[Interview] World of WarPlanes: Talking Dogfights at GDC Online

SBFord · October 2012

During last week's GDC Online in Austin, we managed to catch up to Wargaming.net's Victor Kislyi to talk about World of WarPlanes and about dog fighting in the aerial combat game prepping for official launch. See what we discovered and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

We talked about World of Warplanes and where the game sits this close to launch. Victor explained that the acquisition of BigWorld (a recent technology purchase) has helped them a lot on the building the game. They now have an engine they can modify and work with which gives them a much faster time to make changes. The biggest challenge continues to be the controls of the game and they want to make sure that all planes fly well and more importantly fight well. The Warplanes team is heavily focused on gameplay and polish right now. They want the look and feel of flying a plane to be a great experience even for casual players. The team has been doing endless tests and tweaks to get it right.

Read more of Garrett Fuller's World of WarPlanes: Talking Dogfights at GDC Online.

ReesRacer · October 2012

while accessible for the casual fan (as the article above states), i'm afraid there is simply not the mass-appeal for the kind of player-base Wargaming enjoys with WoT...as flight sims have always been more a niche market in the first place, and straddling the line between hard-core sim enthusiasts and pick-up-and-play arcade fighter action is no small task. i appreciate the effort they are making to ensure the game is approachable with several different control schemes, but i'd be surprised if most fighter jockeys don't use a dedicated joystick system.

also, like WoT, while no one can claim this is a true MMO in any real sense, it will be interesting to see all three of these titles (tanks/warplanes/ships) combined together for clan war map conquest. that is, of course, pretty far down the line.

FastTx · October 2012

I don't think there was mass appeal for tank games before wargaming made World of Tanks either. I believe they will do it justice, but while planes are more mobile and take a little bit longer to become skilled with, I believe it's possible for anyone to enjoy a flight sim fighter.

bcbully · October 2012

For some reason, for me atleast, even though I've loved aircraft since I was a 5 hell, the first book I read was on U.S. aircraft schematics, from the F5 tigershark to the f18 hornet, I loved them all, but dogfighting games never seemed to work.