Originally posted by SunKing
where's banana...
Took the words right outa my mouth Sunking!
Ahem. Well, since Sunking and Ghosth have already branded me the "Hardcase" of my AH squad, I might as well live up to the moniker. I'll try to be fair and give the good points along with the bad, as I know them. I'm no expert, but say this based on my experiences playing the game in the past two months.
I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. My AH squad, the 332nd Flying Mongrels, have aproximately 32 members. About two months ago, I went off and tried WWIIOL again for the fourth time. Every previous attempt to enjoy WWIIOL was frustrated by bugs and extremely high system requirements to get decent frame rates. With the appearance of v1.11, WWIIOL is finally the "complete" combined ops game that it proclaimed itself to be from day one.
After making one post on my AH squad's bulletin board about how much I was enjoying WWIIOL, some of my other squaddies got interested and decided to give WWIIOL another try. Within the last month, 21 people from my AH squad have joined our WWIIOL squad. That's 21 out of a squad of aprox 32 guys.
Actually, 22 guys from the squad have given it a try so far, and one of them, Sunking, didn't like it and has cancelled his account. The rest of the guys seem to be having a fun time, but I won't speak for them.
I can only speak for myself when I say that WWIIOL has rejuvenated the jaded gamer in me, causing me to lose countless hours of sleep, as I log in almost every night after putting my son to sleep. I haven't had this much fun in a game since the first year I played Warbirds, way back in 1996.
The focal point in WWIIOL is the ground war, no doubt about it. It's pretty much an FPS with real people instead of AI bots, and no scripts. You can play as infantry, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, tank driver/commander/gunner, even truck driver. In fact, the tanks can be multi-crewed, so you can have three guys in one tank manning each of the positions at the same time.
In the ground war(as infantry), you start off as a private, and are limited to using a rifle as your main weapon. Once you get experience by surviving missions and getting kills, you get promoted and aquire access to more weapons, such as the sub-machine gun, light machine gun, and satchel charges. When you make Captain, you aquire the services of a pair of binoculars, which totally transforms the game by increasing your situational awareness ten-fold.
The icon system for infantry is interesting, in that there are no icons for the enemy. When you see a guy running a across a field without an icon above his head, he is an enemy soldier. The simple rule is....icon= friendly, no icon= shoot him!
The ground vehicles are nicely modelled, with many tanks and trucks to drive and fight with. I was pleasantly surprised to find that driving an infantry transport truck can be fun and rewarding, as many people will express their gratitude for you giving them a ride, or for towing their anti-tank gun into position.
WWIIOL is for the team-oriented. While it is possible to play as a lone wolf, I would argue that the game is experienced at it's finest when you have joined a squad, and are working as part of a team. As I mentioned before, every unit has a function and an important role to play. The Anti-tank gunners need the Truck drivers to get them to their destinations in a timely manner, and the same is true for the infantry. While it is possible to walk to your destination, it is much faster to hitch a ride on a truck. Hence the popularity of truck drivers.
At this time, it would be appropriate to mention an annoying problem that afflicts WWIIOL(and indeed AH), the 64 player limit syndrome. On busy nights with a lot of players online, you will sometimes see friendly players blink out or turn invisible for a few moments. This is very disconcerting, to say the least, but luckily it has been my experience that this happens rarely. And I understand that in such situations, the enemy is given priority over friendlies, so bad guys shouldn't be blinking in and out, only friendlies. So while this is an annoying problem, it has been my experience that is happens so rarely as to be a minor annoyance.
Another silly anomoly is that if a truck driver has a load of troops in his truck, and drives under a certain type of tree, the men in his truck can(and usually will) be wounded or killed. What this amounts to is an unwritten rule to never drive directly under trees if you're loaded with troops, only drive near them. It's a stupid bug to not have quashed by now, but I guess the rats have more pressing bugs to spend their development time on.
Moving along to what is undeniably the most debated and subjective part of WWIIOL- the air war. I will state catagorically that you will probably either love it or hate it. I doubt if there is any middle ground, here. I happen to love it, and here's why:
In WWIIOL, if you fly for the Allies, you will only fight against the Bf-109E, Bf-109F, Bf-110C, JU-87B and HE-111. You will not encounter any Niki's, Chog's or LA7's.
The air war, likewise the ground war, is limited by the amount of supply that a particular airfield has available to it. Supply plays an important role in WWIIOL. What this means to the players is that there is not always available aircraft to jump into. It is imperative that you bring your plane and yourself back to base in one piece, because if you get shot down, there may not be another aircraft waiting for you back at the hanger. As long as you RTB safely, your plane is reserved for you. But once you lose it, then you might have to wait until more planes become available. As you can see, the odds of finding Lazs playing WWIIOL are very slim!
Like the ground war, your "Air Force" character starts out as a private, limited to flying certain aircraft. I play on the Allied side, so my flying has been limited to either the Hurricane I when I fly British, and to the Hawk 75 when I fly French.
I haven't learned everything about rank and promotion, but what I do understand now is that I will be limited to flying those aircraft until I reach a certain rank. Once that happens, then I will be able to fly the Spitfire and bombers. That's right, you have to reach a certain rank to be a bomber pilot!
I just got promoted to private first class in the RAF, and it took aproximately 8 successful missions to get promoted. Now, that doesn't sound hard, except that in order to get a mission success and earn points toward my promotion, I had to shoot down an enemy plane and safely return to base. All the missions I flew where I shot down planes, yet failed to return, resulted in zero points! As you can see, you have to fly aggressive enough to make a kill, but then be smart enough to know when to disengage and rtb to claim your points for promotion.
Speaking of disengaging, that is my favorite things about the air combat in WWIIOL. It is actually possible to disengage from a fight in WWIIOL. How many times have you been in trouble in a fight in AH, and have been unable to shake your opponent off and disengage? I thought so. Me too. The neon icons in AH, IMO, make it next to impossible to disengage from a fight.
In WWIIOL, however, the icon system is limited, and so is the view system. You won't find any of the configurable cockpit views of AH in WWIIOL. What you get is the standard views, with no direct-six view at all. This lack of a direct-six view is a good thing, IMO. It allows for bounces to occur. If you are careful, you can sneak up on an enemy plane and make an easy kill before he knows what hit him. Conversely, it is the wise pilot who performs regular checks on his six by performing flat half-circles, etc.
The limited air icon system works like this: your first indication of another aircraft is a dark grey circle, you know there's a plane out there, but you have no idea if it's friendly or not. The onboard AWACS radar of AH, complete with dots and dar bar, does not exist in WWIIOL.
Once you approach within a certain distance from the con(I'm not sure how far it is, but it's pretty close), you will see that it's either a friendly or an enemy plane, with the make of the plane given(i.e. Bf-109). Then as you get closer still you will finally be able to see the aircraft itself and commence to shoot it down. It is relatively easy to lose vis on a enemy aircraft, so the old motto "lose sight, lose the fight" applies in spades here. I have experienced times where I have been in the thick of a multi-plane furball one moment, only to find myself completely alone the next moment. Just like how I've often read about fights in books.
The clouds layers of WWIIOL also contribute to the fun. They are not cumulous clouds like AH has, but are more like translucent, whispy, cirrus clouds. They are mostly opaque in that you can see through most of them, although there are some places where they thicken up to be impenatrable. However, they are definately more sophisticated, IMO, than the "flip the switch" clouds of AH. In AH, you are either in total gray inside the cloud, or you are outside of the cloud. In WWIIOL, there is a gradual transition.
The guns of the Luftwaffe are very effective, as I can attest to. I have more than once been the victim of a single guns pass from a Bf-109E. When those 20mm slugs hit your Hurricane, you're going down. Although, to be fair, I have been damaged by 109's and been able to disengage from the fight and make my way safely home, albeit with crippled controls. Funny, I have yet to take any engine damage in my Hurricane. Usually for me it's my control surfaces that end up damaged. Either that, or I am killed straight away by a pilot hit.
