WWII Online revisited.

WWII Online has gotten a slight facelift. The last patch, the 1.2 patch, added grenades and satchel charges for infantry. All infantry now are issues 2 grenades and a new infantry class is available, the sapper. Sappers carry 6 grenades and 4 satchels which CAN disable tanks if placed in the right areas (I do not know much about sappers but have had my Char imobilized by them).

Also they changed the way some vehicles handle to bring them closer to reality. They removed Heavy Explosive rounds from the A13 (which did not have HE historicaly) and all German shells now have an HE component, a difference you can realy tell when German shells start landing around you. They also added a new AT gun, the French 1937 gun which is a very good medium AT gun for Allies, this is nice since the previous ones were crap but this new one weighs twice as much as the old ones and pretty much can not be dragged on grass without a truck much like the German 88.

They have also added a lot more to the world, there is a lot more cover around for Infantry and they filled out many of the cities (the city of Charleroi for instance is HUGE now full of buildings).

The game still has many problems, spawning problems include crashing to desktop on death and the dreaded "blue sky" bug which is CRS's way of saying "Hit alt+f4 to close the game". Lag is terrible and the new patch screwed up the configuration file by changing the shortcut's "start in" field to null making any configuration changes you make not save to the proper config file. THere is a workaround by pointing the "start in" line in the shortcut properties to the directory you installed WWII in ex: C:\Playnet\CRS\WW2OL. The framerates still drop drasticaly when in heavy fighting but has been livable to me. Another problem is that enemy units tend to "pop" in and out of visablity. When I was on the allies were loosing horribly and complaing all over about germans Alt+Tabbing (alt+tabing in game is rumored to make you invisible) and other cheats so I changed to german side just to see and they were saying the same thing so it seemes to me like it is far less likely that EVERYONE on the other team is cheating and far more likely that it is a lag induced bug. Didn't matter as the Germans were just plain kicking the Allies butts on Server 2 because the Allies were IDIOTS! My god, no one worked together and everyone went defense so it was just a matter of time when the germans would capture a point... Oh well.

Load times when joining the game have been improved the biggest improvement is when respawning from the same base you spawned at last. In that case load time is practicaly instantaneous. No spawn limits are in place yet so it is still mainly Tank Wars but there are more inf out there now. Oh, and since I play inf in the game mostly I noticed that the Brits have had their colors toned down, more of a green than an orange now making them harder to spot (before if you were british inf you basicaly wore a bright target for the germans to shoot at).

I have been able to try the new stuff out a bit (though not a lot since this infection in my glands is very slowly healing, seeing different doctors tomorrow). I realy like what they have been doing with the cities and with more cover around and infantry able to sap tanks there are more inf around too.

Oh, they also added the Allied Hawker Hurricane aircraft.

Not sure what changes they made to Germans as I only realy saw action from the Allied side and even that for not very long.

And unlike Anarchy Online, WWII Online has still not started the monthly charge nor the clock for the free month so it is still basicaly free as the developers refuse to charge till they are satisfied that the game is the way it should be.

That is my computer time for a while. Got to go put a hot pack on my neck to try to sooth this infection.

[AK]Widowmaker