PAX East was an eventful weekend, and while there we caught up with Wargaming to get a look at how their collectible card game (CCG), World of Tanks: Generals, is shaping up.

This upcoming free-to-play title brings World War II warfare to the turn-based card gaming world. Just entering closed beta last week, the PC version of the game is completely browser-based, working best on Chrome but also supported by Firefox, Opera 15 and IE9 or higher. Wargaming anticipates the mobile version to also be available in 2015, which looked pretty solid when they showed off a tablet demo.

When I sat down with Chris Cook at Gamescom to find out about the latest from Wargaming, I was caught by surprise. I’d often thought of the World of Tanks developer as a young firm with an incredible success story. But, while the latter is undeniably true, the company was now celebrating 15 years of online strategic warfare.

Over the past year, Wargaming has continued to grow. Its 16^th office opened earlier that month in Austin, Texas, focusing on providing business intelligence and analytics that can be used to improve games even further. The developer also acquired Day 1 Studios – now Wargaming West – and Gas Powered Games.

Though Wargaming has grown from 1600 employees a year ago to roughly 2000 now, Cook described it as smart expansion. To him, it’s about making sure that newcomers to the team are a good fit with an internal culture that’s developed over time.

Wargaming, the development and publishing studio—and soon-to-be rulers of Earth, I welcome the advent of our new F2P overlords—has announced the launch of Unified Premium Account.

With the new facility, players can link premium status between their World of Tanks and World of Warplanes accounts without any hoops or hurdles between—World of Warships will also be included in the arrangement when it goes live.

Wargaming.net announced this morning that World of Warplanes will officially release on September 26^th for North America and Europe. Lucky players in CIS countries will have access to the game a day sooner on September 25^th. This follows an extended beta period during which nearly three million players registered to take part. Since the game went into open beta in early July, the team has been collecting and implementing player feedback.

“In the two months since open beta, we've made a huge amount of progress,” says Development Director Oleg Gotynyan. “We expect [World of Warplanes] to offer a deep and polished experience to both MMO fans and flight combat enthusiasts alike.”

In case you didn't notice, it's almost the end of the year (and by the time you read this, quite possibly the end of the world). In either case, its a time to reflect on the year gone by, and Wargaming is doing it in style.