World of Warplanes Finally Takes Off

Free-to-play 20th Century dogfighting from the folks who cornered the tank combat market? Don't mind if I do.

Free-to-play 20th Century dogfighting from the folks who cornered the tank combat market? Don't mind if I do.

Wargaming.net, the developers behind the immensely popular World of Tanks, today officially released the second of their triumvirate of military war games, World of Warplanes.

After months of beta and being pipped to the post by rival War Thunder, aviation fans can now takes to the skies in one of over 100 aircraft from the 1930-1950 period. National airforces currently represented are those of the USA, USSR, Germany, Great Britain and Japan.

The official FAQ describes World of Warplanes as follows:

World of Warplanes is a global-scale flight combat MMO action game dedicated to air combats in aeroplanes that were designed and produced in the middle of the 20th century. The game will combine both PvP and PvE elements, where players will encounter real opponents as well as destroy AI-controlled ground objects.

So if an afternoon of dogfighting, strafing and bombing runs in some classic 20th century hardware tickles your fancy, then you probably want to sign up.

But wait, you’ve already played World of Tanks, right? Then you have a Wargaming.net account and can just download the World of Warplanes client and get… um… planing.

One Account To Rule Them All

Somewhere in the ambitious future of Wargaming.net’s plans for world domination, there are plans to unify World of Warplanes with World of Tanks and the still unreleased World of Warships to create a single glorious tactical experience of global war.

Until then, we’ll have to make do with the Unified Premium Account, which means that “if you purchase premium account time in World of Warplanes, it will also be valid in World of Tanks, and vice versa.”

About the author

Mat Westhorpe

Broken paramedic and coffee-drinking Englishman whose favourite dumb animal is an oxymoron. After over a decade of humping and dumping the fat and the dead, my lower spine did things normally reserved for Rubik's cubes, bringing my career as a medical clinician to an unexpectedly early end. Fortunately, my real passion is in writing and given that I'm now highly qualified in the art of sitting down, I have the time to pursue it. Having blogged about video games (well, mostly EVE Online) for years, I hope to channel my enjoyment of wordcraft and my hobby of gaming into one handy new career that doesn't involve other people's vomit.