World of Warships (PC)

After leading us into battle in World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, Belarusian developers wargaming.net are now ready to take the fight to the open seas with World of Warships. The beta phase is over, which means it’s anchors aweigh and full steam ahead for this new free-to-play title. So let’s have a look and see if the full launch version of the game really lives up to the expectations from our preview  back in July.

Portside

If you don’t feel like spending any money, there are only two cruisers to choose from at first, which you’ll be able to use for your first few battles. With each engagement, you collect experience points and Credits, which you can use to improve your ships and unlock new ones. The captains you put in charge of your ships also learn from their experience, and can acquire new skills granting you a variety of bonuses.

All available ships are placed within a tech tree divided into four classes with a total of ten different tiers. In addition to swift and agile destroyers, there are versatile cruisers, heavily armed battleships, and last but not least, huge aircraft carriers. Each class has specific strengths and weaknesses.

As you progress up the tech tree, more and more powerful ships become available. At the same time, it takes longer and longer to unlock the next tier, so while you move pretty quickly through the ranks at first, it doesn’t take long for your progress to start flagging.

Captain on the Bridge!

With the heavier and less responsive battleships, it’s really important to plan your routes in advance as far as possible, and to make sure your primary weapons are aligned properly, as it can take a while to adjust them. The long range of the guns can result in shots that take well over ten seconds to reach their targets, meaning that if you want to score a hit over such a long distance, you’re going to have to be good at taking the speed, distance, and bearing of enemy ships into account. The battleship’s heavy guns also have a long loading/cooldown time, so this ship type requires a high degree of precision if you want to use it effectively.

If you pick an aircraft carrier, you’ll have fighters and bombers at your disposal to sink enemy ships. If you launch a torpedo attack with your planes, you have to make sure to attack at the right angle to increase your chances of hitting your target while at the same time avoiding enemy air defenses. At the same time, you’ve got to make sure the carrier itself is always in a safe enough area where it won’t fall victim to attacks by destroyers that manage to get past your team’s forward defenses. You can – and must – also use your fighter squadrons to shoot down enemy aircraft. As you might imagine, aircraft carriers require a high degree of coordination and a good grasp of the big picture.

Destroyers have torpedoes, a very potent weapon, but they have to get really close to the enemy be very effective. They’re also lightly armored, so it doesn’t take very many hits to sink these relatively small attack vessels. However, their small size means that enemy ships can only see them within a distance of seven kilometers, allowing you to sneak up on them. But make sure you always keep an eye on the enemy’s aerial reconnaissance so as to avoid going from predator to prey. If you want to use this class effectively, you’ve got to be able to react quickly in order to achieve a decent firing position without putting yourself in too much danger.

Cruisers are comparable to destroyers in their speed, but they typically have more powerful guns and a wider range. However, they lack the destroyer’s ability to sneak up close to their targets, and they’re also less maneuverable in comparison to their smaller cousins. They also have significantly less firepower and weaker armor than battleships. This makes the cruiser a versatile craft that’s useful for direct fire, air defense, or, in the case of Japanese cruisers, torpedo attacks. If you pick a cruiser, you should be pretty good at predicting the course of a battle in order to determine how your ship can be used most effectively.

Battlestations!

While one game mode has you capturing the enemy base, another one called Conquest mode requires you to take and hold various positions on the map while scoring 1000 points by destroying enemy ships. Of course, you can also win by sinking all the ships on the opposing team.  

Ships are controlled with simple mouse-and-keyboard commands that are pretty easy to learn. A minimap gives you a decent overview of the battle. You can also plot your course on the map, and pressing the [Alt] key gives you information about the distance to whatever enemy you have in your sights, which really helps with targeting and ammo management.

The larger and heavier your ship is, the more sluggishly it moves and the more more slowly it reacts to your commands. The size of the map and the relatively long load times for the guns, combined with ships don’t move very fast as it is, means that the gameplay World of Warships has a surprisingly leisurely pace.

Most battles go pretty much the same way, and the different game modes and maps provide little in the way of variety. While the maps do vary in terms of size, number, and arrangement of the islands that obscure your view and can be used as cover, all battles pretty much follow the same course.

Coordination Within the Fleet

From one battle to the next, ships are randomly reassigned to different teams, which is supposed to ensure that players will be given a new role and will have to coordinate their strategy with their teammates each time they go into battle. This means that a team never gets the chance to figure out an optimal system by trying out different strategies and role distributions and building on experience. All too often the beginning of a match is pure, uncoordinated chaos. And while it’s necessary to discuss tactics with your teammates, there’s no voice chat, requiring you to use text-based chat and signals on the mini-map.  

While you certainly can’t blame the developers for the poor behavior of other players, wargaming.net offers the barest minimum of possibilities when it comes to forming groups. No more than three players are able to stick together on a single team, and there’s absolutely no way to deliberately face off against your friends to see who’s better.

The War Chest

Of course, none of this makes this free-to-play title a pay-to-win one. While premium ships do enjoy a slight advantage over their free counterparts of the same rank, the advantages for paying players are never great enough to mess up the balance of the game in any meaningful way.

On Lookout