Historically, the battleship never really had its day. There was just one major battleship clash in World War I (which ultimately proved indecisive) and America's entry into World War II came at the exact moment carriers rendered the battleship obsolete. Fortunately for fans of these undeniably cool floating weapons platforms, Wargaming.net’s World of Warships gives World War II-era naval combat the design balance that history so often lacks, creating heavy-metal slugging matches that test tactical skill. Carriers can still rain death from above with bombers, but they're trapped in a naval cage match where carriers, cruisers, battleships, and destroyers all have distinct and important roles to play in its free-to-play 12v12 multiplayer fleet battles.
The heart of World of Warships is gunnery. I've probably spent over half my time in Warships looking at distant warships through zoomed-in gunsights. Fortunately, shooting in this game is a lot more demanding than in your typical first-person shooter, or even Wargaming's own World of Tanks or World of Warplanes, and involves a whole bunch of skills and instincts.Gunnery requires a mix of aim, mathematics, geometry, and attempted telepathy.
Early warships are deceptively simple, as they shoot each other from a few kilometers apart, and it often seems like combat boils down to simply leading you target a little bit and pulling the trigger. But by the time you're playing around with your first battleships, gunnery requires a mix of aim, mathematics, geometry, and attempted telepathy. The biggest warships hit hard, but their mighty guns can only fire a few times each minute, meaning that a missed shot leaves your opponent’s guns fully operational and you exposed for an eternity. Meanwhile, those shots can take something like five to 10 seconds to reach their target. An enemy warship can cover an awful lot of ground in that time, and it can maneuver to avoid incoming fire, so you have to not only figure out where your shots will land in relation to the enemy vessel, but also read what the enemy captain is going to do when he sees you fire. Torpedo ships like destroyers and light cruisers also have to make these calculations as they try to make their slow-moving torpedoes hit home against an enemy that sees them coming.As frustrating as it can be to see long-range shots make their slow journey across the sky, only to land far behind their target and a few yards short, success makes it all worth it. Correctly anticipating your adversary, gauging the distance and travel time of the shots, and delivering a crushing salvo that instantly shatters turrets and sets fire to the superstructure is unbelievably satisfying. So much went into that moment.“
All Together Now
Yet battleships and cruisers are only effective when they can actually see their opponents and overwhelm them with firepower before the same happens to them. This is where World of Warships really begins to sing as a team game… and also where it falls down the most on a regular basis, thanks to the vagaries of online matchmaking.Every ship class is dependent on every other ship class. A carrier is a sitting duck unless it's protected by the ships with the guns; cruisers are more self-sufficient than any other class thanks to their versatility, but they're also limited in what they can accomplish without support from specialist ships; destroyers can't last five minutes under fire, but they can scout, harass, and ambush like no one else.These classes have to work together, and it's a thing of beauty when they do.
For a team to succeed in Warships, these classes have to work together, and it's a thing of beauty when they do. When you're on a good team you'll see destroyers setting smoke screens to conceal the direction and location of your fleet, then start scouting and blind-firing torpedoes down likely avenues of enemy approach. Cruisers will range out ahead of the battleships to intercept enemy destroyers and locate the main enemy force, or they will play rearguard and keep the carriers safe from harassment. Battleships will lay a course taking them across a vital section of the map so that they can rain death on anyone their teammates find, while carriers chase off enemy air attacks with automated fighters and send in bombers to exploit opportunities and weaknesses.“
Naval Academy
Learning to play each of these roles is a long and interesting process because they’re all completely different. A destroyer is all about reflexes and nerve as you race through enemy-infested waters, firing torpedoes as fast as you can, twisting out the way of return fire, and escaping to safety while your allies open fire on the targets you scouted. A carrier captain is practically playing an RTS game in the middle of the battle. If things go bad in one game, you can always grab another one of the ships in your personal fleet and dive into a different match in a different role. (This is the same setup the other Wargaming games use.) If a battleship player decides to stray away from the main battle, your entire fleet will slowly get shot to pieces
But you're still dependent on the other ships to play their role, and if a team doesn't coalesce around some overall strategy, World of Warships can be an express elevator to Hell. It’s good that a single skilled player can't just dominate a game alone, but unlike in World of Warplanes, where mistakes tend to results in swift defeat, battles in Warships take much longer to play out -- no matter how futile they are. Short of abandoning games, these matches can drag on. I've spent 10 or 15 minutes with my last remaining teammates just waiting for the enemy team to find us and kill us, or put us out of our misery by capturing our base and winning the match via objectives. If your team’s destroyers all go on a suicide torpedo runs at the start of the battle, the bigger ships will be left blind almost helpless as the enemy maneuvers around them and sneaks in close for kills. If a battleship player decides to stray away from the main battle, your entire fleet will slowly get shot to pieces because there is nobody who can do the damage necessary to take out enemy battleships. If your carrier wastes all its fighters, ships will be picked off one at a time by enemy bombers. It only really works if people end up - by accident or design - working together.“
That's not really a comment on the community. While there are a few heedless fools or teamkillers (who don't seem to be weeded out as effectively as they should be – I saw the same teamkiller griefing in multiple games), most players do try to work together, even if no words are spoken.That said, that focus on teamwork and the clear distinctions between classes makes Warships a little richer and more rewarding than, say, Warplanes. By Tier 4 in Warplanes, I kind of felt like I'd seen everything there was to see - dogfighting with faster and more lethal planes isn't THAT different from dogfighting with worse ones. But in World of Warships, I’ve had a lot more diverse experiences based on what game mode we're playing and what ships have shown up to the battle. There is a control point mode in which the two fleets vie for control of three strategic locations on the map, and a more traditional team-deathmatch in which the two fleets fight either to eliminate each other or to capture the enemy's home base (which usually only happens after one fleet has been soundly beaten).
Get Frocked
Higher-tech ships force me to improve some skills and develop new ones.
Higher-tech ships don't just feel like better versions of the stuff I already had, but also force me to improve some skills and develop new ones. As the gun-ranges get longer, as the ships get get faster, and as more special abilities like air-defense boosts and spotter aircraft become more critical to helping your team, World of Warships is constantly demanding better shooting, better piloting, and better teamwork. Progression is especially rewarding because each ship looks sleeker and more beautiful than the last, with boxy, smoke-spewing old rust-buckets replaced by long, low greyhounds that seem to knife through the water.I haven't talked about the payment model yet because it does an excellent job of staying out of the way. Warships starts to feel like a pretty complete package once you've unlocked every ship class. It does require a ton of games to climb the tech tree from Tier IV onwards, but since I was hopping between tons of different ships, I didn't feel stifled. There is one noticeable exception, however: the fact that you can only maintain a handful of ships at a time without paying premium currency does feel like a bit of a straitjacket, and I definitely felt forced into selling some ships before I felt they were played out.“
