Wednesday, August 3, 2011

World of Warplanes - WoT Integration?

Wargaming.net has yet to reveal much information about World of Warplanes (WoW . . sigh) beyond the fact that it's in development, will feature three classes of aircraft, and will share gold and free experience with World of Tanks.

The three classes of aircraft seem to fall into the categories of air superiority, multi-role, and ground attack.  What I'm curious about though, is what will be the use of a ground attack aircraft in what sounds like a dogfighting game?  They won't be very useful unless there's something on the ground to attack  One possibility is that there will be objectives on the ground that need to be protected by the air forces, airfields or factories or whatever, and destroying the enemies building/buildings/base will result in victory.  Maybe.  That would provide a clear role for each type of aircraft -- ground attack go for the bases, air superiority escort ground attack, and multi-role provide escort or supplemental ground attack capability as needed.

However, that sort of role was traditionally filled by bombers more than ground attack aircraft.  The ground attack role was more often used to support ground forces, such as tanks and infantry, by destroying enemy tanks and artillery.  Wargaming.net just happens to have a game that stars tanks and artillery, and the games will even be sharing some resources (and presumably the same game engine).  I wonder if they could possibly be hoping to integrate the two games, such that ground attack aircraft are able to have some sort of impact on WoT battles.  It would be interesting, but I'm not really sure how they'd do it.

Presumably the area of battle will be much greater in World of Warplanes than WoT.  It will be pretty silly if it's not.  One thing they could do is create an area on the WoW map that represents the WoT battlefield that's being interacted with, and entering that "square" on the map zones the WoW player into the air above the WoT battlefield and gives them just enough time to attempt one strafing run.  Teams would be randomly assigned, with WoW team 1 allied to WoT team 1, and WoW team 2 with WoT team 2.  Victory in one battle gives rewards to players of both games on that side, and it's possible for the air battle to be won by one side and the ground battle won by the other.

I think the biggest issue with this would be for the poor WoT players.  They'd have no way to influence the air battle, and no real way to defend against attacking aircraft, making them fairly passive punching bags as far as the air forces are concerned.  That may be fairly historically accurate (in the absence of anti-aircraft weapons) but won't make for fun gameplay.  I suppose my first theory is much more likely, but the second one could make for some interesting options if Wargaming.net can figure out how to do it right.

I wish they'd release some more definitive information about the game than "we have planes, and they'll fight!" but I know that will come in time.  Anyone heard any concrete news, crazy rumors, or have their own wild speculation?

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