World of Warships Launch Event: What's Next for Wargaming?

World of Warships Launch Event: What's next for Wargaming?

If you enjoyed Rick's World of Warships review on Friday, you might be thinking about giving World of Warships a whirl. Those of you familiar with Wargaming's WW2 flavoured explosion fests might be wondering what WoW can offer you that you can't find elsewhere.

It's a reasonable question. At the meta level the games look similar, a screen full of war era machinery and a multitude of upgrades you can pay for with your time or your cash. These waterborne monsters were my first impression of the game, and I'm here to find out more about the game at the European launch event of World of Warships at Chatham Historic Dockyard.

It's within seconds of playing that you start to notice the innumerable tiny differences between this and its land and airborne cousins. Ships can take more of a kicking than tanks and planes, although their reliance on Poseidon for transport makes them slower, more unwieldy.

This means that the combat is more meditative, a bit more "thinky". You can find out more about it from Rick's review here but if you were thinking of moving across, a premium account for any Wargaming.net game works with World of Warships too, offering you the benefits of your premium account in all games.

The launch event itself was pretty extravagant - I got to carry my 6'7 bulk around a submarine, and look at a few ships that came from the same era as the game. This tour of the dockyard finished with Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi firing off one of the massive 4.5" guns on the HMS Cavalier. Later, a swing band plays out the evening with 40s covers of popular songs. It's perhaps a little overboard, but after the three years the team has spent developing the game you can't blame them for wanting to celebrate.

After firing off the ship's cannon, Kislyi took to the stage to fire off a few other shells. Truth shells (sorry). The most interesting part of the CEO's speech to commemorate the launch was the details about the game he shared: the average time to model one of World of Warships actual Warships is three months, and the average player spends three hours playing the game every single day.

Afterwards, global publishing producer Artur Piociennik takes to the stage and plays the game on the big screen - boldly dropping himself into an online game for the assembled audience. His fight was short-lived but brutal, taking out several boats before he himself exploded into fiery wreckage.