World of Warships is the third game to be added to Wargaming’s catalog, with the developer and publisher’s previous titles World of Tanks and World of Warplanes having been released in 2010 and 2013 respectively. World of Warships will take place in oceans across the world, and promises to be different from anything we’ve seen before...

ESL: Hi there, and thank you for taking the time to have a chat with us. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about what you do?
Adam Plechaty: Hi, and nice to meet you! My name is Adam Plechaty and I am a content editor for the World of Warships EU portal. I produce words, talk to our producer, coordinate with our community specialist and keep the official website fresh and interesting for everybody who comes in. Right now, I am preparing the portal for what’s to come during the later stages of testing and after the game is released, when more people pour into the game and onto the website looking for stuff to keep them entertained.

ESL: Can you tell us a little about the game and how it’s different from Wargaming’s other titles like World of Tanks or World of Warplanes (besides the obvious warships part)?
Adam Plechaty: Sure - glad you asked! World of Warships is an online naval third-person shooter where you take control of the most iconic World War II warships and duke it out with other players on the high seas. It features intense team-based combat in diverse and dynamic environments where anticipation of your enemy’s moves, knowledge of the maps and being in the right spot at the right time is the key to domination.

You’ve probably heard this line before, but it kind of needs repeating: we are doing something new and exciting here, and we are really amazed and thrilled by the public reception so far.

What’s great about the whole concept is the fact that you can play this as an action game, blasting your main guns up close and personal in a cruiser, destroyer or a battleship, or take a different approach with aircraft carriers, where you play in a more tactical manner, controlling key areas on the map, covering teammates with your air squadrons and sending torpedo and dive bombers to take out the juicy targets such as battleships and other carriers.

That was one hell of a sentence, sorry about that - but you get the gist now. It’s very exciting!

ESL: The game recently went into beta testing, with beta weekends now taking place on a regular basis. How have those been going? When will the next one be and where do people sign up?
Adam Plechaty: The game is currently in its alpha and people already think it’s ready for release. The degree of polish this time around is crazy. We are slowly getting ready to enter the closed beta phase, where we will strain the servers even more, invite more people, come up with new exciting features and get ready for the open beta and eventually release.

The beta weekends are here to give people a taste of what’s to come and help us flesh out the key features, and I can say there will be more of these testing weekends to come. So far we have had great success with this concept.

Just keep an eye out for those invites on our social media (Twitter, Facebook), official forums and of course the website, which is going through serious revitalization.

ESL: So far you have presented four classes of warship. Can you tell us about why you went with these four types and how they differ? We have to ask the question - why not submarines?
Adam Plechaty: These four classes of warships are really the main pillars of the whole concept, which revolves around rock-paper-scissors interaction and provides the player with different gameplay styles. Destroyers absolutely ruin the day of battleships, battleships give hell to cruisers, and cruisers, to circle back around, are the worst nightmare for destroyers. Aircraft carriers kind of stand on the sideline, supporting allies and chasing down big bad wolves with their air squadrons, giggling as they do so. They are my personal favorite!

I could go into detail and break down each class for you and your readers, but I feel like it’s better for players to find out on their own. Basically, destroyers are nimble and strong with their torpedo attacks, but very fragile and won’t last long in the heat of battle. Cruisers can dish out the damage (some of them carry torpedoes as well) and even protect others from air attacks with their anti-air defenses but can’t step in for battleships when it comes to armor (well, not always at least). Battleships are the kings of the battlefield with massive guns and sturdy armor... or so they think until they get surrounded by destroyers or swarmed by bombers. Aircraft carriers we’ve already covered - historically speaking, they were the killers of battleships and the whole dreadnought concept.

Oh, I almost dodged that question about submarines, didn’t I? I did, right…

ESL: World of Tanks has recently seen changes to make competitions more interesting to watch for audiences - what will make watching World of Warships worthwhile? Do you have any competitive events planned for Warships yet?
Adam Plechaty: I can’t go into too much detail here because the game is still deep in development, but we are definitely thinking about making World of Warships appealing to esports audience. I mean, if we really need to compare ships to tanks, battles on the sea are actually more fast-paced and dynamic. While in tanks, we see a lot of players pitching a tent and camping hard, it doesn’t work like that in naval combat. If you stop moving, you're going down. Just like a shark. You need to keep moving, and what’s more it takes some time to turn a ship around or even change a course. You need to keep thinking and planning ahead. Oh, and have you seen the graphics on this one…?

ESL: What’s next for World of Warships? When roughly can we expect the full game to set sail?
Adam Plechaty: Like I said, World of Warships is on the right course to become something very special and is steaming towards a release at full speed. Before we get there, however, we have more testing and polishing to do, which is going to happen during the whole period of closed beta testing then shortly after open beta testing and finally the release. We still have more features to implement to make the gameplay deeper and even more interesting, and will eventually be adding more nations and ships to the mix.

I can tell you we will be setting sail this year, but can’t say when exactly as the marketing and PR teams would have my head otherwise. Just keep checking all our outlets, especially the website, and you won’t miss a thing. When the closed beta launches, be sure to grab your chance to be in it!

ESL: Thank you very much for your time!

As you can read above, there’s a lot in store for World of Warships this year! If you want to sign up for closed betas when they’re available, be sure to keep an eye on the World of Warships website, Facebook and Twitter.