E3 2001 Preshow ReportWorld War II Online: Blitzkrieg

World War II Online: Blitzkrieg will be an ambitious online game that'll let you participate in a massively multiplayer re-creation of the entire Second World War. The game will include all the important events that took place in the conflict starting in 1940 and will model every major theater of war in the five-year conflict, from Stalingrad to the Western Front.

World War II Online will let you engage in real-time missions in many different international locations, each of which will be divided into choke points. These choke points will be strategic locations, such as army bases, arms factories, and various cities, and will be the basis for territory struggles in the final game, since armies must capture choke points in the immediate vicinity to move on to adjacent choke points. Developer Playnet has already devised a number of different ways to speed travel across larger distances so that you'll be able to quickly enter contested choke points and begin your missions.

The game will feature a variety of mission types, including standard attacking and defensive missions, as well as reconnaissance, escort missions, and transport missions. Interestingly, once you've attained sufficient military rank by earning mission points from successfully completed operations, you'll be able to actually assign these missions. More complicated missions may have multiple objectives--and the more and more dangerous objectives a mission has, the more mission points it'll yield if completed successfully.

World War II Online will let you control a single soldier at a time, though that soldier may be an infantry unit, a tank driver, or even a fighter pilot in service of either the German forces or the allies. The game will model all of its vehicles, both ground and aerial, after real-world WWII vehicles, such as the Panzer III tank, the Char B1-bis tank, the German Spitfire, and more. In addition, the game will let multiple players pilot vehicles simultaneously; so instead of simply flying a dive bomber, you'll be able to have a friend actively play as either the bombardier or the pilot.

World War II Online is currently scheduled for release later this year. We'll have more coverage directly from the E3 show floor soon.