World of Warships has been taking quite a bit of my time lately, and today Wargaming provided quite a lot of information on Patch 5.1, that still doesn't have a firm release window.

Below you can read a summary of the upcoming changes:

  • New players will get to play a tutorial mission when they start the game.
  • Three new maps will be introduced: The Fiery Land, The Trap and Northern Lights. Northern Lights will be the first map featuring weather and night combat.
  • Islands of Ice, Two Brothers, and Hotspot have been reworked.
  • The Zone Capture mode will be introduced, featuring a single capture zone that gets captured very quickly, but needs to be cleared of enemy ships in order to be conquered smoothly.
  • American Cruisers Baltimore and Des Moines received an improvement to armor thickness.
  • American Destroyers Benson and Fletcher got a higher rate of fire. Fletcher and Mahan got  an improved hull research system. Torpedoes on US destroyers have been rebalanced and got an improvement to range.
  • Japanese Cruiser Atago had its maneuverability improved, and received the repair party consumable like battleships and the Zao.
  • American bombers will have a smaller spread when under attack.
  • Japanese bombers will be more precise when aiming manually.
  • Japanese torpedo bombers will deal less damage at lower tiers (why Wargaming felt that Japanese carriers needed further nerfing completely escapes my wildest runs of imagination. The wider torpedo spread already makes their torpedo bombers much more easy to avoid than American ones).
  • The edge of the map will finally be harder to exploit. Ships hitting it will lose 75% of their engine power. Good luck exploiting them, cheesy players.
  • Missions will get a full revamp, and will be spread into four categories.
    • Events enable players to commemorate various memorable dates for Wargaming or historical moments in naval history. In this section, you will be able to view all topical events, along with the relevant game bonuses and discounts.
    • Challenges are active only for a short time and can be repeated, which is their key distinctive feature. These tasks will require wit and skill, but it won't take too long for an experienced commander to accomplish them.
    • Missions are an excellent way to throw down the gauntlet for commanders who are willing to bring diversity to their gaming experience and get a reward for the superb skills they have demonstrated. They can be accomplished only once and can be offered in stages.
    • Daily Missions have been in World of Warships for a while. Now you will have the option to replace one of your Daily Missions once a day with a random new one.
  • Ranked battles will be overhauled according to player feedback.
  • Flags will be introduced. They're just cosmetic, and will reflect your ranking  or display special achievements.
  • Domination mode will be tweaked.
  • Division members will now spawn closer to each other.
  • Sounds will be overhauled.
  • Filters will be added to the port interface.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, you're probably asking yourself: "Yes, that sounds fun, but is it any good?" I'll soon answer that question with a review here at DualShockers. It's a bit late, since the game released on September 17th, but I decided to avoid just using the press account kindly granted by Wargaming with all the ships unlocked, and instead keep progressing through the tech tree on my own.

After all, you can't really judge a game's progression (which is crucial in this kind of game) without having to do the progression at all.