World of Warplanes is the flight combat MMO action game set in the Golden Age of military aviation. The game continues the armored warfare theme marked in the highly-acclaimed World of Tanks and will throw players into a never-ending tussle for air dominance.

Based purely on aircraft setting, World of Warplanes will allow players to build full-scale careers of virtual pilots offering machines of several key eras, staring from 1930's with biplanes and up to Korean War jet fighters that led the way to modern air forces.

World of Warplanes Global Alpha blasts off today in Europe, North America, and Russia, and will be recruiting a new army of test pilots to assist the development team in improving and polishing the game.

Along with the start of World of Warplanes Global Alpha, Wargaming.net is launching new websites for players in each region, intended to help the growing game community stay up to date on all World of Warplanes news and updates.

The Global Alpha phase will initially offer players more than 20 plane models and two battle arenas. The amount of content will be growing steadily, as the developers add new warplanes and maps to the roster.

“With the Global Alpha, we are entering a very challenging, important, and exciting phase for World of Warplanes, which will require support of a massive number of testers,” said World of Warplanes producer Anton Sitnikau. “Our most important task now is to gather feedback from our test pilots and prepare a well-balanced, stable version with a large amount of vehicles and battle arenas, which we’ll be able to enter the beta with.”

Upon its beta release, World of Warplanes will feature around 60 airplanes from Germany, USSR, and USA, with British and Japanese planes to be added with the further content updates. New branches and new planes will be added gradually over the process of development as it is done in World of Tanks, and the total number might reach several hundred aircraft.

World of Warplanes will feature a wide range of warbirds, each of them unique in their effectiveness and behavior. Virtual pilots will choose from three main warplane classes - single-engine light fighters capable of engaging enemies in close dogfights, heavy fighters with their deadly straight attacks, and strafing aircrafts, the fearsome threat for ground targets.

Every plane will feature multiple variations of ammo types, engines, and other crucial modules, and their various combinations will allow to pick the optimal configuration for the most effective behavior in combat.