World of Warships Review
I mostly steer away from Titles that strongly emphasize PVP as its core Gameplay. They sadly end up more than often toxified by its own community and from my personal experience, it is needless to say that I am not entirely surprised that this was often not any different in World of Warships during my sessions which is a sad thing since the game on its own is really stable and smooth to play and with its core mechanics in place one of the better free to play PVP orientated titles that I have played so far!
Tempted by the huge Historical Warships offered through simple technology charts for each faction I warmed myself to hit the uninstall button shortly after. Unexpectedly I got caught by surprise where I also had the pleasure to try out two of their other developed Games “World of Tanks” and “World of Warplanes” this in the wake of testing World of Warship for the very first time.
While exceptional, Wargaming is one of the few Gaming Studios that seems to understand how to approach the free to play Payment model somewhat in a right way. So far, I do not see any evidence that there is any pay to win!
I need to be honest to myself that I greatly enjoy the Gameplay so far, for the most part, it seems that the Game is super well optimized. I have been playing on both the EU and NA servers and I have yet to encounter any serious lag while I am playing.
Premium ships can be destroyed by any other ship, however, there are times that they might prove to be power creep on low to mid-tier. The only annoying thing I countered thus far is, how hard it is to establish contact with other Captains. The community seems to be very salty towards each other at times and those that have a friendly gesture towards you seem to be very rare.
FREEMIUM:
The Freemium Model of this Game seems to be well sorted out for now. The entire game can be played entirely for free and the Premium options do not seem to be forcible, they are as far as I am aware optional by nature. I personally bought myself one US Ship to accompany me on my sailing adventures, the cruiser “Boise” because I wanted to support the developers but also because I loved the look of the ship. I may also purchase other ships depending on how much I will play the game further on.
While it all seems optional you need to be aware that the people responsible for this game are also there to earn money, it would be gullible to say that they won’t encourage the use of their in-game payment system, you have the option to acquire your selves some Doubloons which is the premium currency within World of Warships and these tokens can be used for various things.
Doubloons can be used for the purposes of:
- Purchasing Consumables, camouflage, and premium ships
- Converting Experience points to free XP
- Training / Retraining Ship Commanders
- Purchasing Premium account time
- Exchanging Doubloons for credits
- Demounting ship upgrades
Some of the items above if not most are also acquirable by playing the game. Consumables like signal flags and camouflage will be rewarded when you complete certain tasks or by collecting the free containers by earning XP and filling the XP bar up during your gaming sessions. Higher tier vessels are expensive and will take a lot more time to unlock and maybe later on even the occasional buck if you do so desire, this is, however, entirely up to you if you want to steamwals through your tech charts.
The only thing I personally do not like is the loot containers which you can purchase in the game!!!!
Loot crates, containers or boxes, any form of such a mechanic that emphasizes gambling in such a DISGUISE are a means for immediate denouncement, this is totally beside the fact whether it is offered in a free to play Game or full priced triple-A Game.
We the end users do not need such systems while the items who are offered in these containers are already acquirable by other means, these mechanics are exploitive and unnecessary since they do not offer us any extra content on top of the base Game.
ACCESSIBILITY:
This Game is surprisingly easy to get into for a barebone newbie like me, I honestly did not feel like I was punished due to me being a new player, au contraire, when I fail to keep my ship alive it is due to me taking a wrong decision or because the team you “diced” is utterly selfish, the latter happens sadly around 30% of the time and highly dependable on the time of day.
This is the main reason why I both play on the European servers and the North American servers, the downside to this is that I have to do twice the time to acquire myself the ships I need to make progress in World of Warships, in my opinion, it would’ve been a lot better if they had only one central hub where the ships are attached to your account and not to a specific server.
In all fairness we can acquire the first 4 tiers reasonable fast which will grant us acces to all 4 types of classes.
It would not take me to long to get both the North American and European servers equipped to enjoy the game, however, I noticed that the population in World of Warships seems a bit low where I’ve seen around 20k active players on the European servers and around 16k on the North American servers which seems a bit low for a Game which was seemingly well received.
I am not saying that this title will not survive, but, matchmaking might get really problematic in the future if the player base degrades, even more. The Game mechanics are very, very dependable on the activity of a tight community and strong base!
At least, it worries me a fair bit towards the longevity of World of Warships. …
GAMEPLAY:
The Game-play in World of Warships is like with World of Tanks largely focusing on Team-Based Game-play. you have access to four classes, ranging from Destroyers, cruisers, battleships up to Aircraft Carriers. Countries represented in World of Warships have given their own unique strengths and weaknesses. This to make them stand out from one and another when shipped out.
While every country has their unique tech tree only two of them have access to Aircraft Carriers. Cruisers have a wide range of utilities available, some of them have Anti Aircraft Batteries or radars to see through smoke, others have a really high rate of fire or even stealth abilities with longer range torpedoes which makes them a very capable opponent for any other type of shipping.
America has some of the better Anti Air of any cruiser line with significantly weaker guns while the Japanese cruisers have access to better long ranged torpedoes with good high explosive shelling but really crappy AA defense!
Destroyers are the fastest type of ships, their role is to penetrate stealthy and harras enemy shipment while cruisers have the general task to both take these destroyers out and support their Battleships who are verry deadly close up. While the Big ships are meant to be tankie and draw in the fire, the Carriers are to scout ahead and harras the enemy shippings from the way back.
When you roll into a well sorted out team the initial idea is to work the classes as above but in reality it wont work like that!
The overall game-play is easy to get into, but you are required to generate some know how. It is therefore advised to watch some tutorials on YouTube to get used to how to play. Tactical positioning and knowing the ship classes is imperative to your success as well as having a decent team that works together, one-shotting the enemy shipping is not going to be an option in this Game.
Players are randomly matched, mostly generated out of a pool of similar tier vessels to keep it even, this can, however, be a bit tedious at times since it depends on population and the time of day of the server, the performance of your team is also highly dependable on the maturity of your team, you will quickly notice when it is not a school day when some of them scatter around.
Aside from the random battles you also have access to the co-operative mode which will place you alongside other players against Artificial opponents, the difference is that you will earn less XP and Currency when playing this mode.
There are quite a few maps to play on, around 30 general maps. The special maps are reserved specifically for scenario battles and a few ranked battles. One unique map lets you play in a bad tub on the Ruinberg in Jacuzzi map which is kinda funny to see.
So far I noticed that every map has its own unique layout with smaller land masses spread out on them for tactical purposes. some of these maps are only available in the standard mode where you have to keep control over your side with the entirety of your team. Domination mode, however, will require your team to control two to four areas on the map which will require more effort of the whole team, you will need to coordinate and outsmart the enemy be it by positioning or by surprising them with good tactics.
The more recent Game mode will grant 300 points to each team with one large zone in the center of the map, points are received by occupying these zones or for killing enemy ships while points are abstracted when the enemy captures and or kills your Allies.
To me World of Warships is a well-optimized Game with a lot of eye candy, but, it is somehow missing the strength of a friendly community who can pull you in much deeper, I think that this game has more depth when you play it with a well sorted out team.
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I hope that my persistent nature will grant me the pleasure to find a more fleshed out community deeper within the Game someday!
CLOSING COMMENTS:
We do not see our reviews as a review, neither should you, it is in the end totally up to you to decide whether this Game appeals to your needs as a gamer or not, we urge you, not to let our experience guide you to whether you have to purchase a Game yes or no!
Therefore this is purely the personal Experience of the author for this specific title, treat it as such!
A reasonably exceptional, fun, free-to-play game with no Pay-2-Win practices!
While the Game is totally free to play I do believe that when you want to play the Game more competitive that you will somehow have to pitch in the extra buck after all. However, given the fact that you would like to go that far we can only come to some sort of an agreement that you are most likely going to like the Game enough to pitch in the money to play on that level of experience.
To my impression, the free to play model does not penalize freemium players if they do not pitch in any money at all!
Premium ships are good but not the best ships and you will still need to dig up some decent skill if you counter real life players.
I’ve read some really funny shit on Reddit, Steam and on Metacritic from people who strongly advise you not to lay your hands on this Game. Others try to advise you how Great it is, and the only thing I notice is how contradicting all these statements are!
My, advise? Follow none, not even mine!
If you ask me whether I like the Game then the answer is “YES” if you ask me whether I would recommend this Game to anyone then my answer would be “I don’t know” this will depend on the person and It’s honestly not up to me to form an opinion for you.
I would like to ask you this if you have these type of questions, what holds you back that you seek out such advice?
I personally approached this Game without any expectations and it turned out good, not great, but, GOOD!
World of Warships has, in my opinion, a well-optimized Game here. The more than nice Graphics and well sorted out Sounds made the Game even more compelling to me. The battles are often very intensive where you have to find a way to outsmart the other opponents. When you are tired of PVP you can try out a co-operative match which will give you a little room for errors.
The Game is designed around Team-Based Game-play, it is somewhat sad to see that the Game has less than 1.8K active players on its lowest peak last night on the EU servers, and when I rolled on the US servers there were only around 7.8K active players around. I has a clear effect on the matches I try to play, I at least hope this is only temporarily or bad luck on my end!
A major controversial topic with games like this is premium this and that’s. This is understandable, but I urge you highly to form your own opinion on it. It is free, after all!
World of Warships
Pros
- Every Captain makes mistakes
- Combat is engaging and deep
- Nice Graphics and sound
- Well optimized game
- Daily free containers
Cons
- Matchmaking can be problematic
- Above T7 Progression is slow
- Very salty Community 🙁
- Low population at times
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