WWII Online: Blitzkrieg Review - PAGE 1

World War II was arguably one of the most bloody and violent times in human history. It was a time when combat was still actually fought by large numbers of brave men and women who risked their lives out in the battlefield rather than by pushing a few buttons from somewhere safe and watching the result from behind computer screens (as mostly is these days). I guess it’s this human factor that makes this macabre part of human history so fascinating to people despite its horror. Thus, the subject has spawned many stories and films as well as quite a number of computer and video games. With the release of the movie Saving Private Ryan, it seems that the subject has become even more popular and as a result whole plethora of WWII themed games and mods have sprung out of the woodwork.

Hoping to tap into this movement and combine it with the current fad for massively multiplayer online games, Cornered Rat Studios has developed World War II Online. On paper, this game has a lot of potential and its ambitions are very high. WWIIO is supposed to simulate the invasion of France by Germany during WWII and to this end, the whole of this front is said to have been simulated at half-scale from satellite data. At least 10-20,000 people are supposed to be able to battle it out at once, 24 hours a day, in this vast arena playing either the Axis or the Allies. Towns and cities act as spawn points for players and in a twist to CTF conventions, only infantry are allowed to “capture the flag” by bumping into the radio tables placed in the radio buildings that house these flags. Many weapons and vehicles from WWII are also supposed to be available at your disposal, ranging from pistols to tanks and planes. Furthermore, players would be given the opportunity to gain points playing on-the-fly missions in order to advance in ranking and there would be a supply model to simulate supply lines during the war. There are also plans to include naval aspects to the game where players will eventually be able to command and crew the various warships from both sides of the conflict.

Now, you’re probably wondering why this article sounds more like a preview rather than a review. The reason is because of the simple fact that many of the features in the game are not available or haven’t been implemented yet…

For starters, only some of the weapons and vehicles are available to any player. When I first installed the game I was under the impression that all the weapons and vehicles listed in the technical manual would be available to players for play. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Surprisingly absent from the infantryman’s arsenal are any sort of grenades. Heavier infantry weapons like machineguns are absent too. Bombers are absent as well. Although we are promised that a patch in the future would include these vehicles, and that newer, unannounced vehicles would be on their way in future patches, I find it somewhat odd that the missing equipment would be listed in the technical manual included with the game (which is a good read, actually) anyway. Another thing is that the folks at CRS haven’t consolidated their game servers into a single big one yet. At the moment, there are at least three game servers up and a “test server” where they are testing the maximum number of players that can fit onto a server at once. This doesn’t bode too well especially when it appears that a maximum of somewhere around 1,300 people can log onto the test server at once before people start getting disconnected. This can be proven because of the fact that upon getting disconnected I would check the population of the test server and would always find the number to be hovering slightly above the 1,300 mark. Attempting to log back in is a futile effort because even if you’re on the server you can’t spawn in any areas. This is bad because I’ve also found that even if I wasn’t disconnected in the first place, I would somehow lose the ability to respawn when I’m dead. The bottom line is that somehow an obvious improvement must be made to the servers or to the netcode in order to support more than 1,300 people (which is a far cry from the “thousands of simultaneous players” promised in the FAQ). To top it off, other missing features include the ranking and supply systems. And this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg! Unfortunately, all these missing features tends to affect gameplay in various ways that the developers haven’t anticipated with the results ranging from the mildly amusing to downright annoying. To tell you the truth I’m somewhat at a loss at where to begin describing the other problems that WWIIO has but I will highlight the missing supply system as an example…