How the game works

World War II Online is a complicated piece of software that we'll try to briefly explain here.

Initially you can log in as either Axis or Allied. Axis players are limited to a pure-German spawn list and while they have more variety than the British or French individually, there are fewer kinds of Axis toys than Allied in general. Once you log in, you are committed to your side for two hours after you log out.

After logging in, you'll see a map of northwestern Europe that will likely have some flashing squares on it. Double-click one of these locations. Those flashing squares, at maximum zoom out, indicate combat areas. Double-clicking zooms your view in on the map, which you can left-click drag to view. There are some checkable boxes on the right-hand side, that say "Civilian", "Army", "Navy", "Airforce" and "Depots". These icons indicate what is and is not shown on the map. Typically, civilian buildings like bridges really clutter the map up so it's a wise idea to click them off. You're also not likely to play navy, so you can click that off as well.

Once you select a town, more icons will pop up around it - these indicate the specific civilian, army, naval, etc. bases there. Other than bridges, all objects can be captured. To capture a building, you need to find its CP or, in the case of an airfield or army base, bunker. Inside the CP building will be a table. Stand by it and don't fire or move for about a minute or two and it will be captured - assuming you don't get killed in the meantime. You should see a capture progress bar - but we'll cover the rest of infantry play later.

First, you need to spawn in, and to do that, you need to know where to spawn in. Any old town is not likely to see action, especially not one in the rear lines. There is an EWS - or Early Warning System - that indicates enemy/friendly presence at a town. These will be flashing infantry, tank, aircraft and ship icons. If the town is friendly and those icons are flashing, that means that enemies of that unit type have been in the area recently. Note that air only indicates bombers - fighters don't set off EWS. Now, the EWS may be going off but unless the town is either an Attack or Defense objective, there isn't necessarily action going on. An attack objective (AO) obviously means your job is to attack the town. It is a yellow circle with red arrows pointing inwards. A defense objective means the opposite - defend the town. It is a yellow circle with green arrows pointing outwards.

If you're going on an attack objective, you're probably going to spawn at an FB - a forward base or "fire base" as it's sometimes known. These are special structures that appear in between two hostile towns. Only one side can own the FB between two towns at any given time. To reclaim ownership, it needs to be blown up by using satchel charges from sappers. An FB is sort of a teleport from the host town's army base, and makes all the units available at the army base, spawnable at the FB. This shortens the trip between towns considerably.

Where do FBs appear? Each town has depots that are named after neighbouring towns. If one of these neighbouring towns belongs to the enemy, the town becomes a frontline town and an FB pops up. Let's assume you're playing French and see that Cambrai has a Defense Objective on it. You look around and see that Caudry and Bouchain are nearby towns that belong to the Axis. To check which FBs are open and who owns them, you can click on Cambrai, press Enter to open chat, and type ".fb cambrai" (no quotes). The chat display will likely say something like "Allied: Caudry-Cambrai FB". This means that your side owns the forward base to Caudry. But where is the Bouchain FB to Cambrai? There is none. Even though Bouchain is near Cambrai, neither town has a depot named after the other, so there can be no FB between them. That doesn't mean an attack can't be launched from Bouchain to Cambrai, just that it's much less likely since the travel distance is considerably greater. In some cases, even though towns have depots to each other, there won't be an FB. This is usually because the distance between them is too short.

To see an FB to the enemy town, you need to make sure "Army" objects are visible, and then select the town you'll be attacking from. Assuming your side owns the FB, its icon will appear on the map and you can double-click it.