ATTENTION TO ALL PLAYERS: This Sunday, December 22nd 2019, outage and cut-over will START AT 9AM PACIFIC TIME or 5:00 PM GMT. All services will be effected for 24 +/- hours as announced in our previous article.

• Game server physically relocated
  
• Website and critical data relocated
  
• Configure the game server all critical services to new ISP's

We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding during this transition, our goal is to minimize server downtime. Unfortunately we could only do it on Sunday and not a weekday.

Official communications/status will be posted via Axis and Allied Discord, and FaceBook during outage.

Once the move is done, depending where were are in the current campaign, our first preference will be to suspend and restart the ongoing campaign.

***Effective that day, server time will become Pacific Standard Time (GMT -8), and no longer US Central (CST) as it is now.***

Until January 2nd Winter sale are on, -30% on your first month subscription!
No rank restrictions: starter/premium subscribed players get access to all the equipment available in their pack!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/667290/World_War_II_Online__STARTER/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/667291/World_War_II_Online__PREMIUM/

Thanks for your continued support!

ATTENTION: We are giving everyone early warning and trying to warn you often that we are moving our servers from Texas to Oregon this month and there will some game downtime. We will keep you updated on the planned outage both beforehand and during the actual outage. Read here for outage plan.

We are moving our servers to a new home in Oregon. This move brings our infrastructure closer to our support personnel and the headquarters of Cornered Rat Software (CRS). The move will be completed by the end of this month. Although most of the work is happening now, behind the scenes, there will be a period of game outage. We hope to keep the outage to a minimum and commit that we will keep you informed of our outage plans and our progress during the outage. All services will be temporarily effected at some point during this process.

As of now, we expect the game servers to be down starting on Sunday, December 22, 2019 that may last more than 24 hours. Continued temporary outages may occur through the end of December, and players may experience increased lag as files are uploaded to the new servers. We appreciate everyone's patience during this transition.

Depending where were are in the current campaign, our first preference will be to suspend and restart the campaign. If the current campaign ends within days of the 22nd we will likely stay in an intermission mode until after the move.



We will keep you updated in the forums (while they are up), Discord, and Facebook.

Thanks for your continued support!

In case you missed the Rat Chat, we unveiled the current progress of the "Mission Leader Waypoints" update which helps mission leader better guide users of all skill level more efficiently in WWII Online. This is still in development but is approaching release, and is one of our Dev Roadmap items we outlined. Continue reading this article to see the pictures, and you can also get involved with our Mission Leader Tools - Forum Discussions to help contribute ideas so we can come up with even more efficient tools.

As you know, Mission Leaders can already create "Waypoints" by right-clicking on their game map, and adding either Rally points, Attack points or Mortar points. However you have to use your game map to be able to see these, until now...




The HUD (Heads Up Display) in the near future will show waypoints as shown here to better guide users. Of course if you do not want these to be visible, there will be an area in your settings to remove them, but if done correctly we think users are going to love them and it's going to do a lot of good to direct users accordingly to important priority objectives.

Guiding soldiers in WWII Online is a high priority for CRS and this is in keeping with our mission to provide field leaders the necessary tools to help us achieve that goal.




What do you think? Comment below on Mission Leader Waypoints

Attention all soldiers, airmen and sailors! An all new WWII Online Campaign (#170) has just started and you’ve been ordered to report to your commander for duty! The Tier consolidation plan has been completed, which will get your more equipment into the war faster while maintaining balance. This is the first Campaign since recently reactivating Free Play and we see a continued rise in population for both Free Players and Premium users. We’re asking everyone to get into game with a renewed sense of purpose and refreshment. We’re also asking for you all to make a point to get on official WWII Online Discord servers (voice communications), which can be found at www.wwiionline.com/discord.

Meanwhile the RATS are continuing the big move from Dallas to Portland, among several essential development items like 64-bit implementation and the UI redo. We also have some great production work underway. See you in the field troopers - SALUTE!

The 2019 Steam awards nominations are now available! The "labor of Love" category fits our project pretty well, doesn't it?

This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the first unveiling of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years..


During the autumn sales on Steam, we offer a -40% discount for the first month of our starter and premium subscriptions!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/667290/World_War_II_Online__STARTER/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/667291/World_War_II_Online__PREMIUM/



We have replaced the old "recruit DLC" by a new "mortarman DLC" of the same value.
All owners of the recruit DLC got this new DLC for free. It adds the mortarmen of all countries to your personna, including the para versions. Check it out here

https://store.steampowered.com/app/936710/Mortarman_Pack/



After 59 days of battle, Allied Forces are VICTORIOUS! Congratulations to the Allied High Command for their outstanding 24/7 efforts during 2 months!
The server are now in intermission mode (free play for everyone to all units). Campaign 170 will start soon.

this has to be one of my all time favorite campaigns [Paddyo]
One of the best camps in a very long time [dustyhc]



The move to Portland is well underway with servers being configured here locally, our new colocation (server housing facility) established and our new internet service and cross-connect pulled to our cabinet and ready to go. We have a couple of very basic pictures to show you today as installation of network and server equipment approaches quickly. This has been made possible thanks to all of those who participated in the recent fundraiser initiative, and to that end I’d like to thank you and share this update to show your contributions being put to work. All of us at Cornered Rat Software would like to wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Read more here (with pics)

See you in the battlefield!
Zebbeee

Login to game now and start playing WWII Online for free! Rifles, Trucks, Submachine Guns and light / medium tanks. Join the battle now!

All Free Players have received a FREE UPGRADE! New submachine guns and light / medium tanks have been added to your account and is ready for you to login and start playing with - right now! Come join us for a big weekend of fun battles.

• MP34
  
• MP40
  
• Beretta
  
• M1928 Thompson
  
• M1A1 Thompson
  
• Sten Mk II
  
• Mas38
  
• M3A1 (Grease Gun)

• Panzer II C
  
• Vickers
  
• R35

• A-13 Cruiser
  
• H-39
  
• Panzer III-F

Multi-crew a tank with a friend to have a driver and a gunner working together! Free Players may now host a tank together creating a crew.

This patch corrects a few errors that were noticed after the recent update. We'll be releasing this patch today, November 8th 2019, and there will be a short downtime to achieve this.

Bug Fixes

• The Steam Mac client wasn't being properly uploaded
  
• The CFML (keymapper) folder was only being created for new installs with the Organic PC client
  
• The Mini-Map on the Mac wasn't showing properly
  
• The issue that caused some infantry to not make sounds while rotating has been fixed

S! Cornered Rat Software

Xoom has requested our team at CRS has restored perpetual Free Play to WWII Online, effective immediately. I'd like to go into detail as to the available access Free Players will receive, discuss the big picture of Free Players and how they will be integral to the WWII Online experience, and share some insights and reflections that I have had reviewing recent decision making. If you've created a Free Play account now - or in the past, it should now be active and available for you to play. Continue reading for the details on this significant announcement.

WWII Online, as we all know, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game - the very first MMO FPS in fact. By definition, it requires a large number of players online for the game to be successful, and that is the root cause for reflecting on the decision back in August to phase Free Play access out, and then coming back to make a course correction.

I'd like to share a quote by Steve Jobs, which has been weighing heavily on me personally in the last 6 weeks:

"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."

I'd add onto that it is best to also come to the table with a sense of humility and recognize that some times we make bad calls, and we need to fix them instead of trying to brute force an outcome that is not natural.

In other words, the decision to remove Free Play was seen as a gateway to encourage more personnel to actually convert users into some form of payment, and it did not directly consider the essential component of how these users directly contribute to the overall success and health of the game.

We have since evaluated, discussed and worked out a plan to correct this and we're hoping for your assistance to not only spread the news but also get reinvigorated about the potential for us to grow the WWII Online player base. Continue the read for essential details.


Cornered Rat Software is looking at all Free Players who have signed up since 2012-Present, letting you know that we're committed to making sure your experience is worthwhile, fair and reasonable with the understanding of what our product is. It is not a micro-transaction game and it will not, for the foreseeable future live up to the expectations of some of our competitors because WWII Online is designed (in terms of monetization) at its core to be a subscription-based game. There are many advantages to having things this way (no magic powers, quick rank boosters, pay-to-win ammunition) it keeps things relatively fair. Please remember that going forward.

We have, with immediate effect, reactivated ALL Free Play subscriptions, and there is no time limit whether you signed up from www.wwiionline.com (organic channel) or if you play on Steam. We have given them locked, indefinite access, with a much larger equipment and feature list (as seen below) to not only show you that we are serious about our commitment to making your experience great, but that we genuinely want you to play, share the joy of our game and help us build it.

Forum access will be dedicated to supporting these users specifically and we will periodically collect feedback about their experience through standard means such as available support forums and routine surveys / all other channels.


All Free Players will receive the following:

• Locked Free Play access (indefinite)
  
  • Permissions / Game Access
    
    • Capturing Facilities
      
    • Using Infantry Binoculars
      
    • Deploying Player Placed Objects
      
      • Including mobile spawns from Trucks
    • Rank Attainment to 2nd Lieutenant (Rank 9) ~ All branches
  • Rifleman
    
  • Paratroopers
    
    • Rifle
      
    • SMG
  • Reserve Submachine Guns
    
    • All tiers
  • DLC Vehicles (You do not need to buy these, that's just their names in the list presently)
    
    • Panzer II C
      
    • Panzer III F
      
    • R35
      
    • H39
      
    • Vickers
      
    • A-13
  • Light AA
    
    • Flak30
      
    • Hotchkiss 25mm
  • Light AT
    
    • Pak36
      
    • FR/US 25mm AT
      
    • 2 Pounder
  • Trucks
    
    • Opel Blitz
      
    • Bedford
      
    • Laffly S-20
  • Fairmile Riverine
• New sign-ups: 1 month FULL premium trial
  
  • Includes NCO (during trial only)
    
  • Includes Ammo Bearer (during trial only)

Steam users who have purchased DLC tanks, will be receiving the PREMIUM versions of these vehicles.

Our hope now with this announcement is that you'll assist in spreading the news and that our Free Players will give us another opportunity here at CRS to make your experience great again. Our commitment will remain in-tact to create the most likely scenario for players to try and continue to play WWII Online all over the world so we can create some of the most compelling and memorable grand-scale warfare gaming experiences that only WWII Online is capable of generating.

On behalf of all of us at Cornered Rat Software, we'd like to thank our loyal following to WWII Online. We remain a very special place to be and our goal is to continue that by being more inviting and integrate our new users fairly into the experience, recognizing their continued value to helping the overall mission of making WWIIOL gameplay awesome.

We hope now to garner a balanced relationship with these new users recognizing once again that we are offering a perpetual Free Play subscription version of the game that we are able to while balancing the special access for paid subscribers and their privileges. We will both benefit from this and we need to come together, united in making this MMO + FPS + WWII era simulation vibrant and active. That is how we've made it 18 years, and we have to realize that's the core of our culture here at this community.

Thanks for reading everyone, we appreciate your support.

Salute!

For any assistance, please feel free to contact us at http://support.wwiionline.com.

Several refinements to improve the player experience have been made, such as Netcode 3 networking improvements, along with better player ping information displayed, faster and easier mission creations and multi-crew is 100% back to normal so you can crew with confidence. The Char tank positions also have some updates, and the HC Officer class has some adjustments to the available player placed objects (PPOs) that it can deploy. Keep reading as there's plenty more inside to show active WWII Online development continues!

Continue reading here