This is a game about warships in their purest form.

It's about the ships of the first half of the 20th century.

It's about combat between these multi-thousand-ton monsters.

So at the beginning of each battle, they may seem a little slower,

especially, if you are used to the speed of World of Tanks.

You know, you start a battle, you're cruising down in your little ship

and you're like: "oh, this so pretty and everything"

And, all of a sudden, you have torpedoes being launched at you; you're being shot down by the enemy battleship;

You have planes flying all around you

and this really, really gets intense

and all of this is just in a matter of a couple of seconds.

So you really, really have to focus and, you know, it basically keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Just imagine, if you will, a dozen battleships, each of which has 16-inch rifles, slugging it out.

Intermixed with that are the destroyers launching devastating salvos of lethal torpedoes,

then you add the third dimension: you look up and you find yourself on the receiving end of dive bombers,

torpedo attack aircraft and then up at the higher levels, there's even combat between the aircraft,

between fighters and other fighters, fighters and the attacking aircraft.

Once you have this massive, complex battle of multi-dimensions happening at the same time,

that's where you really start to see World of Warships become not just a case of clicking and shooting,

it really does become a more strategic case of interactions and tactical thought.

So there are going to be four classifications of ship available to us in the game: carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers.

For example, with aircraft carriers, you can attack the enemy using bombstrikes, torpedstrikes

and you also have scout planes to find the enemy and also fighter planes that will attack the enemy planes.

The main class of vessel, of course, is going to be the battleship.

Everybody knows what it looks like, I mean, we're on one now, the characteristic, iconic vessel of WWII.

Of course, not the most significant, but it's the one everybody thinks of.

And in gameplay it is, if you imagine in World of Tanks terms, it's a Maus with multiple SPGs mounted on it

and it kind of cruises around at 30 miles an hour.

Due to their blend of armour, speed, and reasonably heavy firepower,

cruisers are probably the most tactically versatile of all the ships in the game.

They're well-enough armed that you have to keep an eye on them as a battleship.

Destroyers, they're the enemy of destroyers, a lot of them will carry torpedo armament as well,

so carriers and battleships both have to be significantly concerned.

They are also fairly fast, they can apply their firepower at the most opportune time to disrupt the enemy as best as they can.

Another ship type is the destroyer.

Imagine a light tank that has quadruple KV-2 cannons on it.

So, basically, what the destroyer does is it roams around really fast, it hides

and then it'll just attack you with its really, really awesome torpedo force.

There are no submarines in the game.

Believe me, we looked at it.

It just doesn't fit with the gameplay.

You've got these small things that are practically invisible, unless you happen to be in ASDIC range, which back then wasn't all that long,

they have devastating firepower,

but when detected, let's say they're on the surface, they're gone immediately, because they just have no survivability.

There really wasn't any way of implementing it, so, just for the sake of gameplay,

yes, we understand how important the U-Boats and the American submarine fleet were in WWII -

we are not ignoring the historical reality behind it, it doesn't work in the game.

There will be no submarines.

A project like World of Warships can't be done simply on the basis of drawings.

Well, I guess you could, but the quality wouldn't be the same.

As a result we actually sent a couple of expeditions,

personnel from the development offices in St Petersburg came over to the US

and we visited, I think it was about 12 ships, throughout the South East and North East of the US.

We visited everything from destroyers to battleships.

Visiting real ships provides a lot of data and material for the game that we couldn't get anywhere else.

When we see what the ships look like in real life, it helps us make the graphics authentic and closer to the real deal.

I think this is very important to the gamers.

When you see a ship with your own eyes, you realise it's not a picture or a model,

but a monstrous steel machine which moved and fired its weapons.

You come to understand the reality of it and you get a feeling on what it should be like in the game.

Find out more about World of Warships at the developers blog: the most up-to-date information about this project straight from the source.