The destructive power of WoW....

[Grumpy Robot]

Well now it's in open Beta i've finally gotten on to have a play.

Before WoW i'd get home from work and spend a few hours a day on BP. When I installed WoW I resolved to log on to try it for half an hour...... 7 hours later I logged off to do other stuff.

Since that initial try 5 days ago i've been on BP for a combined total of 1 hour.... and that was to click repair on my base and/or start a ship build off. Having seen the data on this months raid prize I can see myself leaving BP entirely before too long. It just doesn't compared to WoW in the slightest in terms of enjoyment and engagement.

My personal WoW career highlights so far include:

• Scoring 4 kills in an 8 V 8 match with a stock tier 3 cruiser.
• Sinking 2 enemy ships at once with a single torpedo spread from a destroyer (that was entirely luck though)
• Taking my first battleship on its first ever run and killing two higher tier battleships and capturing the base to win the match.
• Having a 3 hour run of about 20 battles without a single team loss and surviving every battle.
• Completing all 3 "bonus missions" in a single battle.

Career low-lights:

• Commiting suicide by driving straight into the coast at full speed with my badly damaged and on fire ship
• My third battle with my destroyer (I died in less than a minute without getting off a shot)
• My cat pulling out my mouse wire in the middle of a battle so I drove straight into a teammate while still firing weapons directly at them because my intended target had moved.
• Targeting a ship while at maximum zoom without checking it was an enemy (and ended up sinking my own teams carrier)
• Getting annoyed at one of my teammates running their mouth at the team so I sunk them to shut them up.

Overall though i'm having an absolute blast on WoW, even after teething troubles (see the low-lights) and have had alliance mates from BP asking me if i'm alright because i've not been around much recently.

I can see WoW inflicting significant damage to BPs player base, either from people quitting completely or just spending less time on it because they're on WoW. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming months, but I for one am excited about WoW if nothing else.

My only criticism is that we don't have British and German ships to play with yet, i'd very much love to work my way toward Bismark and Hood class battleships and take those out for a spin!

[Drakonez]

There actually is a single British ship in the game though not available anymore Grumpy. Also the Bismark may be a premium ship also but just speculation.

I think WoWs is better than BP but it is still a different game with different gameplay compared to BP which may not be your cup of tea. Like grinding for the bigger ships. Premium account is a must imo as it helps you get to the mid tier (4-6) which is the sweet spot where most of the fun is. This is just my personal opinion. I don't think we will see that many players quitting just because WoWs came out but still a good number I would assume.

[crazyjr]

I just started my WOWS career on wednsday, I have played more in two days than in 3 month of BP. That is usually just my 1 85 a week and then talking to friends. I still consider it a FPS and usually not my style, but it's better than nothing and will help me break the BP addiction once and for all. My new years resolution, is to never mentionor think about, BP ever again.

[CJS]

Crazyjr WOW is great for gameplay, there's a few low points, Aimbots and some guys seem to have a cloak tweak for DD's that keeps them invisible as close as 2 KM's ( but that may be a bug in the game as well).

I play WOW about 90% of the time and only spend significant time on BP for raids and FM...that's it.

If you avoid the 6:00-9:00 PM EST bracket (European nighttime) you avoid most the aimbots 2:00 AM can get bad as well when some of the India countries log in in the morning. I'm not being racist but it's my observation of when certain groups start playing & scoring repeated cits on you from way way out there.

I actually called one guy out who was blatant...2 games in a row 1 salvoed my Aoba from 14-16 KM's away ( it's detect is only 11KM's and there was nothing near to detect me either)

Things like that just tick you off...I have about 1100 battles in BB's and have a 22% accuracy rate ( which is damn good for most players). Nobody but nobody gets the first round dead center from beyond detection range...they can't even see you according to the game rules & stats.

However on a cost/fun ratio WOW has BP beat by a country mile. $20 can keep you playing for months for just the basics. I have 17 or 18 ships now , most fairly ranked & upgraded.

You'll be able to tell later on when the Bots come out, just do the co-ops then if you still want to play.

One bug I find with WOW is your targeting center changes from game to game...use your first few salvoes to dial in and adjust accordingly, and you can score an amazing number of hits.

[Krondrin]

So far I've been maintaining just the US line of ships. I haven't put money into the game. They throw enough at you in the beginning through play and achievements to get one of each ship type up to tier 5 pretty easily. After that it starts to turn into the money grind. Tier 6 is where I started buying upgrades for the ships (separate from research items) and tier 7 is where you can easily lose money on a match if you get sunk early without getting many hits in (no premium account, no flags). I hear it's really bad at tiers 9 and 10 where you can still lose money even doing reasonably well and winning the match. Still it's been fun so far. It's a shame to dump a ship with a lot of XP not converted to free XP, but that's what I get for being another freeloader.

As for hitting the lottery in-game, I blind fired AP rounds from a BB once at someone who went behind a smoke cloud and managed 2 citadel hits and sent them down to the bottom. They were not happy about it since they had that captain skill and knew I lost targeting. I've also managed to clip the bottom of someone's turret in my Colorado last week with my first salvo of the game at around 14k with a HE round and caused a detonation. Didn't think that was possible although I did cause a detonation once with a dive bomber too. That surprised the hell out of both of us. That's probably all the highlights since I started

Rarely I have great games where I'm nailing citadels and sinking cruiser after cruiser. Maybe once every two weeks. I can't citadel a battleship to save my life even at 5k but people still manage to hit mine it seems even if I'm facing them at 30-45 degrees (which is probably too much??) from 10k+ out. I dunno how they do it. I'm decent at hitting cruiser citadels, but awful at BBs. I want to be like the cool kids posting earnings of 400k+ credits and 3k+ XP for a match with like 10 citadel hits. If I manage 4 in a game I think I'm boss

Two things I can certainly recommend is:
1. Try to stick with your teammates. It doesn't matter what you're driving if 5 people on the other team decide to focus you. Although it's a little hard in a battleship without an engine upgrade especially if you are a late loader like me (90-120s after the match starts )
2. If you're a cruiser and you're under 8k from another cruiser, switch to AP rounds. I've wrecked 3 of them that kept spamming HE rounds at me with 8 citadel hits between all of them (granted they were all a little hurt, but still). People really don't seem to do this. Of course I went down shortly after this, but damn it was worth it.

And right now the invisi-firing of DDs is bullshit. Had a Russian one sit in a cloud for about 5 minutes and whittle down my BB with the death of a thousand cuts and multiple fires and meet me with "gg" in chat. That was really annoying, mad skills there bruh. I should have probably been more ballsy. I know Russian torps are short range, but they're fast. I didn't think I'd be able to avoid them in my floating freight train and figures I would have just been sunk sooner. Yeah, probably should have yolo'd under the circumstances.

Is there an offline site you can see your stats? I see people bring them up of the official forums whenever someone complains about something like BB citadel hits or fire from HE rounds.

[crazyjr]

I have all the level 2's but the US ship. my favorite is the dresden though. If you time the firings, you can rain hell on your foe. it's cool to watch. Destroyers i'm no good at, i get too close try to torp and die. Cruisers though i'm pretty good at them all.

So far my highlight was killing 5 ships in a campaign battle and beating two campaigns simultaneously. no damage received that battle, this was using the dresden

[Krondrin]

I don't know what compelled me to type all this.

The St. Louis is a very good cruiser once you get the hull upgrade and it looks like a porcupine with all the guns sticking out of it. I think that one had 2 hull upgrades. Very worth it. It's a hull is very well armored in terms of what can punch through it for a citadel hit (i.e. not much). I kinda suck in DDs (destroyers) and even with the upgrade you can buy my engine and rudder constantly get knocked out. I rarely survive a match though it's hilarious when you can sneak up on the side of a BB (battleship) that the guns aren't pointing at and you know when they just panicked

The common trend with the US ships (since that's all I'm familiar with, though the Japanese ships probably follow this as well) is they all get slower to turn and reload as you go up, but the damage potential slowly increases as well. Still, going from ~8 second reloads on the Cleveland cruiser to 15 on the Pensacola is painful with fewer, even if larger, guns. You usually want to cover the BBs if the other team has carriers. Cruisers tear bombers apart most of the time.

Wait until you try your first battleship. A lot of general awareness is needed. It's like driving a dump truck on ice with a 30 second reload. Hitting an island with a DD in the area is practically guaranteed death (it happens more often that you think). You want AP shells for hitting the broadsides of cruisers for massive damage. Usually other battleships as well, but I can't citadel them for shit. This is where you learn about all or nothing armor where you can land the full volley but at a bad angle and the shells basically bounce for crappy damage! AP shells over-penetrate destroyers and usually don't do much damage unless you get a lucky hit on their ammo, so you want HE for them assuming you have the chance to shoot them when you're not dodging their torpedoes! Of course if they're in range, might as well fire away before switching your shell types if you needed to anyway. And oh god the turret turn rate on all of them....

Then there's aircraft carriers. It's an RTS style interface if you haven't seen it yet. I finally hit the tier 6 one and it's a little less painful on the US side. I'm really not fond of the US carriers so far. Dive bombers just suck imo and I don't like them. Probably because I can't manually aim for shit with them most of the time. Their fighters usually win one on one with their Japanese counterparts especially with the aircraft upgrades on the ship and captain you can purchase at higher tiers. Torpedo bombers are where the fun is, but they're slow and get ripped up as the BB anti-aircraft guns get better at higher tiers. God forbid there is a cruiser in range too. If you're the air superiority type, you're shutting down other carriers. Once they're out of planes, you're scouting for enemy ships. It's fucking boring and doesn't bring in much XP. The strike configurations give you more 2 dive bombers, 1 torp, and no fighters... Eww. If you're facing an air opponent, you're probably going to end up a floating paperweight near the end of the match. That sucks too . The tier 6 base one is nice because it gives you one of each, so at least you can try to torp something. It's a little rough going up the US side for carriers, but the light at the end of the tunnel if you can afford it leads to people complaining about having to fight high tier US carriers on the forums

Still despite all the good and bad, it's enjoyable and many matches have been exciting with a few that were utter bullshit . Heh.

[crazyjr]

I don't know what compelled me to type all this.

The St. Louis is a very good cruiser once you get the hull upgrade and it looks like a porcupine with all the guns sticking out of it. I think that one had 2 hull upgrades. Very worth it. It's a hull is very well armored in terms of what can punch through it for a citadel hit (i.e. not much). I kinda suck in DDs (destroyers) and even with the upgrade you can buy my engine and rudder constantly get knocked out. I rarely survive a match though it's hilarious when you can sneak up on the side of a BB (battleship) that the guns aren't pointing at and you know when they just panicked

The common trend with the US ships (since that's all I'm familiar with, though the Japanese ships probably follow this as well) is they all get slower to turn and reload as you go up, but the damage potential slowly increases as well. Still, going from ~8 second reloads on the Cleveland cruiser to 15 on the Pensacola is painful with fewer, even if larger, guns. You usually want to cover the BBs if the other team has carriers. Cruisers tear bombers apart most of the time.

Wait until you try your first battleship. A lot of general awareness is needed. It's like driving a dump truck on ice with a 30 second reload. Hitting an island with a DD in the area is practically guaranteed death (it happens more often that you think). You want AP shells for hitting the broadsides of cruisers for massive damage. Usually other battleships as well, but I can't citadel them for shit. This is where you learn about all or nothing armor where you can land the full volley but at a bad angle and the shells basically bounce for crappy damage! AP shells over-penetrate destroyers and usually don't do much damage unless you get a lucky hit on their ammo, so you want HE for them assuming you have the chance to shoot them when you're not dodging their torpedoes! Of course if they're in range, might as well fire away before switching your shell types if you needed to anyway. And oh god the turret turn rate on all of them....

Then there's aircraft carriers. It's an RTS style interface if you haven't seen it yet. I finally hit the tier 6 one and it's a little less painful on the US side. I'm really not fond of the US carriers so far. Dive bombers just suck imo and I don't like them. Probably because I can't manually aim for shit with them most of the time. Their fighters usually win one on one with their Japanese counterparts especially with the aircraft upgrades on the ship and captain you can purchase at higher tiers. Torpedo bombers are where the fun is, but they're slow and get ripped up as the BB anti-aircraft guns get better at higher tiers. God forbid there is a cruiser in range too. If you're the air superiority type, you're shutting down other carriers. Once they're out of planes, you're scouting for enemy ships. It's fucking boring and doesn't bring in much XP. The strike configurations give you more 2 dive bombers, 1 torp, and no fighters... Eww. If you're facing an air opponent, you're probably going to end up a floating paperweight near the end of the match. That sucks too . The tier 6 base one is nice because it gives you one of each, so at least you can try to torp something. It's a little rough going up the US side for carriers, but the light at the end of the tunnel if you can afford it leads to people complaining about having to fight high tier US carriers on the forums

Still despite all the good and bad, it's enjoyable and many matches have been exciting with a few that were utter bullshit . Heh.

It's like anything else, it's adaption, Like i said, I also suck with destroyers as well. I seem to prefer cruisers right now, but it's either that or destroyers right now. Can't wait for a Battleship, to try them. I doubt i'll even try carriers, saw some youtubes, they look real complicated