Director of Content Cody Bye got to check out Wargaming.net's World of Warplanes at GDC Online.

Those Belorussians know what they like: War games. After seeing the massive spectacle that was Wargaming.net's booth at E3 - complete with tanks, tank girls, and WWII garbed drivers - it came as no surprise that the next two games coming to their servers would be World of Warplanes and World of Battleships. More explosions? I don't mind if I do.

At this year's GDC Online, Wargaming.net had a behind-closed-doors demo of World of Warplanes for members of the press to check out and enjoy. Gone were the flashing lights and booming stage presence of World of Tanks at E3; this was a demonstration that was focusing entirely on the game. To be honest, this was a nice change of pace from what we'd experienced the last few months from the Wargaming crew, and it definitely got our attention.

So what about the game?

To start, World of Warplanes fits into pretty much the exact same gaming mold as World of Tanks. There are a variety of different kinds of planes, from the slow-moving but powerful to the agile but relatively lightly armored. You'll progress through the game in the same way, earning XP from battles and using that to advance your planes and "tech trees." All in all, that portion of the game is going to be (or at least is promised) to be very similar to what already exists.

The combat, however, is going to be far different. Unlike the land-locked tanks that go rolling around crushing the countryside, the warplanes that will be flying high won't have that same sort of limitation. Flying into clouds, ducking down into valleys, and losing your enemy by dodging into the sun's light is all part of the strategy and tactics that can be employed.

One of the more impressive (and incredibly fun) bits that the developers showed off in their playable demonstration was flying into and out of clouds. These billowing white pieces of the landscape (and they are, because they're actually modeled into the environment) completely obscure any planes that fly through them, giving complete cover and providing great places to launch ambushes.

Flying around the landscape seemed pretty fun as well, but don't expect all the WWII planes to be able to dodge and weave. While one of the planes we flew was pretty agile and could skirt along the ground with relative ease, the bigger, beefier planes were.....bigger and beefier.

Let's just say we crashed a lot.

For controls, everything is at your disposal. From joystick to authentic flight controls to mouse and keyboard is usable. Although the game is splitting the different between an arcade dogfighter and a flight sim, they're catering to every type of player. In fact, FPS players will feel just at home flying these planes as they would in any of their shooters, albeit you'll have a much larger 3D space to do it in.

All in all, it looks like World of Warplanes will be exactly what players of the current "World of..." series are looking for. It's just different enough to be entertaining without being so completely new that it's confusing.

Cody "Micajah" Bye, Director of Content