World War II Online Feature

Strategy-Gaming Online was interested in the massively-multiplayer-online-war/roleplaying-game World War II Online (WWIIOL) from the very first day we heard about it. Cornered Rats Software’s (CRS) vision of a huge strategic game spanning the entire globe, running 24/7, with tactical combat executed by real people (and not some complex algorithm) seemed like the zenith of any strategy gamer’s fantasy. No longer would you have to rely upon a developer’s vision of whether ‘this’ unit was stronger than ‘that’ defender; no rationalizing, no black boxing, no blaming the AI - now the game would play out in (virtual) real life, may the better troops win.

Unfortunately, what should have been a triumphant beginning went awry. After fumbling their initial release to fervent fans (overwhelming sales meant that demand for bandwidth on their servers was far greater than expected, and brought the whole thing down for a short while), CRS was faced with some unhappy customers. Once they finally did get to connect, players didn’t get what they’d expected. Absent a character advancement system, there was no roleplaying. Repeated CTD’s (aka crash-to-desktop; generally a bad sign when the flaws in one’s product develop their own nomenclature) meant it was even hard to call it consistently “online”. The veritable swarm of bugs infesting the game was an entomologist’s dream.

If you read the web- and magazine reviews in July and August, a lot of them were extraordinarily harsh. But in the midst of the fury, even the game’s biggest critics were universally clear: somewhere amidst the great black seam of coal, there was a potential diamond. What CRS was attempting to accomplish was nearly the Holy Grail of computer wargaming: online war, persistent, massively multiplayer. While the bitterness of deflated expectations was rampant online and in print, just about everyone agreed: WWIIOL was a great idea, if only it would work right. In a tacit admission of their problems, CRS/Strategy First quickly suspended the pay-for-play element (until 10/01; now they are back to their original “30 days free play” to see if you like it). Mollifying the savage hordes is one thing; getting them to forgive you is entirely another.

Right after release in July, we too found WWIIOL wanting. Badly. When it was clear that for the time being we’d basically just be parroting the hordes of negative reviews, we decided to try something else. Cleverly employing that “strategy” in our moniker, we decided instead to wait a while. In our opinion, a botched release may say more about the experience level of the company than the quality of the game. Give it a few patches, let the hard feelings die down, and then come back and take a fair look at it. Now it’s nearly 6 months – and more than 110 megs worth of patches - later. It seems that, to everyone’s relief WWIIOL might now have finally found its feet. The latest patch is 1.50 which came out just before Christmas. And we’re pleased to say the game mostly works. “Mostly?” you say? Yes mostly – to explain, an excursus into ‘What is WWIIOL?’ is required.

The game itself.

WWIIOL is a massively multiplayer, first-person view, online game of World War 2. Players logging in take the role of either Allied or Axis combatants, then select where and as what they’d like to play. Ultimately, they will be able to play anything, anywhere; in Blitzkrieg (this specific game) the roles are understandably limited to German/French/British of 1940. You can play as armor, AT guns, aircraft, or infantry with the advantages and disadvantages of each. Currently the selection of vehicles is quite limited: a few (3-4) types of tanks (per side), a few aircraft, a couple of antitank (AT) guns, a prime mover, a truck and a naval patrol boat (the model of this is the same for Allies and Axis, just with different flags). Infantry may spawn as rifle-armed, SMG-armed, or engineers with satchel charges for blowing up enemy bases and, if desperate, AFV. Despite this rather small selection, the archetypes are all here and CRS is adding more as fast as possible.

What you spawn as determines your role in the great melee: armor is the king of the battlefield, and is used as the main shock force on offense, or the anvil of any defense. AT weapons are used for fire support while aircraft roam overhead clearing the skies of enemy aircraft and strafing/bombing targets of opportunity. Infantry, the weakest and most vulnerable of all, are nevertheless given a critical role: it is only infantry that can actually trigger control change of the ‘flag points’ that are the denominators of territorial control (and ultimately victory). Tanks can easily blow away everything except each other, aircraft are terrifying as they stoop to devastate troops and vehicles, and the AT guns can reach out an obliterate a target at 2000m; without infantry to actually turn the flag point from enemy to friendly, it’s all just a wasted effort. In the biggest change from current online fare, the map is HUGE. There is no quickly-memorized rotation of limited maps here. You learn the terrain by playing it. Like real life, hard-fought experience in a region pays off with a familiarity with the terrain. I’d estimate that 80-90% of Belgium is mapped and playable, as well as a chunk of Northern France, all at half-scale in a concession to playability. Want to spawn up a tank and drive from St. Vith to Amsterdam? Go ahead, although given the priority CRS has placed on ultra-accurate simulation of systems, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you ran out of gas on the way. (Personally, I’ve never survived long enough to notice if my fuel gauge was dropping…)

Territorial control is handled on a town-by-town basis, with each town having a number of “flag points” as well as possibly a spawn base or two. Unthreatened control of all flag points in a town make it ‘owned’ by one side or the other. Multiple flag owners make a town “contested” and therefore unusable as a spawn point for anyone wanting to spawn as something more substantial than infantry or small AT guns. To prevent people from getting swallowed up in all this terrain (yes, it is so big you can get lost!) or spending more than a few minutes driving to the battle, there are forward bases in between towns where units can also spawn. These also allow forces to better hold incremental gains. FB’s are useful for getting to the action quickly – at least until the enemy plants a satchel charge on the revetment and your spawn point is knocked back to the next further base away from the action.

Ostensibly, a flow of “supply” links through each town to these forward bases, limiting the equipment spawned; flanking and interdiction are worthwhile tactics that can cut an enemy’s ability to reinforce his position to a trickle. Thus the entire network – from forward bases, back to towns, through factories (which multiply supply points) and depots – is linked in a dependent chain that an army commander must respect to succeed. At least, this is how it WILL work at some point in the future. Currently WWIIOL does not have the ‘supply system’ fully implemented and is somewhat hobbled by the lack. The 1.50 patch has improved this to a degree, preventing capture of any base not linkable to a friendly base; essentially, only the towns adjacent to enemy-controlled locations are vulnerable. This has prevented unrealistically deep and effective penetrations that made the WWIIOL strategic map sometimes look more like Vietnam-online than the Ardennes in 1940. The implementation of individual- and mission-based spawn limits has also helped, as this naturally ‘chokes off’ isolated bases. In an action to seize the town of Paal, I watched as tanks fended off the initial assault. Once Paal was isolated by simultaneous German captures of Diest and Geel, this constant stream of AFV seemed to drop to a trickle, eventually replaced by infantry and ATG only (which successfully held us off for the evening, since we failed to bring enough infantry ourselves – a tactical mistake on our part).

The main question is of course, “How does it play?” As of patch 1.50, the answer is “pretty darn well” if you want to play a tank or a plane, “not great” if you want to play infantry. The repeated CTD problems, major lag-bugs, and lockups seem to have been licked for all but an unhappy few (however anecdotally it’s worth observing that the only ones enjoying totally trouble-free operation seem to be running 512+ megs RAM and impressive (1 GHz+) hardware). The big bugs seem to have been exorcised, and the early days of infantry running off into the sky, or a dead body skating for miles behind a vehicle are hopefully gone or good. Unfortunately, reports are cropping up since 1.50 that some bugs previously quashed (incorrect flags visible, bugged “uncappable” flags, and even clipping through walls) are starting to occur again. The HE model too seems a bit tepid (if anything, this favors the poor bloody infantry) and will hopefully also see tweaking. The next patch is rumored to be a major effort to update infantry code.

In play, the huge terrain can be intimidating and even off-putting for players used to respawning instantly and jumping right into the action. Even using the well-implemented forward base mechanic, you can spend 5 minutes or more driving just to get to the battle. If you’re a footsoldier, well, you’d better beg a ride because otherwise a 15 minute hike isn’t uncommon (and then that realistic quick-death thing once you DO make it to combat can really piss you off). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the time it takes to get to the battle becomes another very good incentive not to let the enemy kill you. Maybe it makes players behave a little more realistically, at least. At this point the strategy is minimal but extant; strategic envelopment is possible by capping a salient of towns and cutting the enemy off. Further updates, which enable actual supply-point limits to spawning, and AI supply convoys (that can be intercepted) will really give the various General Staffs something to plan for.

Let’s be clear though: just because there’s not much strategy (yet) doesn’t mean there isn’t fun. Games like Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, and Ghost Recon are fun as hell and those are teeny little maps. Imagine one of these games covering all of Belgium, and you’re not far off. WWIIOL takes the “realistic combat” paradigm and hikes it up another level by putting you in a much more realistically unbounded environment. Like the other reality-based shooters, it’s terrifically lethal (discouragingly so for some newbies). As mentioned above CRS is nothing if not a stickler for detail, and combat is no exception: an AP round hit on the side of the tank is not a simple matter of (penetration – armor)=damage to crew. In WWIIOL such a hit is energy applied to the vehicle model at a specific point mitigated by the armor and angle, and then propagating through the vehicle as spall which can even ignite stored ammo. The human body, when hit by fire (be it the aforementioned spall or something as mundane as a bullet to the chest) has a myriad of responses, although this seems a bit on the lethal side and unfortunately does not (yet?) have a location-based effect system.

This sort of ultra-detailed treatment might seem like overkill but will make the system ultimately portable and consistent when CRS gets to modeling capital ships, indirect artillery, etc. Playing infantry can be particularly tough since you’re so incredibly vulnerable to anything that happens on the battlefield. Again like CS, DoD, and GR (or even your average paintball game), your survivability in WWIIOL is directly related to combat experience. Play a few times and you start to learn where to look, when to shoot, and what to run away from.

So as we said it’s “mostly” complete. In summer of ’01 we too would have said that this game was broken and nearly unplayable. Right now post-patch 1.50, WWIIOL is a fun multi-vehicle shooter with a great variety of gameplay and a level if combined arms interaction that no other game can currently match. That said, it also has a $10 monthly price tag that most don’t require, either.

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