Damn those frenchies anyhow!

Review

by Dave "!FT!Marauder" Kratky. June 11.2001

 

World War 2 online has come out at last. The long awaited simulation of World War 2 from Cornered Rat Software & Playnet is at long last out and........ Well... kinda ready for play.

First off, let me say that this is going to sound really bad first off, I'm going to get all the negative stuff out of the way, then we get onto the good stuff after....... I'm REALLY enjoying this game, but at the same time it's very frustrating for me...... And yet I keep playing.. and playing..... (Just one more game.. I can quit any time... Yeah.. just one more and that's it for me....)

*Sigh* There's nothing quite like paying sixty dollars to be on the meta team for a game I always say, and yet another game has been released in it's meta stages. I'm talking about World War II online, touted by it's publisher Strategy First as "The world's first massively multiplayer shooter." I don't know how many times I've ranted and raved about publishers releasing buggy and non-operational games. (And yes, I have praised the rare exceptions to the rule, such as the lads over at Relic who did such an amazing job on FAKK2, and apologized when the game had a memory leak. And fixed it ASAP.)

(See, sounds like I'm going to flame these guys like a mofo eh? I'm not....Keep reading......)

I called Playnet to try and get a quick interview with someone regarding the game. A few hours after leaving my message I got a phone call from Playnet's own Hatch. I was most impressed. Most gaming companies won't call back for a request like that because... Well, they just don't seem to care frankly. I guess they're too big and distanced from the gaming community. More from Hatch later in this little spiel.

I was really looking forward to WWIIO, and while it is tons of fun... Well.... It's not what it should be....... And there's no way in hell I'd be paying $10/USD per month to play the game in it's current state. As a good note, Playnet and CRS have extended the free one month trial until the game is less buggy. I'm impressed.

The servers are getting much better for up time as the days go on, but why were they not stress tested before hand? (I got the answer for this one from Hatch, and it was the answer I was guessing at.)

*sigh again* 'ight. Here we go:

The description on the box reads:

"Blitzkrieg - The first retail release is set at the beginning of the Blitzkrieg, and all the major battle points are included: strongholds, fortresses, forests and rivers, just as it was in 1940. Can the RAF and British armies help the besieged French forces to rewrite history? Could the Blitzkrieg have been stopped in France? With the dynamic flow of resources within WWII Online's strategic system, players will start the battles where they choose, and those choices will make a new history.

FEATURES

• Combined land, sea and air operations in the first online virtual battlefield
• ½ scale map of Europe with accurate terrain modeling- the biggest online world ever!
• Thousands of online players in a 24/7 persistent world
• First person perspective in all gameplay- the first massively multiplayer first person shooter!
• Character advancement and career paths for rich RPG layer
• Strategic systems driven by player missions and command structure
• Historically accurate and detailed weapons including aircraft, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, trucks, rifles, grenades and more!
• Groundbreaking physics and damage modeling
• Web-based player services package integrated with gameplay"

 

Regrettably, as of this writing more than just a few things don't work right. And some of the features included on the box, and in the ad campaign don't even exist in the game yet.

• A 70 meg patch that was released the day the game hit shelves. Not a good thing for the poor bastards on dialup. (Can you say 7-8 hour download?)

• Servers keep crashing, and CRS was unable to have one huge server... There's seven servers up right now, with at least two down much of the time. It was extremely difficult to get onto the game servers for the first three days, as CRS was experiencing massive packetloss and server crashes once their network loaded down..... Admittedly this is improving and from the sounds of it they were working their asses off to get it fixed ASAP. I'm impressed by their apparent dedication, I'm not impressed with the lack of a public beta, or some sort of stress test on the servers.

I was rather dismayed to see this when I first tried to access the game. It's getting much better now however.

 

• The game is buggy with frequent crashes and long load times, as well as just plain weird things happened. As a note about the load time, apparently the game connects to the server AFTER the load. So if a connect fails you just wasted a few minutes of time starting at the load screen. Apparently the patch due out this week will connect before the load, which should alleviate some annoyance on the gamer's part.

• Horribly low frame rates for anyone. (Every few minutes I drop down to 1-5fps. I usually hover around 10-20) Now I understand that when I can see to the horizon I'm not going to get 200 fps or anything, but when I'm dropping to 1 fps...... gimme a break.......See below for more....

• The game seems to have some sort of a memory leak, and on my system (Tbird 1.2ghz, 768 meg RAM, Geforce 2) I have screenshots of the game using 317 megs of RAM when I spawn as a tank. Tribes 2 in game tends to use around XXXX megs. If this game has issues running on my machine, it's going to have REAL issues running on the majority of gaming machines, which aren't as powerful. (Oh and yes, I _AM_ bragging here. Just in case you were wondering. :) I'm going to do some more testing on this one, I'll post my findings.

I think they need to work on the memory usage. 317 megs seems just a little excessive.

 

• Joystick support seems to stop working mid game for many people. Kingpin spent over an hour trying to take off, and crashed everytime.... For some reason his stick goes out of alignment in game. I've talked to other people experiencing the same difficulty, no one seems to have a solution yet.....other than to drop from the game and recalibrate.......

• If you black out/red out in a plane your compass and map stop working sometimes. Black out/red out also seems to sensitive at times. I'm experiencing them at 1-2 gs... (Normally it'd take around 5-6 if I remember correctly... and sometimes it does....)

• In gameplay map doesn't seem to be zoomable, so getting lost on your way to the target is extremely easy, and VERY frustrating. The world map should, I think (when you zoom in one level) have the towns labeled. It's annoying to have to move your mouse over each town to see the names of the town. Grrrrrrrr. I can never remember where the damned things are. It would also help just have to have a printable version of the theater map for reference. (.pdf?)

• There are no navy components or grenades. (Where's the earth shattering kaboom??) In my phone conversation with Hatch he mentioned that they had actually posted on their web site and in some interviews that they were not planning on implementing the naval phase for 60-90 days from initial release.

• The number of vehicles and weapons per side are extremely limited (basically two types of infantry, tanks, planes and trucks.) (AT guns can't fire flak either, which would be very helpful in shooting down those pesky spitfires strafing you.)

• Physics right now need some work. Tanks "float", large vehicles roll over sometimes when they hit... Well.... shrubs quite frankly. Yes. Shrubbery. It's either a bug or a plot by the tricky French to slow down the Axis advance while they run away. I've also had my AT gun spawn a few thousand feet in the air and plummet to the ground as gently as a feather made of bricks. (Now THAT was an interesting experience.) Oh, and just like Jesus, I can walk on water.... and drive my tank on it too. (Note to self: Not to be tried in real life. These are trained professionals on a closed server.)

Please note: In order to advance past this tree line you must bring a pair of hedge trimmers. Apparently the shrub is indeed mightier than the tank.

Newsline, Berlin 1940. Germany unveils their their newest secretest weapon of all...... The flying Panzer. Take that France! Romel is reported as being overjoyed!

 

From the looks of the WWIIO forums, there's alot of unhappy people. Actually their forums read like Diaktana's. People seem quite upset, and I imagine from the looks of it there's been quite a few returns to stores that actually accept software back. I've been reading the forums over the last few days, and I'm amazed at how angry people are. I mean some people are just about ready to haul the entire CRS team out of their offices and lynch them. From the above, it may sound like I'm there with the rope and horse...... buuuutttt.....

Actually I'm not. I will admit I'm pretty annoyed, because...... Well hey, I bought the damned game and I want to play. I want to play NOW. Not in a week. Not tomorrow. Now. But on the other hand I understand a little about the economics of the gaming industry. There comes a time when it's release the game, or as Hatch put it "Start handing out resumes." Gaming companies, especially the smaller ones, can only develop a game for so long before they start running out of money. CRS doesn't exactly have the backing of Sony like Everquest does.

As for the bad startup, well.. Stuff happens. Every MMPOG that I've ever heard of has a rough start. Logon & authentication issues. Crashes, hangs, lag due to server loads etc etc. CRS didn't have the time and funding for a massive public beta, they got more than the expected number of people logging in to play on the first day, ran into some weird server bank issues and had the machines crashing constantly. Part of the problem from what I read from the dev team posts on the forums was actually caused by some bad fiber optic cable. Personally I've gone through something similar with clients servers, though certainly not to the extent that I had several thousand people ready to kill me over it, but I understand how hard it is to troubleshoot something like that, especially under the kind of pressure these guys must have been working under. And work they were. I was up all Friday night trying to get on, and reading their posts allllll night and morning. (Incidentally, I was impressed that the dev team was keeping the players notified about what was going on, not just leaving everyone hanging, wondering what was going on. I was also impressed that they were damned near killing themselves trying to get it working.) They also implemented a multiple server structure quickly, which, while not allowing everyone to play on the same world, does allow people to get on and experience the game.

I'm not happy that the servers didn't have a massive stress testing before hand, a large public beta would have been useful. (And would have allowed me to get a peek at this game a little earlier. :)

Finally the servers seem to be running pretty well, and there were at least a few thousand people on each server Tuesday night playing. I was on as well, and I didn't really have any serious problems. Everything seems to be good, other than the annoying bugs. According to Hatch the dev team is currently working on getting the bugs out of the game, and get it running stable. Then they're going to work on implementing more weapons and vehicles, as well as the naval phase of things. They're planning on a 60-90 days after initial release for the naval phase. I can hardly wait. Not sure how that phase is going to work, trying to get some more information on it.

Allrighty, enough social commentary, lets get down to the ditty gritty.

 

How does this thing work anyhow?

Well, basically you enter the game through a browser launched interface. Just click on the world you wish to play in and shazam. After the load time, assuming a successful connect up pops the world screen.

I've got the whole worllllllddd under my heels! Come on, everybody sing along!

You click on the theater you wish to enter and hit the go button, or you can chat with everyone from this menu. Entering the theater will put you at a new menu. From here you can zoom in on the map more and pick a town to spawn at, as well as your vehicle. (For this game, troopers counts as vehicle types.) OR you can pick a mission that your betters have laid out for the betterment of your war effort. You gain rank and help your team out by completing these missions, so really it's a good idea to do them. If you gain enough rank you can actually start handing out missions of your own. The mission description will give you a little bit of information on the task at hand, (Usually of the "Head east and kill everything that isn't showing on your HUD as a friendly." variety) as well as a base of operations, town to attack or defend, and what vehicle the commander has decided would be the most useful at this time. Just click on the mission, click on the vehicle you wish to take, and you're headed out onto the battlefield from your selected town. Simple as pie! Note that the game maps all of Europe in 1/2 scale...... So if you're planning on leaving for the battle from a town that hundreds of miles away, you're going to have quite a walk/drive to get there... Just accept the missions, trust me. :)

On an interesting note, I've never seen a game that's more team based than WWIIO. Infantry rely on other players for rides into the battle. Everyone relies on infantry for capturing towns, so you can't just leave them behind and go play lone wolf. Ground troops need air support to suppress the enemy's air assets. Towed guns need to be towed into the battle, tanks and infantry need the towed guns for heavy fire support. Basically, you either live or die as a team.

This will either be a very good thing, or an annoying thing. I enjoy playing with a bunch of guys on Roger Wilco. It can sometimes be VERY frustrating trying to get people to organize themselves and attack or defend. Much of the time it's just a bunch of guys running around getting slaughtered by a better organized enemy. This is an issue in any team base game, and will probably resolve itself once people figure out why they're getting their asses kicked all the time by smaller numbers of opposing players. :) When you do get the teamwork going on... man. It's an impressive sight to see 50 tanks, guns, planes and infantry blowing the hell out of a town.

As the game moves on, more vehicles and equipment will be released as they became historically available. (Sorry Nazis, no Tiger tanks in 1940!) Eventually new theaters will be released as retail expansion packs that you'll have to purchase. For instance: Asia and North Africa. One very interesting thing you'll be able to do is maintain supply lines across the world. So if your side can keep a corridor open from theater of operations into another, you'll actually be able to ship supplies/points back and forth. When you fully capture a town it becomes part of your sides supply lines and starts generating resource points for you. When it's attacked and partly captured production is put on pause. (Fighting in the streets and all yah know.) If the enemy kicks you out and captures everything, it now makes guns and toys for them, and your people can no longer spawn there... They spawn at a forward base near the town. This entire supply idea is very cool, and it'll make the game VERY strategic at high levels. Just so you know, the rest of the world will continue to run for the length of the war, so even if you don't have the new expansion packs you'll still be able to continue fighting in the old theaters.

 

Graphics Engine & Sound

Well. It's not Halo or Tribes 2. In fact, several of my friends have looked at this game and commented on how ugly it is. Personally I think it looks pretty damned good, especially considering that one can see literally miles and miles. I'm quite impressed by the scale of the game, which I've only ever seen before in games such as Project IGI and the Delta Force series..... Of course those maps are only a few dozen miles across. In WWIIO you can literally walk across Europe if that's what tickles your fancy. Now THAT'S a big mother map.

Take a look at the below screenshots. I think the dev team has managed to portray the whole feel of war ravaged Europe pretty well. Tracer rounds fly across the sky, (Which incidentally looks damned fine.) dust flies up behind vehicles, earth flies into the air from shell impacts. Your vehicle instruments are detailed and realistic, although I've talked to quite a few players about them and no one I've chatted with so far will admit to actually even looking at them. Especially in planes where a variety of gauges bewilder and confound. (And frankly if I'm still in the air and going forward why would I care, except perhaps in night flying?)

One of the nicest things about this world is that it's actually populated. Perhaps not in amazing detail (The bushes and forests are just big 2d thingies.) but populated it is. One of the things that drove me nuts about Tribes and Delta Force was the fact that the worlds were so vast, and so damned barren. You'd have to occasional rock or tree sticking out and that was about it. Boring! For WWIIO, they've actually brought the world to life. Woot. Forests, villages, roads, trees, grass.... It's all there baby, and adds a little more realism to the experience.

Animations are pretty decent. Infantry look a little jerky running, and most objects actually look a little like they're "skating" across the ground. You do however get the idea. Tank commanders stick their heads out of hatches, barrels swing ponderously around as gunners take aim. Some very nice attention to detail.

Hate when I run outta ammo and have to respawn.	And the assault is underway. Panzer gunner's view.	Commander unbuttoned = sniper bait.	Heh. I'll be back here once I get back in my tank. Explosions good.

Sound effects are decent, if not overwhelming. It's very cool to hear a series of German 88 guns open up. Guns roar, engine rumble, rifles crack and you can hear bullets tinging off the hull of your vehicle. You can usually guide yourself to a nearby battle from the sounds.

There's no in game music, which really annoys me to no end. I LIKE in game music. Alot.

 

Controls

Some of the controls refuse to remap which is apparently caused by a read only file. (Grrrr) Each vehicle has it's own control scheme, which can be remapped in game to match your personal preferences. Learn them, you'll need it if you're going to pilot multiple vehicles. It's sorta like using your flight sim skills, first person shooter skills and driving sim skills all in one game. It adds a little confusion to the game having to learn a separate set of keys for each vehicle, but I found the default keys to be intuitive and easy to learn. Also, you don't have much choice. It'd pretty much stuck to fly a Spitfire with your first person shooter keys, nes pas? I've found that quite a few people simply stick with what they like to do the most. Like being a tank driver? Do that most of the time and learning the extra keysets isn't an issue.

 

Vehicles/Weapons

As I mentioned in my intro piece, the vehicles are rather limited right now. Each side has rifle infantry, submachinegun infantry, two tanks (Light & medium), 2 types of AT guns (Light & medium), two planes & a few types of truck to haul things around with (Infantry and AT guns.) All vehicles have detailed controls and interiors. If you're a tanker you can actually look over your shoulder at the wall or the other positions inside the tank. Pretty impressive if not really all that useful. Cornered Rat was planning on implementing more weapons for the infantry, more vehicles (Including planes.) as well as the naval section of the game within 60-90 days of release. Hmmmmmm.... Wolf Packs..... Destroyers...... I've been informed however, due to issues with the launch the Naval phase may take longer, they're not sure.

 

Looking over your shoulder for Frenchies while driving a Nazi halftrack.	Looking forward in said halftrack. Yes you CAN run down infantry. Take that you nazi bastard!	Why do I always drive the tank pa?!? I wanna shoot! Lemme shoot!	Getting my 88 gun towed into battle by a nice fellow nazi.	88 gun battery in defensive position. Blamo.

 

Final analysis