World of Warships: Guides and Game Overview

This is the NextPlayWire hub for World of Warships. It gathers the facts — developer, genre, platforms, ship classes, business model and PC requirements — from Wargaming's official wiki, the Steam listing and Wikipedia, and links to what we have written about the game.

At a glance

▶ Watch: World of Warships Basics: Starting Out in the Game

World of Warships is a free-to-play naval action MMO developed and published by Wargaming. It released for Windows on 17 September 2015 and arrived on Steam on 15 November 2017.

Wargaming's own wiki describes it as 'a naval action MMO, dipping into the world of large-scale sea battles of the first half of the twentieth century.' The Steam listing counts over 800 ships across 13 national tech trees.

Ships run from Tier I to Tier X, with some tech trees adding 'superships' above Tier X. Battle modes include Random Battles (PvP), Co-op Battles against bots, seasonal Ranked Battles, Clan Battles, PvE Scenarios, a Training Room and Brawls.

Platforms and versions

This is the PC game. The console version, World of Warships: Legends, and the mobile version, World of Warships Blitz, are separate games with their own progression.

On PC it can be installed through Wargaming's own launcher from the official site or through Steam, free on both. The Steam page lists a 67.2 GB install and rates the game PEGI 12, with descriptors for in-game purchases including random items and for online interactivity.

Key facts

The five ship classes

The official wiki summarises the playable types as heavily armoured battleships 'with the most powerful guns', 'swift and stealthy' destroyers, cruisers as 'universal fighters', aircraft carriers 'with aircraft as their main fighting force', and stealthy submarines. Submarines became a permanent class with Update 11.9 and appear at Tiers VI, VIII and X.

Which class suits a new player is the first real decision the game asks for, and it is the question our beginner guide spends the most time on. The short version is that the classes differ less in power than in how much of the map you have to keep track of, and how expensive a mistake is.

How the game makes money

Credits pay for servicing and resupply after every battle as well as for ships, modules, upgrades and commanders, and higher tiers cost more to run. Doubloons are the premium currency, and the wiki lists a standard conversion of one doubloon to 1,500 credits. A premium account adds a 50% credit bonus.

Wikipedia's summary of the business model is that 'significant progress can be made without purchasing anything, but access to higher levels of play and additional warships becomes progressively more difficult without financial investment.'

Read that as a statement about pace rather than access: the tech-tree ships are reachable without paying, and money shortens the wait.

Start here: our coverage

New to the game: the beginner guide covers how to start, how the five ship classes actually play, why detection and positioning decide battles more than damage does, and how to progress without wasting credits.

→ World of Warships beginner guide 2026

Checking your hardware first: the requirements above are modest, but if you are unsure how to read them against your own PC, our setup guide explains what each figure means.

→ How to know if your PC can run a game

Still deciding what to play: War Thunder is the obvious comparison for vehicle combat, and our free-games round-up places both alongside other verified-free PC games.

→ War Thunder beginner's guide 2026

→ 15 best free PC games to play in September 2026

What we have not verified, and will not assert

• A review verdict. We have not reviewed World of Warships, so this site carries no rating for it and this page does not imply one.
• Which ship line or nation is 'best'. Balance changes with updates and any confident answer dates quickly.
• Current player counts. We have not checked a concurrent-player figure for this game on a date we could cite.
• Live events, bonuses, promo codes or new-player rewards. None could be verified as current, so none appear here.
• Exact per-ship statistics, credit costs or access-level thresholds. The in-game screens and Wargaming's wiki are the authority for current numbers.

How we cover World of Warships

Facts on this page come from Wargaming's official World of Warships wiki, the Steam store listing and Wikipedia's cited release and business-model summary, read on 4 September 2026. Nothing here is based on hands-on testing, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. Where the game's own information screens disagree with a source, the in-game figure is the current one.