WWIIOL trials

A free two week trial, the game is very good if you want a truly realistic FPS, and are patient. It can take sometimes half hour to get to the battle feild and when there get shot right away. I think 85% of the time you dont see who killed you. Its got tanks, planes, paratroopers and ships. AA and AT cannons and stuff, rifle, sapper, MG and AT rifle classes. No XP or anything, totally player run.

http://www5.playnet.com/bv/wwiiol/firingsquad_promo.jsp

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And the fun in that is....?

Totally player run? Like the kinds of players who inhabit Jessie?

No... thanks...

I consider this thread to be a public service to the residents of SL. Maybe the trigger happy griefers will bite, and get their asses handed to them elsewhere.

I'm interested.

I know it's a free trial, but I've been pulled into free trials before and left with a feeling of wasting my time, even if I wasted no money. So...could you answer a few questions?

I play other FPS's like America's Army and (not much lately) MOHAA. Very much into WWII themed games whether FPS or RTS (ie D DAY). Is this game like MOHAA? I kind of got tired of it after a while. What I like about AA is the more sense of strategy/squad tactics to it (as well as the building character, read: honor points/awards, aspect of it). I also liked the fact that you can actually go prone in AA, unlike MOHAA. I saw a screenie on the site showing an Axis player in prone position. Is this accurate? In the later expansion packs for MOHAA, the AI could go prone, but you could not. Just hoping this isn't the same deal.

Also...are there any NPC's in this game, or is it pure pvp? And lastly, are we talking MOHAA-like deathmach (even though there were other MP modes) crap here. Or are there mission objectives, or other modes of play beyond pure shoot 'em up?

Thanks.

EDIT: Nevermind. Read through some of the help files, answered all my questions. And downloaded it. Trying it out in train offline, and wow, is all I can say. Graphics aren't the best ever (maybe I have mine set low?), but the amount of control you get over so many vehicles and artillery is extremely impressive. Just trying to find a way to work some of those vehicles now - as I don't have a joystick and am having trouble using the keymapper for some of those controls.

Other than that. Awesome. Thanks for the thread. Wouldn't have checked into it otherwise.

I'll stick with Planetside, which has all of the good features you meantioned and very few of the bad ones.

I am a WWIIOL player. The game is not full of griefers like you might think. There are very organized and serious players who appreciate the depth of equipment, strategy and FPS play.

CRS is a a great development team. They constantly talk and play with the playerbase and take the moderating of the game and forums very seriously.

WWIIOL is getting ready for a re-release of their box and have made some very impressive additions and improvements to gameplay and performance.

If you are intrested in a serious war simulation then try WWIIOL. I havent played Planetside, but from what I can gather, they are not similar except that they are FPS's

Champie

Thanks for the thread

I was an Infantry Officer in the 27th Panzer Division in WWII Online for over a year and this is the ultimate in FPS games on the internet, by player run they mean that both Allied & Axis officers have the ability to remove griefers from the game,players decide when and where battles take place in a completely non-linear game.

You can play French,British or German from the start of the battle of France up until Dunkirk on a map the encompasses the whole of europe,you can fly planes,crew tanks,crew destroyers,gunboats,drive trucks and many of the vehicles are multicrew.Infantry play is quite simply brilliant.

Try the free trial,you wont be disapointed and if you do then look up the 27th Armoured on the Allied side and ask for Engine2 who is my old unit commander,a gret bunch of guys & girls to game with.

Despite your assumptions, the WWIIOL playerbase is an extremely mature one. According to a poll (done a few months ago), the playerbase's average age resides somewhere between 28 and 30. The steep learning curve is attributed to the relative level of maturity.

Once you are fully acclaimated, the game proves to be as unscripted and dynamic as Second Life. The players, given many tools (aircraft, tanks, rifles, light machine guns, anti-tank guns; with detailed physics-based damage and flight models) have free will to determine the outcome of the battle.

Hundreds of players fill the Allied and Axis high commands which serve for both function and role-playing. They are governed by a strict, almost true-to-life military structure (if you try to jump the chain of command, or assert control in places where you shouldn't, your ass is grass). The High Command is entirely voluntary, and anyone may join. But, the higher you rise in rank, the more responsibilities you gain; and naturally, your social life goes down hill (hehe). I consider myself a senior member of WWIIOL, being that I am both a Builder (I pay a bit more than everyone else ) and a former Axis High Command member. I only went as Konteradmiral (roughly equivalent to a Brigader General) before I threw in the towel.

If you are interested in military history (mainly that of the Second World War), I would give WWIIOL a shot. The new box release is coming out sometime in may, so keep your eyes open.

a bump and another bit of info..

The new Release will be named Beyond Blitzkrieg. The 4 year anniversary of release is June 6, 2005. On that day in 1944 Operation Overlord began (D-Day) and the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin their drive of the German forces to Berlin. I do expect the new release to be available by then.

The game is 56k friendly and surprisingly, I can run both SL and WWIIOL at the same time without killing my computer.

WWIIOL uses SpeedTree technolog as well as a proprietary physics engine and terrain editor. CRS (the developers) have been rolling out upgrades to their proprietary tools which allows them to continually expand features without "waiting" for a new realease of third party software or holding back new features until some 3rd party software can be integrated (for example: waiting for Havok II implementation).

Just some info if you are curious.

ok, offline sucks. The only reason to use offline is for the purpose of testing and becoming familiar with new vehicles and equipment. Offline is there for this purpose only. It does not even begin to show you what the real war is like (the live server).

Graphics are the way they are. They are not the best, but they are the best they can be. WWIIOL hold the award for the Largest Contiguous no sharded virtual world. It is huge! Let me find the map illustrating the size of the WWIIOL world....

oh and the visible distance is greater than 2 KM. Because of these aspects of the game, polys are sacrificed for speed and visibility. However, as code and proprietary tools are optimized, more complex and detailed models of buildings, vehicles and AVs are added or upgraded.

Also note, the area represented on the comparison map is only most of the developed game space. Not pictured is the English Channel and the UK, as well as the Alps to the south east and germany to the east, and north into Denmark.

The "theatrenav" image shows the complete game map with the yellow squares indicating the active portion of the map.

Lets do a little math:

1 Sim in SL = 256m x 256m = .256 KM x .256 KM = .065536 KM^2

that means that 1 KM^2 = 16 sims.

Based on the km^2 of the "active" game map that means that the WWIIOL world is equivilent to 441,600 sims, in area only. Obviously the density of the SL world could not be handled by the WWIIOL engine.

Not many people unfamiliar with WWIIOL would ever see this comparison. If you have seen any comparison, it is likely to be another map that compares just the MMORPG games without the WWIIOL map comparison.

Champie

Wait until the Beyond Blitzkrieg release...you will not be let down

I tried playing once, I logged in and had no idea what to do and ran around for 2 hours and never saw another player except for planes flying around. And I got killed.
More than once.

It's not a noob friendly game.

you are correct Jellin, not noob friendly right now, but that is changing.

The User Interface is getting a complete overhaul...I mean complete! Comparing the old and the new..well, they look like different games.

Attached are the latest in development screenies of the New UI

Training Videos, A live help channel, training server, training classes held in game, websites in English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Norwegian (I think).

Been over a month since the original post and my reply. Hadn't checked back here since. But thanks for replying anyway.



Yeah. Offline was my first stop because I was given some handy advice about keymapping and wanted to get everything setup ahead of time so I didn't roll out of a spawn point without a clue.

I still enjoy offline for making fraps videos and practicing dodging the AI AA guns over the island.

But yes... Offline is nothing compared to the real deal. Which I've been enjoying steadily now for, as I said, a month. The game impressed me incredibly - and has taken up quite a bit of my time. I hardly log into SL anymore.

My thoughts on graphics changed immensly. I had my settings tuned super low by default for some reason. When I pumped them up - I was quite impressed. Especially considering the high framerates I was getting and the distance I could see.

And I know all about the extended map areas. I often fly over the channel to hit the factories in England with He111. Hehe. And yes, I'm an Axis player. I tried both sides. 2 Weeks each, more or less. And decided to stick with the axis.

Thanks for the pics though. Wish I'd seen this again sooner. I got an email notice that the thread had new posts today. But I haven't had a single one before that even though I see quite a few more people replied since I did. Owell. Spam filter I guess.

Anyway. Love the game. Play it religiously now. And am looking forward to the update myself. Was privy to my first intermission too, during the last allied win. Was fun to be able to use some of the vehicles you normally couldn't during regular campaign time.

As for it not being a noob friendly game, I couldn't have found it more opposite. Maybe I just got lucky due to the time of night/day I play, but everyone was really nice to me. Had one nice guy on the LW let me tailgun for him for hours to help me rank up so I could fly JU87's. I found the people to be pretty nice to noobs. Again...guess I might have lucked out. But I hope that doesn't keep the previous poster from giving it another go.

Hell, I'm trying to recruit my brother to play the game. He's in college and is just getting into the mmorpg scene. So I told him I'd frap a bunch of footage and cut him a movie so he can see what I'm talking about.

So all in all...the original poster of this thread made a big and much needed change in my online gaming experience. And I thank everyone else for posting their thoughts too.