World of Tanks: MMORPG Meets World War II Tank Battles

Destroy your opponents with your upgraded battle tank in new MMORPG, World of Tanks. World of Tanks is one of the newest MMORPGs and has won "Best New Concept" at this year's Electronic Expo (E3). It features massive tank combat, set in WWII, between dueling armies of players on pre-designed game maps. It's really a great MMORPG, totally different from current games such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online or Runescape.

World of Tanks is currently in Beta phase, with loads of gaming websites giving away free beta keys to interested players. The game is quite polished so far and feels like a game that has already been released. Servers appear fairly glitch free, combat is handled nicely, and graphics are quite nice. It's put out by the awesome Wargaming.net publishing group, who are also behind Order of War, Massive Assault, and Galactic Assault.

Players are given two tanks to start out with, and earn experience and credits for upgrading their tanks through in-game battles. After battles, players return to a tank "garage" lobby area, allowing them to upgrade their vehicles, add different types of weaponry, and purchase crew or ammo. Battles seem to consist of about 15 v 15 players in WWII-themed maps. Some of the environment is destructible, at least from what I've seen, and combat is fierce and challenging.

My favorite part of World of Tanks is the insanity of close combat. This is by far the most engaging and difficult portion of the game, where every shot counts. Close combat in a tank game is not very common, with engagements usually taking place at a decent range, but every once in a while you'll encounter another tank at extremely close distance and have to fight it out. This usually occurs for me when I am driving a tank through a lightly urbanized map, such as some of the farm maps, and I (or the opposing tank) gets ambushed, or runs into another tank by surprise. Then, it's pedal-to-the-tank-metal, frantically turning to gain the advantage while protecting your weaker rear or side armor, firing as quickly as your gun can reload. I usually skip the auto-aim function here, as it doesn't seem to be anywhere near sufficient to deal with the demands of close combat. This gets even more intense when multiple tanks happen on an area at the same time, with explosions occurring all over, buildings and walls being crushed and blow up, and general mayhem and panic occurring over that portion of the game map. Great fun indeed, even more so when you emerge unscathed!

Granted, this isn't a super-realistic tank simulator. Fans of Red Orchestra, T-72 Balkans, and Steel Beast will probably be a little disappointed in the tank models, upgrades, firing, and damage modeling. However, don't kid yourself, this certainly is not an arcade tank battle game. Armor penetration is important, as is hit location, and so on. There is an element of random chance in hit penetration too, in keeping with the game's RPG model. If using the game's auto-targetting system, your hit chance is based on your crew's skill %, upgradable with training in the in-game menu. Check out World of Tanks at its website today!