I have never heard of this game...

blucommunist

When did this come out? Why should I play it? Im just curious...I mean all of u seem like diehard fans so impress me..

Slamen

Hey Blu,

Well I'll give it a stab.  Just a short explanation, WWIIOL is a game played in 1/2 scale Europe starting in May 1940 with historically modeled equipment.  The perspective of play is from a first person point of view.  At any time, you can be a rifle carring infantry, drive panzers, fly spitfires, or pilot a coastal patrol boat.  There is a ton of different equipment/vehicles that I'm not listing. 

There is only 1 server with a day/night cycle and no zones.  Over 250 cities have been modeled across Belgium, northern France, southern Holland, western Germany and Luxemburg.  There are only 2 sides Allies (french army and british army) vs. the Axis (german army).  Team play is encouraged since overwelming numbers wins the battles most of the time.

The overall goal is for either team to capture 90% of all the cities.  Only the infantry class can capture points in cities.  A secondary goal for either team is to reduce the opponents ability to research/produce newer equipment by destroying factories.  Several important towns on both side have Research, Development and Production (aka RDP) factories that allow for newer equipment to be introduced into the game.  (i.e. 1941 tanks are better then 1940 tanks)  Usually bombing strikes are used to reduce the factories to rubble but also deep infilitration raids by sappers/paratroopers have been used.

If you're considering playing this game, read my post titled "Must read for new players or people considering playing WWIIOL."  It should describe what to expect in game.  Even though WWIIOL looks like a FPS game, it doesn't play like most.  Oh and ignore all the replies to that post since it went off topic quickly

Here is a pic I put together to show how big the game map is.   http://wwiionline_pics.home.comcast.net/Gamemap.html

The pic is current and gets updated every 10 minutes so what you see is the battle lines at this moment.  The big black areas are sections that do not have any towns in them so I don't have acces to the .jpg from CRS.  Make sure you use the horziontal slider, the pic is bigger than 1200x1024.

One of the features not visible in game but I believe is very important is that WWIIOL relies on a physics engine for balistic flight paths and for armor/projectile interaction.  What this means is the game is not a hit point system but an attempt to model real life damage to equipment.

Here is a post that shows a few examples of what I'm talking about.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/load/forums/loadforum/526/loadthread/11000/setstart/1/loadclass/181

Well that is all I have at the moment.

Also check out the Screen shot post for a vision into this game.

Good luck

Slamen

Pruitt

Good post, Slamen. I'll just add a couple of additional points.

First, you asked when the game came out. It was released on June 6, 2001. It had arguably one of teh worst lauches ever in the industry, due to it's original publisher, Strategy First, forcing teh game out the door before it was ready. Since the game has been patched numerous times to become the beast that it is now 3.5 years later.

On the subject of patching. The developers (fondly known as the Rats, as the company name is Cornered Rat Studios) release a new major update/patch roughly every 6 weeks. They've been on this schedule for well over a year now. That may slow down a bit soon, as they begin to work on tehor recently announced expansion, North Africa. They are a small development house without the resources of the Giants in the industry, so manpower there needs to be used efficiently to accomplish their goals.

Now the game itself. WWIIOL has a very steep learning curve. I can't stress this enough. Each avatar has it's own set of controls, imitating real life as best as they currently can in a virtual environment. As slamen said, tehy don;t use a hit point/bubble system. It is a physics system that ofetn leads to frustration in people used to the more simplistic HP system. You can and will die to a single shot from your virtual enemy. But just as often, yuo may not. It depends on where your struck. Shells can often pass clear througha vehicle not penetrating any inhabitants or critical components which allow you to continue on. Players who sdo not understand this begin to think there's problems, when in fact there are not.

Each side in the game has it's own player run High Command. There are many levels in the HC, from CinC all the way down to Brigade/KG Commanders with many levels in between, in each branch of the service (army, air force and navy). These players give of their own time to try to help coordinate the masses into some sembelence of an organized army. It's imperfect still, but for those that actually but into the system, it provides a very nice experience imho.

The game is also a bit slower paced than what the FPS crowd is normally accostomed to. As working with others is very important, there needs to be time to group together. Spawn points are also usually a distance away from an attack point, so it also takes time to travel there. Traveling by road is dangerous due to possible enemy interdiction from land and the air, so flanking off road increases the time to battle also.

The game is almost pure PvP. There is very little AI in the game. Only some AAA guns and a few guns that are scattered around each town that are easily avoided or removed. Basically, another human or groups of humans are your virtual enemies, which makes things very interesting and different all the time.

You can download the client and try it out in it's very limited offline mode for free. It'll give you a small idea of what it is like. Just go to http://www.wwiionline.com/. At the top of the page you will see a link for Downloads. Just follow that link and download the full client for the operating system you run (both Windows and Macintosh OS's are supported). Install it and try it out. If it seems like something you're interested in, give it a try. I think you'll find this game is unlike the vast majority of games out there.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. I'm sure one of us will be along to help you out. 

Have fun!

Generallieutenant Pruitt, Retired GHC
1st Lithuanian Brigade "Iron Wolves"

Demarii

Its simply the best War Simulation RPG/FPS out there. Its full PVP on a massive scale. You can assume the role of military personel in whatever army you chose, and your earned rank will determine just how much access to equipment and other features or abilities you might have. It never gets boring because of the variety of battle-fronts, equipment, positioning and disposition along the front. Sometimes your armor is strong you air support is dominant, other times your armor is hiding under a tent of trees, what do you do. Call in your air support would be a good first bet to try, but trust me it doesn't allows work. Sometimes you got to get it done yourself, one way or another.

And you do it as a team. Thats the beauty of it, its all about teamplay. There is room for solo play, I do it sometimes, but even solo your still part of the team your just filling a role in the team that is currently solo (like flying Recon of the Coastlines etc) The rules and the gameplay just get better with each patch.