Earlier this month, we attended the 2016 Wargaming Gathering for Australia in Melbourne during the lead-up for PAX Australia. While we were there, Wargaming announced the addition of the HMAS Perth to World of Warships, the first Australian naval vessel to be part of the game.
HMAS Perth was a modified Leander-class cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy, and was first commissioned on 15 June 1936 as part of the British Royal Navy before being transferred to the Royal Australian Navy Fleet in June 1939.
On-hand at the gathering was Sho Hatai, Product Specialist on World of Warships, who explained more about development behind the HMAS Perth. Sho mentioned to us that discussions and development of the HMAS Perth first commenced at the start of 2016, and how the team were initially planning to have the HMAS Sydney in the game.
We were going to have HMAS Sydney, but the thing was we didn’t have enough historical resources and based off the dev’s decision, it became the HMAS Perth. Usually to make one ship, it takes about six months. So from about the start of the year, gathering the resources and sending them off [to the devs] to make it for the November release.
It’s great to see Wargaming taking such an interest in historical Australian wartime vehicles and incorporating them into their games. The HMAS Perth was not the first, with the Australian Cruiser tank Mark 1 (AC1) Sentinel featuring in World of Tanks. This also coincided with Wargaming procuring a real AC1 Sentinel tank from the US, conducting the restoration work and donating it to the Australian Armor & Artillery Museum in Cairns. Publishing Producer on World of Tanks in Asia, David Macfarlane, was also at the gathering and explained to us further with the development process for adding new tanks into World of Tanks.
It doesn’t take huge amounts of time to develop the tank itself, but there is huge amounts of time testing it and also, once again on the other side [World of Warships], huge amounts of time trying to get the paperwork to base things [the tank] from. So, most of it is like the other side.
We’re looking forward to seeing what Wargaming has for us with Australian war vehicles in the future.
HMAS Perth is now playable in World of Warships. Let us know what you think of it!