opinion. A coordinated three-ship formation could be devastating in a random game of 8vs8.

    I wish I could have got a code to test it.

    • I just watched another video where the combat was 12vs12 . I guess that maximum will be 15vs15 like in WoT, right?

  44. I always dreamed about playing the Yamato class ships and I surely will give it a shot. Also I sevretly hope that in the end there will be the Royal navy introduced at the start or very shortly after.

  45. When are you halfwits going to stop referring to Britain as England. It’s like referring to the USA as Missouri or Germany as Bavaria.

    • If you are going to be pedantic the sovereign state is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or the UK for short.

  46. “Only on tier 1 it takes you five minutes to reach the enemy. I shit you not, five fucking minutes.”

    Into the trash it goes.

    • Slight exaggeration there and it depends on team deployments, also you get out of T1 after one game or two if you are really unlucky, from tier 2-3 shells start flying pretty fast because ships get longer and longer max range on guns

      • So lemme see here now, 5 minutes is a “slight” exaggeration, what are we talking about 4 minutes in actual time?
        Hooboy lemme hold onto my socks lest they fly off my feet.

        And “you get out of T1 after 1 or 2 games if your unlucky”, what point is there even having it them?

        Into the lake of fire it goes.