World War II Online

Did You Know?

• The PC version received mixed reviews according to Metacritic.
• Kevin Rice of NextGen described the game as having a huge learning curve and low gratification.
• As of June 2021, developers were working to port the game to Unreal Engine 5.

Gameplay

Set in 1940–1944 Western Europe, WWII Online is a virtual battlefield and combined arms war simulation. Players can command or crew aircraft, armored fighting vehicles, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft artillery, four naval vessels, fight as a foot-soldier with various infantry weapons, or parachute from C-47 or Ju 52 transports. Vehicles with two or more positions can be multi-crewed by two players. The game runs in real time with players fighting as German, American, British, or French forces in a persistent world. Command structures and missions add strategic and tactical layers, while ranks provide an RPG layer for leadership roles. The single, non-instanced map is a half-scale representation of western Europe covering approximately 56,600 units of accurate terrain, with capturable cities, airfields, and ports. Players are organized into brigades and can join player-managed squads, which follow brigade and strategic rules set by high command. Ranks are earned through a performance-based scoring system and are never lost due to mission failure or death. Detailed statistics, tracked by the server, are available via a web interface called Combat Statistics and Records, which records mission history and compares player performance.

History

After IEntertainment Network purchased Interactive Creations of Grapevine's WarBirds in 1999, several developers left to form new companies. Some joined John "Killer" MacQueen, Jonathon "Hoof" Hoof, and Chris "Mo" Sherland to create the G2 Network, with a massively-multiplayer first-person WWII simulation for PC and Mac as its centerpiece. Following a lengthy closed beta, WWII Online launched on June 6, 2001 under the campaign title Blitzkrieg, timed to the D-Day anniversary. The game has received frequent updates, originally every six weeks, later shifting to larger content releases three or four times per year. The initial launch faced technical difficulties: players needed to download a 70 MB update, which took about three hours on 56k modems. Playnet temporarily set up multiple game-world copies on different servers to distribute load, merging them into a single world after several months. Some advertised features, such as rank and high-command strategic features, were partially implemented or missing at launch.