After invading land of air, World of Tanks and World of Warplanes developer Wargaming has launched the third arm of their attack against free-to-play wargames. World of Warships [official site] entered open beta today, letting all and sundry in to roam the seven years blasting the heck out of each other for funsies.

I’m still impressed that they’ve made mainstream a type of game that was once quite niche (not that they’re sims, but y’know what I mean), and even more surprised that they’ve got away with the World of Warthings naming. I suppose a gnome isn’t much match for a shell bigger than they are.

World of Warships sees players duking it out as four classes of swimming car: zippy destroyers, balanced cruisers, gun-laden battleships, and multi-role aircraft carriers. While mostly they’re just plain old ships, with different speed and armour and mixes of guns and whatnot, the carriers are an interesting idea. They can carry four types of AI-controlled plane – scouts, torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighters – to send out over the battlefield.

A lot’s similar to World of Tanks, from a gentle arcadey tone down to the tech tiers players level up through. And, of course, it’s a bit microtransaction-y. I haven’t played it myself so I couldn’t tell you how far it is. Any commenters fancy chipping in here?

You can download World of Warships from its site. Here’s the open beta launch trailer:



To experience this #content, you will need to enable targeting cookies. Yes, we know. Sorry.

Manage cookie settings

