My review of WWII online... so far.

[Widowmaker]

This bun needs to be put back in the oven, it ain't done yet. Graphics are fairly poor, old style, but I knew that going in and it does not bother me, gameplay and smooth framerates are far more important to me than eye candy.

The cons:
Too many to list, but I can throw a few out.
1. Game crashes for me when I try to start it, I crash to desktop a lot during the loading process but can eventually get through with a bit of perseverance.
2. Game server crashed a WHOLE bunch last night (big surprise).
3. When the game server was up they reduced the maximum amount of players to 500 so only a lucky few could get on (so much for the statement on their web page "There is no hard limit to the amount of players we can support").
4. When I finally got into the game the graphics are very out of date, kind of looks like something I ran on my old 486. This does not bother me much as gameplay is more important but I was hoping for a bit crisper look. The game looks like it is running way under sampled (lots of "jaggies").
5. My biggest problem is that when I go to fly a plane on-line I will crash to desktop very soon after taking off. Others were able to fly because when I was actually playing and got involved with the invasion of a German held town there was some cool fighting in the sky above.
6. When infantry reload there is no animation for it, detracts from immersion.
7. And other problems like the bug where all sound goes away when you play infantry. Or the bug where you can not spawn as anything unless you choose a mission to take (people were just throwing up simple missions like "take that town" so people could spawn as something).
8. There is a frame rate counter in game and it reports low frame rates. Was saying like 26fps for me when in the open doing nothing. This has to be very inaccurate though because when it was reading my 14fps when in the target area where several people were fighting it looked perfectly smooth. Whatever.
9. I have not been able to figure out if Infantry can use anything but the riffle or machine gun they spawn with. I have not been able to change loadouts on any vehicle. I am hoping this will be fixed soon.
10. I was unable to change the mouse sensitivity.
11. Game names must be at least 4 characters (letters or numbers) and no more than 8 characters. And as far as I can tell no capitol letters are allowed. So much for trying to put Widowmaker in there. My in game name is "reynark", Palooka will recognize the name (hint, has something to do with an EQ character).

There were other bugs but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

Pro's:
1. Battlefield is HUGE. It does take time to get from most spawn areas to a fighting area. If you try to run from town to town (and the one I was at looked pretty close to the other on the map) can take a loooong time. I ran for about 10 min and was not quite half way to the enemy town.
2. Cool feature of being able to ride on vehicles, c'mon, d'ya think guys marched all the way to the front? You can hitch a ride on some tanks just by pressing the J button on the keyboard (same to get off). Also the trucks players drive will hold several infantry and be able to tow the big AT and AA guns. Riding in a truck was very cool for me, you can turn your head right and left to look around a bit and I tell you when 2 BF109's are coming around for a strafing run on the column you are a part of (tanks and transport trucks) it is a very scary feeling (until 2 friendly spits show up out of nowhere and distract them... whew).
3. Game physics are well done. At least most of them. Planes are well modeled and will throw you around if you don't keep control of them. Ground vehicles are very well modeled and "feel" right. Infantry feels lacking in realism to me because I am so used to Tribes, Counterstrike, DoD, etc... that the infantry in WWII feel slow and sluggish (as it should be) but as I played the game (on those rare times I could) I got used to it. I still have yet to use my riffle in combat.
4. Feels great to be a soldier in the field riding a truck with a bunch of tanks around you, other grunts by your side and the planes escorting from above. The one organized effort I was in "felt" right, I was able to look around and see all these vehicles moving across the field and it was good.
5. So far the chat systems seems to work very well. The chat windows are all "radio" channels ala the old Air Warrior. But most radio channels can only be heard from a certain distance away so you should only hear chatter from your specific fighting area (that is what someone said last night). The radio ranges are unknown to me but seemed to be adequate for what we were doing.
6. Rank system is interesting and I am looking forward to seeing what kinds of player made missions will be posted when the game is working as intended.
7. Terrain modeling is very good. The graphics may be a notch toward the past but the terrain model is very good. There were many rolling hills with a few high ones. You could see quite a ways into the distance so you could see the road snake off into the horizon, up hills, etc... Brush is more evident than in Everquest with sometimes sparse trees in fields and tall grass for infantry to hide in. There are groups of trees around for tanks to park behind and a couple times I saw some actual forests that were thick and dark, no idea if infantry can crawl through them or not as I was trying to get the hang of driving a tank in an unoccupied zone.
8. They did away with having to "qualify" offline to drive or fly. This was a feature they were talking about pre release but apparently they did not implement. There is an offline practice mode to get the hang of controls (and customize them because some of the defaults make no sense). Do not judge the game on the single player practice. It is very much just to let you play with the controls and does not do justice to on-line game play.
9. When I hit a German infantry with my tank gun (I actually hit something!) he disappeared in a fine red mist.
10. Each vehicle is 100% different from every other vehicle. You have to get a feel for each one, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.
11. NO STRAFE SHOOTING OR STUPID DEATHMATCH JUMPING TO AVOID SHOTS! You best have aim and skill to live in this game.
12. There is a cursor that was really annoying me because the game cursor stays on the screen and was moving around as I moved the mouse to look as an infantry. This would have gone in Con's if you could not get rid of it with LCNTRL+LSHIFT+C. Again to get rid of the mouse cursor use LeftControl+LeftShift+C. This is a toggle so do it again if you want cursor back again.
13. Chat window is easily resizable and movable to any where on the screen.

To keep perspective Everquest SUCKED when it first came out too (you should see some of the early screenshots).

I like the game but it so not done. I spent hours last night trying to get it to run while watching TV. It is so not finished that I was actually laughing out loud. It was funny.
I give this game 3 out of 5 stars and would rate it 4 out of 5 if they fixed the server and client crashes and 5 out of 5 if they fixed the crashes and cleaned up the graphics.

I will be giving this game a chance. Hopefully I will have some time to play around with it this weekend but my folks are coming over for yet another visit (ever hear about wearing out your welcome, mom and dad?) and even if I have time no guarantee that the servers will be working.

peace,
[AK]Widowmaker

[[AK]Squidly]

I'm in the middle of downloading the 60+meg patch... STill haven't logged in, but the signup webpage was an adventure to say the least.

Solo play seemed to have a bug or two as well. I tried to ready my weapon, but as soon as I let go of the shift key, the weapon dropped back down to my side. My fire key wouldn't work. I also see no way in the documentation to LEAVE THE GAME.
Important, that. I hit every button on my keyboard, along with some alt/ctrl sequences... no dice. I ended up having to stop task on it.

More as I investigate this further.

[Widowmaker]

You leave the game by pressing shift+esc. It promps you with a confirmation for leaving the vehicle then you go back to the menu screen and click the red x on the right side to exit the game.

Your gun will always be put down when you release the shift key I think. I will investigate that as well, I think they wanted to make it a bit more than point and shoot by making you have to hold your gun up rather than assume that it is always out and pointing ahead. I support that but think that raising the gun should be a toggle but make it so you can't sprint with the gun out or something.

[AK]Widowmaker

[This message has been edited by [AK]Widowmaker (edited 06-07-2001).]

[Widowmaker]

Another problem I have is that I can see no way at this time to exit a vehicle during play. Such as drive the truck to the battle and have your guys AND YOU jump out to join in. I also saw no keys to bail out of a plane, that would be cool, get shot down and bail only to have to make your way back with only your side arm. Must be an omission because I could have sworn I say beta testers saying they did exactly that. Also I see no way to exit a tank in the field.

[AK]Widowmaker

[Widowmaker]

Here are some reports of peoples experiences in the game. Cut and pasting away!
The following are real life experiences by players who bought the game yesterday and actually managed to logon.
The future is here... just have to iron out those little bugs that's all

Regards

Daren aka Beaz

After trying to download the patch from all the mirrors I finally succeeded at getting it from ZDNET. Elapsed time 1 hr 28min.

Alright! So now I'm excited! Start the game servers are down, 1/2hr later same. 1/2 hr later still down. 1hr later I get in! Almost fell off my chair. I wasn't seriously expecteing to get, so I was doing 2 or 3 other things at the same time (ie. cooking).
5min for game to load. No joke!

I make it to the theatre screen. Very difficult to navigatre and not the least bit intuitive but the manual can help a little. A little.

Ok so things are looking up. People are getting organized on chat. it looks like the servers just came up for everyone. After a lot of yelling and confusion on how to starta mission we all agree to attempt to retake Flavion starting from the Metette base. More confusion about half of the players spawn in mettete with the mission set. Half are still a lost at theatre screen (myslef included despite reading the manual twice). So eventually eventually I figure out how to spawn in mettete without a mission assigned and relay this to everyone else. Now the other half gets in.
Whew!! Elapsed time ~20 min.
Wow mettete is hoppin! First column has already left with about 3 chars and 1 and a half truck load of infantry.

Things at the base are getting crazy, but man the vehicle graphics sure are nice!
I hop on the lead tank (not smart...read on)and we start headin out the gate. Then I see 2 trucks spawn so I jump off. and run and jump on a truck. This was not ez, and all I can say is try getting on from the side and not the rear. Also you nor the truck can be moving. So me 4 others happily sitting on the truck and 3 others trying hard to get on but can't, so we roll out. We are the second vehicle in the 3rd short column. Riding in truck is cool and the feeling of speed and hearing the gears shift is pretty cool. sitting down the inf. can on see 180 degrees if you turn your head. This is a little scary, especially we you can see and hear an intense air war above. Ok we are off to flavion top speed.

We see an allied plane go down in flames very close to us. So far this is easily the most spectacular thing I've seen. Made you really feel like you are in a war zone. The tank driver behind us got so excited he flipped his tank! This holds up what has turned out to be a very large column behind them. So as I turn back to look forward... what do I see? The me109 the shot down the allied plane flying very low straight down the road right at the lead tank. Our intrepid truck driver yells jump. Thanks "Bolt". we all exit and run into the bushes the lead tank gets strafed. This looks spectacular! Sparks every where! Brown dirt Flyin everywhere! Wow! Our truck driver never got touched. unfortunately, the defacto leader of this little expedition took my place on that lead tank earlier adn got seriously splattered. Tank.... unharmed.

We jump on the truck. head on. Now across the grasland toward our objective. WE can hear battle sounds but cant see the town yet. Radio chatter confirms a major battle. people pinned down. people dying. Planes strafing the hell out of the city and curiously not hitting any infantry. Hidden infantry are very difficult to kill by air.

10 more min. we are close to the town now. This is by far the craziest most exciting sight. you really feel like you are in france and fighting a war. Tracers back and forth from one side of town to the other. people running back and forth. The Krauts were holding hard! myslef and 3 otheres unload and start sprint towards some barns the would let us flank the germans position in a building in the middle of town. We take some fire from a long distance. We keep moving since ther is no cover...
As we near the barn. A german smg heads right toward us and hes takin fire from alies in a seconf floor window. WE drop and waste him. It took no less than 15 shots each before we hit him, but we were happy! We get up runtowards teh barns and....... My game freezes and I'm kicked out!
**** !
I manage to reconnect but decide to sleep instead.

That was my first day at war.


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The servers came up briefly at 3:00am - I was waiting and got off about 3 hours of play.
They have a problem with hardware and are trying to fix it today, only 500ppl were able to log on with a 20% packet loss

I must say I had fun, it is VERY realistic. Moving to the battle takes ALONG time (10 - 20 mins to get to another city). Combat is difficult as it is hard to see people who are shooting at you.

Defenders have the advantage for sure.

My greatest moment was when I was a German SMG Infantry riding on the outside of a tank to scout ahead and we are going over a rail road bridge when we run into a convoy of Allied vehicles. 3 tanks with inf riders and a Truck with 4-6 more inf sitting in the back.

I jump off my tank and run down to this little underpass of the bridge, I wedge myself up into the dark crevice and hide

Well the tank that I was on, was quickly killed, and I could hear the tanks above idling and switching gears, then they come along the bridge and then start under it to get to another road !!! They blocked the bridge by killing our tank on it.

They are going to pass right beside and a little below me !!! I am hiding in this dark corner under the bridge so they can not see me. Apparently they never saw me leave my tank. The first tank passes me with no one on it, so I let it go.

Then next has an unbuttoned commander with his head up looking forward .. POP POP !!! 1 miss and one head hit .. fade to black for him His tank just keeps going .. As he tries to figure out what happened and switch back to the driver ..

The next tank has two or three inf on the far side and one facing me, I pop the one facing me. His tank slows to a stop but the truck slams into him from behind and pushes him past me. (not very realistic, but oh well)

So here I am, in darkness (no cover) and looking down to see a stalled fully loaded troop transport truck. So I do what any good german boy would do.

I open up full auto on the back of the truck from near point blank range. I see 4 bodies drop off the truck dead, and a single french rifle man alive and firing at my position. I reload and gun him down.

I start taking fire from the inf I left alive at the front of the convoy. I run down behind the truck and move up to open fire into the driver and engine.

The engine dies and smoke comes from the truck. Now we are all fighting in a dark, tight little stone tunnle that runs under the span of a railroad bridge.I managed to disabled the truck and its smoke is between me and the tanks, they can not get through.

So I run to a treeline while a few of the inf take shots at me .. I scoot along the treeline and hold my fire .. 2 french inf come to check my old position to see if I was dead .. I open up killing them

Then I see the tanks in the distanct (they went around the bridge to get back to this side) They are a ways off, so thier shots are really wide of my old position. I run along the tree line to the other side and lay prone and wait for our tanks to catch up ... After 5 mins of silence and waiting I am thinking of moving and the servers crashed

I think it is funny that I stopped an entire assult with one little man No misson points, but VERY cool

This game is NOT tribes, you can not really just jump in a tank and fight. You will have 10 - 15mins to get to the enemy city and 10 tanks shooting at you

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Let me begin by saying that this is the absolute buggiest, ugliest piece of software that I have ever LOVED. I now understand what the CB's were talking about.
Ok, my tale begins at Ciney. Fairly big fight was going on between us and the French at Spontin. Neither side was really organized so not much progress was happening on either side. One side would push close to enemy town, then get wiped. Most everyone from both sides was getting into vehicles of some sort. I mostly stuck to infantry.

During one of our pushes, my ride got killed at the "Ridge of Death" (you'll know it if you get there). I hopped out and made a 50 yard sprint to the north to clear that road. I was taking some fire...tracer rounds were zipping by and the ground was getting chewed up at my feet. After one particularly hellacious volley, I drop to the ground, spin around, and then lay still feigning death. It works. The char moves on assuming I'm dead.

I begin a painful crawl toward Spontin, never daring to stand. Bush to bush....tree to tree, I crawl for literally about 30 minutes. At this point, I'm about 750 meters out of Spontin and night begins to fall. WOW! It is BLACK! I take the opportunity to stand up and make up the last few meters quickly. POW! A shot rings out right by my left ear. It is a French rifleman. How he missed I don't know...we were about 20 feet apart. I hit the dirt and shuffle to my right looking for a pebble, a dirt clod, ANYTHING to hide behind. Pow! Pow! 2 more shots but I'm still alive right beside him. I finally pick out his form against the star backdrop. We are about 10 feet apart at this point, and to my great relief, he is shooting at the dark bush where I USED to be and can't even see me laying at his feet. I dispatch him, displace, then continue to the city.

As I enter the city, it is a mess. Your eyes play tricks on you. You see movement, but you can't tell what it is. I finally just give up and sprint for a building. After taking cover, I use the doorjamb for cover and look back out from where I had just come. Now, silhouetted against the light colored buildings, I see that I ran right between 2 groups of French gunners and neither side had seen the other.

So, I climb to the second floor of this building and wait...and wait. Dawn finally comes (then a bug kicks as back to the beginning of the sunrise cycle...odd) and I start relaying info to the boys back at Ciney. The whole situation is FUBAR. We have armor inside their town, they have armor inside ours. The French must get the idea that they can take Ciney, because suddenly a bunch of troops start coming out of their barracks. 2 of the first group of 4 that I see drop and my hiding place remains secure. Another group...1 dies. Another group...1 dies. This continues until I've wracked up 9 kills inside the city.

At this point, Oncha and I are communicating and he's warning me of a trooper right below me. I creep to the stairs and see flashes of the firefight going on right below my feet. I believe Oncha is silenced, but I got him for ya, Oncha!

Sadly, another trooper is behind him and puts one through my head. I go down with a smile.

Thanks to Cead as well....I laughed my ass off watching him tow 88's at about 60 mph and backing up into the walls of the garage trying to tow. It was a blast.

----------------------------------------------------------------

My First Battle - The Battle For Riven

Grabbed a Char and headed out. I saw an A13 with two troopers aboard heading that way also. We hooked up best we could (Char be slow ).

On the way there, out of my line of site, the A13 rolled and had to exit and restart. As I came roaring down the same road and hit a turn (probably the same that did the A13 in) I bank hard left, but that beast just leaned right and went into the ditch. Thus began a good 40 second rollfest down the hill. I lucked out and it rolled upright and I was no worse for wear.

The A13 had caught up to me by then and quickly outpaced me. He picked up the troopers again and they were off.

A few minutes later I found them surveying the Riven. I jumped over to the gunners sight and noticed a tank in town. I radiod the warning, but too late. Just then two PzIII came from down the hill and took the A13 under fire. I drove my Char to a ditch to get as hull down as possible and commenced firing. After quite a few rounds the first PzIII started smoking, so I changed my attention to the other one. The A13 was burning now and the first PzIII had squashed the troopers (Those Bastards!!!). So, I opened up on the other PzIII with all the fury I had. Soon, it too was a smoking hulk.

No sooner had this engagement ended than another PzIII crested the hill with some infantry support. I gunned the troopers mercilessly and took out the Panzer, again using alot of ammo in the process.

I began to move up to the crest of the hill to better survey the valley below. A Spit flew over but I was unable to reach him on the radio to get a recon of the area from him.

Sure enough, two more PzIII's crested the hill to my left and I took them under fire. I was able to start one burning before I ran out of main gun rounds. I decided it was now time to hoof it. Luckily, two more A13's showed up and covered my retreat.

What a blast!!! And that was only 10 or 12 people around!!! I'm definately in for the long haul. Flew a Spit right before work this morning, man what a site, 10+ tanks rolling to the front with 5+ Spits as air cover! Well, back to work

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Infantry is a blast. Give us the chance of disabling a tank with grenades and this would be a completely different game.

I can't really say anything specific about what I like. You can't put your finger on it. Somehow it just *feels* right. 2 times last night in the midst of battle, hours went by and I'd swear it felt like 5 minutes.
Oh, I thought of something...tracer fire and the sound of the planes circling overhead. Both incredible. However, the engine sounds of the tanks is out of whack. The biggest problem I have with the game's emersiveness so far is the sound, and this really bothers me. I'm not sure if it is my setup (SBLive, newest drivers on WinMe), but the distances of sounds is not coming across correctly. Rifles, tanks, etc often times sound like they are 10 meters away when they are actually 200.

I hear everyone dogging the infantry on the radio. It isn't impossible, guys, but you have to get the hell off those roads! Especially, the Germans. Until we can get some organization and get some 88's setup, the Chars can just take a sunday stroll down the roads and blow up pretty much anything they see.

This is the buggiest, ugliest, crappiest game you will ever LOVE. I can't imagine how much fun this will be when the code doesn't suck. =)


Well, some people got to play it at least. And now the servers are down for the count until tomorrow from what I have read. Maybe they will allow more than a handful of people on to the servers then. Nice beta product they have here, will be interesting to see when it is finished. I still think it has huge potential

[AK]Widowmaker

[[AK]Squidly]

Thanks for the tip about Shift-ESC... I tried it in solo and it worked great.

After patching, I was also able to fire my rifle. Wonderful!!

Now I need to pull that dusty joystick out of the closet so I can attempt to drive some vehicles around.

Oh, and what do you mean by "Dogging infantry"?

[This message has been edited by [AK]Squidly (edited 06-08-2001).]