MMO wargames

[Kuokkanen]

Air Warrior was one of the first (or The First) historical MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) wargames. Or was it MMO flight sim? What the heck, let's just lump it on the wargame category. No buts! Many other MMO type wargames have been made since then. What is the situation right now? Which ones do we play? Let's stick on historical games and leave the likes of Unreal Tournament and MechWarrior Online out of here.

I used to play World of Tanks. Second World War with various tracked AFVs (not just tanks) from different nations. Becouse game does not have infantry or aircraft, only weapons at players' disposal are the main anti-tank gun of the given vehicle player happens to drive. Move the vehicle with the keyboard, aim with the mouse. Gun is most accurate when vehicle doesn't move. Though player moves both the vehicle and its gun, vehicle still has crew with experience. Experienced gunner hits better where player aims the crosshairs. Otherwise vehicles have hit locations and hit points. Of course different weapons do different amounts of damage, different ammunition types add variety for given weapon, and autocannons are dakka. More recently (years ago by now?) game introduced self-propelled howitzers, but I stopped playing soon after that.

Silly thing in the game is vehicles of every nationality are available for all the players (when I used to play the game). So in given session of randomly assigned teams, one team of players can have vehicles from USA, Russia, and Germany, all on the same side, fighting against equal hodgepodge of vehicles of the other team. That isn't must: players can create and join to arranged teams of their choice. So it is possible to create teams of one nationality of vehicles fighting against another team of different nationality vehicles. But before new player can do that, he must score points in random teams/games to buy better vehicles and equipment. Oh yes, stock Panzer II comes with 2 cm autocannon, but with points that can be changed to 3,7 cm ATG. I imagine points can also be used to balance the opposing forces.

All in all, easy & fun to play tank game which is more of an arcade than a simulation.

So what do you others play? I just watched YouTube video which has parts about Heroes & Generals and War Thunder. Can someone in here tell me about those games?

[Rising-Sun]

War Thunder is pretty good, but there a lot of exploits that players will take advantage of. As well World of Tanks is cool or Warships, later on you will get tired of it.

World War II Online is pretty good, but only in Europe...
http://www.battlegroundeurope.net/home

[terje439]

World of Tanks
Still (imo) the best tank MMO game, however it has it flaws. Gold ammo renders the armour of the German vehicles obsolete, the same with the extremely accurate guns in the game (or actually it is more of an issue with the maps being too small), Furthermore, not all the maps are well designed.
World of Warplanes
Never liked this one. It feels very artificial when you fly the aircrafts in this game. Almost like the plane is held up by 4 strings, one in each wing, and one in the front and one in the rear of the fuselage.
World of Warships
Ok game, gets rather repetetive imo, and there are also some balancing issues with some of the ships. Also HE ammo is somewhat OP due to the fires it causes.
WarThunder
The best of the aerial games of the lot. By far. Still, I personally do not like the 1hit kill mecanism used in their games. You will often find that you will be sniped from 700m by a lower tier dogfighter when you are in a plane like the Me410 which cannot turn. Highly annoying. Also bombers are somewhat fragile and against a team that focuses on the enemy bombers, they hardly stand a chance.
WarThunderGroundForces
Gajin's challenger to World of Tanks. Looks good, but I find the same issue here as in WarThunder. The one hit kills. Ok, they are realistic, but they are not fun imo.

Gajin's games has an added element that you can chose more realism in going into simulation mode, where you will (as an example) lose your wings if your airspeed is too high and you pull back on the stick etc.

For aerial forces, go Gajin and WarThunder.
For ground forces, go Wargaming and World of Tanks.

Also, World of Tanks has functional clan battles, something Gajin does not. That adds a competetive level to World of Tanks that can be fun (or frustrating as hell), but (usually takes up alot of time (for a landing tournament, up to 3-4 hours)).

Btw, if you have not played since RPGs came...Boy...THey can be a pain if you do not know how to avoid them.

[Jeffrey H.]

I played Air Warrior and a string of successors for years. Then I got into WWIIOL and was really enjoying infantry play but the devs seemed to hate infantry players with several successive infantry only nerfs that made it essentially a waste of time. That nonsense drove me back to boardgames. I think WOT's stole WWIIOL's thunder in that it drew off the arcade tanker types which was probably the greatest volume of players on WWIIOL and it was certainly where he devs were catering the gameplay to.

Since then, I've sworn off them, and I haven't seen anything that would make me interested in going back.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: terje439

WarThunder
The best of the aerial games of the lot. By far. Still, I personally do not like the 1hit kill mecanism used in their games. You will often find that you will be sniped from 700m by a lower tier dogfighter when you are in a plane like the Me410 which cannot turn. Highly annoying. Also bombers are somewhat fragile and against a team that focuses on the enemy bombers, they hardly stand a chance.

Have you seen this?

[Alchenar]

You might want to check out Heroes and Generals, which is a bit of a reimagining of WW2 online.

It has issues though.

[Gilmer]

I've played Heroes and Generals back in beta. It was OK and it has definitely got better. You can level up and as you gain in levels more weapons and vehicles become available to you. It's OK if you're into that kind of thing. I'm not saying I'm not, but I did get bored fairly quickly. But, I get bored fairly quickly on a lot of games.

[CarnageINC]

Armored Warfare is pretty solid, its coming to open beta soon.

[ivaldi]

It seems a WoT in different eras, we'll see ...

[ezzler]

The strange thing about World of Warships is every battle is a full fleet meeting engagement.
land has no value except as an obstacle to sight.

Its a shame that no other game modes have been envisaged.
- Fleet action with variant placement
- Convoy attack/protect
- Harbour attack
- Invasion escort/ landing craft
- Airfield capture

There is no weather - its clear day every day.
No clouds to hide under.
No land defences at all. Not even an AA outpost or a radar station.
Maybe it will evolve ?