Hello everyone! I thought it would be interesting to look back over the last year to see the advances and changes to the game which have happened, as well as all of the major events both ingame, and on the forums over the year. It turns out there was a hell of alot going on! Each entry shows both the date it happened, a basic title of what was going on, as well as a very short description of the event. Most of them can be found on the news section of the website, from which they've been taken, looked into (or remembered!) and summarised! I hope you enjoy the summary and have some lovely nostalgic moments while reading through everything!
Here's to one great year in World of Warplanes!
2 Jan – Wargaming Universe Month – A chance to win some pretty big prizes such as the Type59 and loads of gold as well as a variety of premium aircraft through playing different contests and competitions through the month.
9 Jan – World of Warplanes Mobile Assistant Launched – A mobile app which put both aircraft and player statistics in the palm of the players hand!
25 Jan – Dogefighter I – A tournament designed and run by DFA which gathered over 200 players into a weekend of some of the best team battles seen over the year! The tournament concluded with Just For Fun taking 1st place!
17 Feb – Squadron Missions – This required a team of 9-15 players to join forces and complete 5 specific missions over the course of a month to reward the squadron with its prizes. This spanned the community with 15 squadrons appearing from the EN community alone and has been looked back on fondly since, as one of the best events of the year.
18 Feb – Warplanes United – A eSports hosted tournament, requiring 1 aircraft from each nation to be present in the team with battles taking place at Tier 5 with some pretty big rewards given to the winning teams. The tournament attracted 49 teams, with the Flying Ducks – Angry Ducks team taking 1st place.
22 Feb – Wargaming Europe visit the Italian Air Force Museum, touring the museum with a large group of players, complete with the group having lunch together before parting ways at the end of the day.
28 Feb – The World of Warplanes Soundtrack is made available to download.
1 March – Dogefighter II – A follow up from the previously successful tournement, DFA returned to bring another great tournament to the community, with even more action and skill involved than before, pitching 37 teams against each other in a Double Elimination format resulting in Just For Fun remaining the champions.
6 March – Version 1.2.0 is released – This update brought with it loads of new additions to the game, from the Battle Mission system, with weekly and daily missions for players. The first introduction of a Battle Replay function for players to watch over their favourite games. A brand new Battle Results window based off the World of Tanks design to allow players to track their progress and success from battles much more clearly. The addition of a separate chat for training rooms, as well as private chat rooms and a large amount of balancing to aircraft and game mechanics.
13 March – 8 vs. 8 Gamemode Test – This was a small testing session of a new gamemode similar to the random battles gamemode of 15vs.15, however limiting the teams either side to try and improve teamwork. Unfortunately the gamemode was unpopular and was not released to the live server as it didn't accomplish the job it was intended to do.
24 March – The Mobile Assistant app was brought across for the use of Android devices.
27 March – Developers' Blog Launched – This blog went to show some of the work being done on the game from behind the scenes, talking about the changes and improvements being made to the game, as well as going on to help players understand certain aspects of the game to improve both its and their performance.
28 March – The Blue Arrows Air Race – Following up from the older “Death Races”, this tournament pitted 17 pilots against each other across 9 different courses. The resulting victor was Vuksamotnjak.
1 April – April Fools in the skies! - The Sleipnir was introduced for all players to fly, a Tier 5 german light fighter, the Sleipnir was shaped like a UFO, with a laser cannon as a weapon which fired at the speed of light and an engine which could boost the aircraft up to extremely high speeds in a matter of seconds. Players were rewarded with special medals and emblems for both flying and destroying these flying saucers!
1 April – April Fools from the ground up! - An additional post was made “revealing” a new game mode which was soon to be introduced, allowing players to control Anti- Aircraft Guns and shoot other players out of the skies!
4 April – Follow the Leader Season 2 – The FTL series returned, changing to require players to complete the courses as fast as possible to win the top prizes. This gave the series a new life, attracting many more players to push their aircraft to the limits for the best performance and best times!
23 April – Version 1.3.0 is released – This version of the game brought in the long-awaited American Heavy Fighters including several variants of the P-38 Lightning, as well as the return of the widely loved XF5U “Pancake” which earlier testers of the game admired and loved so much! As well as greatly optimising the game in several areas.
24 April – Re-work of the Homepage – The World of Warplanes Homepage was fully reworked to give the website a more up-to date feel, allowing users to navigate around and find what they were looking for more easily.
1 May – Monthly Missions – The first set of monthly missions was announced, with the grand prize for completing all 5 missions giving the player a Ki-88 and XP-50 – Two brand new T6 premium aircraft, the first of their kind which were yet to be released for sale.
6 May – High Five – This tournament pitted 33 teams of 5 against each other in Tier 6 aircraft of different nations in a double elimination tournament over 3 days, with Dywizjon 303 – Eskadra A taking first place!
23 May – The Hungarian Military Festival – Wargaming Europe visited the Hungarian Military Festival near Budapest, both members of the community teams, and other staff attended to answer questions, chat with visitors, as well as bringing a whole tent of computers with them to let everyone try about the game there and then!
26 May - 70th Anniversary of D-Day contest – This contest asked players to produce their own artwork or video showing footage and images of planes, tanks and ships in the two games, rewarding the winning players with large prizes of gold for their accounts!
2 June – Version 1.4.0 is released – This update brought a load more changes and new additions to the game from new T6 premium aircraft, two new maps which had previously been seen and tested in the 1.3.0 test server – Hidden Airbase and Winter War. Improved changes to the Match-Maker, as well as the introduction of a Standard and HD client, allowing players to choose between the two to take up less space on their computers for the loss some some of the higher quality textures in the game.
10 June – E3 – Wargaming attended E3, showing off all 4 of their gaming products, complete with chances to play the games, and various insider sessions and announcements about work being done on the games.
13 June – Dogefighter III – The 3rd Dogefighter tournament was played between 25 teams, with Dywizjon 303 – Eskadra A taking the title.
14 June – Wicksteed at War – This event was attended by a few members of the Wargaming Europe team, as well as Wargaming's brand new “MGT-20” Mobile Gaming Truck, to allow players to play both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes at a variety of smaller events.
20 June – WoWp Community League – This was a long-term tournament organised jointly by a group of players from FLYD and DFA, taking a list of registered teams from the recent Dogefighter III tournament, teams would fight against each other on a regular basis for the chance to win some prizes!
28 June – Stats of War – A new series was started for the Portal, showing interesting statistics both about historical aircraft, and ingame numbers across a wide range of subjects, as well as giving players a chance to add their own statistics to the mix with a chance to win some gold if it was selected!
28 June – New Gamemode Announced – The PvE “Battle against Bots” mode was announced through a developer diaries video, giving players a look into the upcoming gamemode which was due to be released. It caused a fair amount of confusion in the community, with what was said in the video which was later found out to bring some pretty interesting and unusual improvement to the game in the upcoming 1.5.0 patch.
1 July – High Five Volume 2 – Following up from the previous High-Five tournament, 49 teams met again to fight against each other with a similar game format, resulting in Dywizjon 303 – Eskadra A retaining their title as the victors!
5 July - New Community Coordinator! - Erissa joined the ranks in the EU EN community team as a Community Coordinator to help out with community events for both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes!
6 July – Forum- based Clan Wars – The forum based clan wars event was rolled out across all EU communities, allowing clans to compete for territories and earn gold as they maintained them. Run by both the community teams and volunteers it was a successful start and look at how clans might be working when the official in-game clan wars is finally released.
17 July – Create Your Emblem! - This contest invited players to design their own emblems for their aircraft, with the winning two design produced by Makaville and Abetus being given to the developers for introduction into the game itself!
22 July – WG Stream Launch – The release of this application has allowed users to more easily stream gameplay from world of tanks and world of warplanes to Twitch.TV, and is now being used by a fair few people for that such purpose!
25 July – Goodbye FTL! - The last ever episode of Follow the Leader was released for players to complete. Having run over two seasons, totalling 19 different episodes the series was sadly put to bed for the last time.
1 August – Monthly Missions – The second major set of monthly missions was announced, with the grand prize for the player being a T7 premium Gloster Meteor F.1 – The first T7 premium aircraft to be announced and an aircraft which had also been long awaited!
1 August – Wargaming's 16th Anniversary – Players were given great discounts and ingame bonuses in almost every way over the weekend, with discounts on premium aircraft, and special offers on aircraft which had never previously been put up for sale in the gift shop!
4 August - A new Community Coordinator appears! - Grimbru joined the ranks in the EU EN community team as a Community Coordinator to help out with community events for both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes!
13 August – Gamescom – Wargaming attended Gamescom to show off all 4 of their products, as well as the long-awaited World of Warships. Players were allowed to attend insider sessions which talked about the future of the games, as well as some unannounced information about future updates which were planned for the coming quarter.
20 August – Version 1.5.0 is released – This update brought the PvE “Battle against Bots” mode into the game, with other major changes to the ground target system ingame, splitting ground targets into separate sections which can be attacked with different weapons. The Canyon map was introduced to the game, as well as a re-worked version of National Park, along with a load of new achievements for players to get while flying in random battles.
1 September – Monthly Missions – The Hurricane IID was finally offered up to the community through a chance to win it by completing 5 1 day missions over the month.
1 October – Monthly Missions – Keeping with the trend of aircraft prizes for the monthly missions, another long-awaited aircraft – the Ha137 was shown to be the grand prize for the October Monthly Mission. This was the first non-russian ground attack plane to be introduced into the game and is in some eyes, a hint towards a upcoming Ju87 branch of aircraft.
22 October – Version 1.6.0 is released – 1.6.0 introduced the Mig branch of light fighters to the game for the USSR tree, these were the first medium-high altitude fighters which were introduced for the USSR tree since release. Along with this update, almost all fighter aircraft were tweaked and moved into two separate categories, Multi-role and Light fighters to try and further specialise the aircraft types for their respective roles. Tier 7 premium aircraft were also introduced with this update, with the Meteor F.1, Yak-3RD, XP-75, 190 A-8. As well as the re-introduction of an older aircraft from testing – the J4M. The El Halluf map was made larger as part of the patch as well as extra balancing and changes to aircraft modules and flight mechanics.
24 October – Golden Joystick Awards – Two of Wargamings products were nominated for the Golden Joystick Awards of 2014, and 150 players were invited along to see the winners being announced with wargaming at the O2 arena in London.
1 November – Monthly Missions – Over November, the YP-29 was available through completing a set of missions over the month, requiring players to win and achieve specific goals in various aircraft classes to obtain the aircraft at the end.
3 November – Community League Season 2 – The return of the community league brought about a more refined set of rules, with more prizes for the teams competing to win!
12 November – Clans Arrive! - After waiting in suspense for over a year, clans were finally released to World of Warplanes! With clan tags being added to players names, ingame emblems on the players aircraft, as well as a separate website and section for their clans duties and description. Clans were introduced as a joint system across both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, with future intentions to be to merge the clans across into World of Warships to have a single clan system across all 3 game titles.
13 November – 1 Year on! - World of Warplanes celebrated it's 1st birthday with 3 premium aircraft which had never before been for sale in the gift shop becoming available, with discounts on premium time, ingame missions and emblems, as well as a free gift aircraft for all players to get their hands on! A separate post was also made showing the progress of the game over it's first year, detailing each update and the major changes which were brought about with them.
16 November – Forum-based Clan Wars – Following the success of the first regional clan wars event earlier in the year, the map and layout were re-worked to allow the whole EU community to participate on a single clan wars map between them.
21 November – Anniversary Contests – As part of their birthday celebrations, two contests were announced for players to create artwork and videos describing the past year of World of Warplanes, and celebrating the last year. The two winners – _karaya1_ for the video contest, and attack_el_robot for the artwork contest both won a large amount of ingame gold, as well as having model aircraft kits sent to them! Other winners also won smaller gold prizes and more model aircraft kits!
1 December – Media Section Update – The online media section of the World of Warplanes website received an overhaul and update, showing off more of the great artwork which had been produced in the past and making all the items much clearer to read and access!
1 December – Advent Calender Spotted! - A 24 day advent calender was announced for players to get great offers on rare aircraft in the premium shop, discounts on gold and premium time, as well as ingame missions and goals to achieve! Each day a new door was opened for another opportunity for players to get their hands on!
6 December – Weekend Contests – The first of a series of 4 weekend contests were announced for December, asking players to complete certain tasks to win prizes, including two brand new gift aircraft, the Ki-5 and TsKB12-Bis
7 December – Gift Shop offers! - A large selection of discounts were released for the gift shop over the month for players to purchase ranging from small amounts of premium time, to large amounts of gold and credits.
15 December – March of Nations – A month of ingame discounts and offers was announced giving players a chance to get up to 50% off of tier 2-5 aircraft, 30% discount off tier 6-8 aircraft, and 15% discount off tier 8+ aircraft. As well as discounts to premium aircraft.
16 December – Monthly Missions – Another month of missions was announced to gain 50,000 damage in each nation, along with 50 kills, with the grand prize after completing all 5 nations being a Yak-3RD tier 7 premium aircraft.
17 December – Version 1.6.3 is released – This patch brought in a special “snowball fight” gamemode, allowing players to fly the Odin 42 M – a distant cousin of the Sleipnir, and fight against other players and bots with snowball rockets. This gamemode came with a specific winter-themed map based off Arctic Region, including a giant christmas tree, snowmen atop mountains, and a giant snowman towering in the distance. The F-94D Starfire was introduced to the USA multi-role tree at tier 9 alongside the F6U during this patch, as well as the introduction of the Ha137 V-1 as a regular tier 3 german premium aircraft.
18 December – Holiday Quests – Players were given a set of holiday quests which they could complete 3 of each day... gaining special holiday consumables, and eventually, after completing 30 quests the players would be awarded with the Do-17Z-7 Kaus, a tier 3 German Heavy Fighter.
24 December – P-51K spotted! - To end the Advent Calender of the year, the tier 7 Chinese premium P-51K was released to the premium shop for a limited time of 7 days for players to get their hands on. The aircraft was yet to see action on the EU server until this offer.
24 December – New years gift – The new years gift was announced to players to be a selection of premium consumables as well as a free day of premium, tagged alongside by some great ingame discounts and offers!
25 December – Experience Masters – This contest challenged players to achieve the highest score possible in specific aircraft over a two week period, with prizes of gold and premium time. With a grand prize of a RC plane!