World Of Warships Celebrates Naval Museums With 17-Hour Livestream

Wargaming's World of Warships is celebrating International Museum Day this month by offering players to virtually visit 15 different naval museums from across the globe.

This is happening as part of what's being called The Longest Night of Museums. A 17-hour livestream event, it will show off 15 naval museums through a virtual tour of them. There will also be live Q&As with historians as part of the event so attendees can have more of a traditional museum-going experience in a virtual environment.

The event, which is free, begins May 18 at 12:40 AM PT / 3:40 AM ET on May 18, and you can watch through the World of Warships accounts on YouTube and Twitch. There will be prizes and rewards available for people who watch and participate.

The first museum on the tour is the Mikasa Historic Memorial Warship, while it will continue through Australia and Taiwan. Other stops will be in Europe at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and Maritiman in Sweden. The last stop will be Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Wargaming said it's conducting The Longest Night of Museums to help support museums, which have been impacted by the COVID pandemic due to lack of tourism and closures.

Additionally, Wargaming is working with Verizon for a Museum of Warships AR experience, while the History Channel will air some documentary content during the stream that focuses on historical naval history.

"Naval museums around the world keep a wealth of knowledge and important lessons from history, which were unfortunately largely inaccessible for the past year," Wargaming's Marko Valentic said. "We in Wargaming know that each museum has a unique story to tell, and we want to shed some light and bring them to our wide audience of history enthusiasts."

According to Wargaming, World of Warships has the most historically accurate warships of any video game. Most of the 400+ ships in the game were designed based on real historical documents, according to the publisher.

You can read more about the Longest Night of Museums event on Wargaming's website.