Source: http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/world-of-warships/artikel/world_of_warships,47221,3059429.html

Hello everyone,

around the time of Gamescom and E3, where World of Warships was presented to public for the first time, you might have seen a lot of praising articles about the game. What does that mean for the yet to be released game now that the entire gaming journalism is put on trial (see “Gamergate”) is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure. Not all the reviews are entirely positive, such as the one by Gamestar.de, one of the most important German gaming portals.

The review is not a complete hatchet job, but it’s definitely critical (the title itself is ironic: “Racing boat armor on high seas”). It came out on 31.8.2014 based on the Gamescom experience. The review (written by Christian Weigel), apart from the general overview of the game play (WoT-style with ships, different classes, the “garage” etc.) notes following things about the game:

- the caliber of the guns cannot be increased, it is tied to the ship class according to developers

- the spotting system: the smaller the ship, the later it is “spotted”

- ships have onboard recon aircraft to spot the enemy

- the performance (mobility) of all ships was increased unrealistically to a speedboat level in order not to make the battles too long

- developers promised 100x100km maps, but the test map is just 30x30km, which means that you are constantly within the reach of enemy guns and all pre-battle positioning is pointless.

- the gameplay is reduced to sailing quickly in zig-zag pattern not to be hit while trying to get as many shots as shots possible off in enemy direction

- ships exchanging fire is a “terrifying experience” – the shell guns look visually great, but are unrealistic (they leave a white smoke trace). Counterfire works well and is easy to pull off.

- the fire targetting works like in WoT (automatic elevation), but you can select the elevation manually to a limited degree in order to decide, whether you want to fire into the hull or below the waterline

- the shells are either of HE type (against unarmored targets such as destroyers) or AP (against battleships)

- AP penetrates the armor and damages the modules of the ship, but it doesn’t cause spectacular explosions (these can be caused by aiming at “ammo rack” (powder hold) below the turrets)

- apparently, submarines are still completely not out of question

As stated above, the article is not written in the cheerful and positive tone we usually expect, when it comes to articles about Wargaming products. I guess that’s good. We’ll just have to see, whether the game will satisfy the masses as World of Tanks did. Personally, I have serious doubts about that (especially seeing the politics behind the branch selection), but who knows? After all, the preview and leaked footage looked great. But then, so did World of Warplanes – in the beginning.