Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Believe it or not, most of the wars waged over the course of human history haven’t been confined to a single variety of vehicle at all times. I mean, tanks are great and all, but they’re a bit rubbish when it comes to swimming and flying, and I imagine the subtle nuances of both thumb wars and food fights elude them as well. So Wargaming, naturally, is slowly but surely expanding its F2P empire into new arenas of war. First up, it’s taking to the skies with World of Warplanes. That, however, doesn’t mean tanks are taking a backseat. Wargaming’s been planning to connect its major franchises all along, and it’s taking the first step with World of Warplanes’ extension of Clan Wars.

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Do you like controlling things? Do you become unreasonably enraged at the idea of controlling them with anything other than the incredibly specific implements of your choosing? Well then, World of Warplanes might just be the game for you – unless you despise planes, war, or the entire world, anyway. It’s offering precision-tweaked plane reins that include everything short of Kinect and masterfully articulated political coercion. That said, if you couldn’t care less about whether you’re putting your virtual life in the hands of a joystick or a particularly modest mouse, there’s still quite a bit of very nice-looking WOWP footage accompanying all nuts ‘n’ bolts chatter.

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Whenever I see “World of Warplanes,” I always read it as “World of Warp Lanes.” I have no idea what a warp lane is, but I just wanted to share that with you. Anyway, World of Warplanes is rapidly making its way down the warp lane to completion, and – in order to make sure everything comes out just right - Wargaming.net is narrowing its focus to a few select modes. Specifically, the latest developer diary highlights Superiority (think team deathmatch with a point-controlling twist), Escort, and Training – in Russian. Do those things strike your fancy? They should. And if not, well, let me also remind you that this is a fantastic opportunity to watch some planes go boom.

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Aircraft carriers, majestic caravans of the sea, are apparently home to all sorts of winged wonders. A combination of being disturbed by having no land in sight and a terrible fear of being shot at means I’m unlikely to pilot any carrier-based aircraft in real life, so perhaps the addition of nine such warriors into World of Warplanes provides my best chance to take them for a spin. They’re all from the US Navy and include the “Grumman F2F and Brewster F2A Buffalo, the first biplane fighters with retractable undercarriage, as well as the boldly designed Chance Vought F5U and Vought F7U Cutlass fighters, both of which pioneered the use of turbojet power.” This isn’t Flare Path and none of that means much to me, I just used a picture of the funniest looking one. The rest are idling in the trailer below.

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Taking the free-to-play dogfight to the air is WoW, known globally as World of Warplanes. The skyborne sister to World of Tanks has finally decided to stop being shy and graced us with some in-game footage. I’m particularly taken with the mix of old and new flight beasts, and the notion of flying in formation with friends under bridges. I’m not one to ignore a massive, immobile, heavy structure when I’m falling through the sky in an unstable tube of thin metal.
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To the skies, brave few, to the skies. Wargaming.net, developers of World of Tanks have just fuelled up the global alpha for World of Warplanes so they’ll presumably be hoping the brave many sign up so that they can test the capacity of the blue yonder and receive plenty of radio chatter feedback. If you fancy yourself a fighter ace, you can sign up here if you are in Europe, here if you are in Russia or here if you happen to be in America. The game will offer a full career mode and covers several eras beginning in the 1930s. Jim spoke with the developers at the end of last year and I shall cheekily direct you toward that conversation if you desire more information.

Oh this could get awkward. Wargaming.net recently announced World Of Warplanes to join World Of Tanks and the forthcoming World Of Battleships. But it seems another MMO already had a very similar idea. The imaginatively titled World Of Planes from Gaijin Entertainment was first announced in April, and has a debut trailer out today. In a world where you can’t have The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Scrolls without trouble, I’m impressed that this one hasn’t kicked off yet. (Let alone Blizzard getting involved.) Also, World Of Planes’ trailer is pretty.

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Skybound aviation-based sequel to World Of Tanks is gaining some momentum now, as the World Of Warplanes website appears. It just contains a snippet of information and a bunch of screenshots so far, but we’ll be expecting to learn much more about the game come GamesCom next week. For my part, however, I am not expecting this to be quite as outrageously popular as World Of Tanks, with its millions of sign-ups. I think it’ll do okay, but there was something just right about a purely tank-based game, which I am not sure will be true of air-war…