Been playing this for about 3 or 4 days now, and I just want to give some of you a run down if you're thinking about trying it. Originally Massive or Sierra bought into one of those shady deals to help keep Satan (fileplanet.com) around for a year or two longer. Keys for the open beta were only released to those sad bastards who subscribed to one of fileplanet's Give me money or eat these ads plans.
To my surprise I received a key emailed directly to me from Massive, which actually isn't surprising as I signed up for the beta through their site 2 weeks ago, like any other monkey would do if they took 2 minutes out of their boring lives.
So here is the gist of it.
It's a RTS in a non-RTS style setup. What the hell does that mean?
Well I'm going to try and explain it, in the shortest length possible, trust me it seems much more complicated than it actually is:

- Its US, NATO (not in beta), and Mother Russia - The cold war, at last!

- It's gods eye 3D view - Top down, controlling your AI and killing them, over...and over.

- There are no civilians - This means, no gathering resources, no building, no custom fortifying, and no "Pro get your spy dog the fuck out of my camp!" as everyone can see you at all times.

- 8 vs 8 Multi-player - Dedicated servers allowing you to join and leave whenever you want instead of the direct connect, or player hosted servers, or 'Waiting for D_hasselhoff666...', or the latter.

- High end graphics - And steep beta minimum system requirements, you pretty much need a rig and a half to run this at even medium settings. There is a in-game benchmarking tool to test your settings. I built this rig over a year and a half ago so its a tad behind the times, yet I have no problem running it at modified settings @ 1440x900 (16:10);

Not the greatest detail, but better than most.

- 4 Classes - Infantry, Support, Armor, and Air. good in theory, but each class has a specific weakness (some more than one) that helps keep the game in 'balanced' play. Within the classes (in the beta) are a total of 7 to 8 sub-classes or units that you may purchase for team resource and have air-dropped in for your disposal. There is not a 'standard' set amount of units you start off with, meaning it is up to you to pick out which combination of units you want to use.
For instance; as Support class, I can choose between, Heavy AA (anti-air), Medium AA, Repair Vehicle, Heavy Artillery (big long ranged weapon, slow and easy to kill), Medium Artillery, or two Transport Vehicles.
Now depending on the situation I may go with a Heavy/Medium AA combination, or if the enemy (Yankee scum) are a bunch of Air whores I'll simply go full Anti-Air. Each class is like this.

- Capture Points - Much like every FPS on the market (including mods) this game has CPs that require capturing to dominate the map. The more CPs you capture the more of the map you own and thus the more you have to defend, capturing these points is the main objective of the maps. They also have (quite useless) fortifications that construct themselves when you sit on them for a long time allow you to have a awesome squad of 3 units. They also give you kill points so you can call in reinforcements from the heavens above to mutilate your enemy and...sometimes your team as well.

- Kill points & radio commands - Otherwise know as, 'I kill and capture stuff, you give me points, in-turn I use these points to call down the thunder on your village.'
Which is extremely useful in certain situations, unfortunately it is always a certain situation. There always seems to be one stingy guy saving all his points and waiting on the
perfect nuke drop.


- 5 units at a time - Wait, what?
Apparently to either save resources or to simply keep your head from exploding. Regardless of your team resource in the top right corner, you can only have 5 chosen units out at a time. This of course excludes the called in Airborne reinforcement troops you can get, but they're push over's anyhow so yeah, 5.

- WASD Camera/Movement & Mouse controls - W, forward, A, left, S, backward, D right, mouse wheel raises you up & down, mouse wheel button, free look and that's right, no real shortcuts in this game. The down side to this is often I find myself wanting a shortcut for specific unit commands other than their special ability. The special ability shortcut tends to be aggravating because you must individually select the enemy you want to use it on rather than it automatically launching against those you are fighting. Now this may sound smart, and it would be, but the special skills have limits to them such as; Medium Unit can only use skill vs. same unit type, but Heavy can use it against anything. And the fact that the objects unless zoomed in on them like an extreme close up, aren't the easiest thing to select in a crunch. But at least all units have these abilities, I guess.

- Basic Interface - The ui, like the game, is relatively simple to understand, though being a different approach to a strategy game some may feel awkward at first but it passes in time.
Here is the simple UI layout:


So in a nutshell, and though I'm leaving the best part out which is Team work, this is basically left up to you and your team. You will find out soon enough that if the teams are lop sided, your 5 units don't stand a chance. Or if your entire team wants to go air and the other team does not, you're in trouble. Basically, teamwork all has to do with balancing out who plays what class and what is needed to be effective in defending/attacking them and winning the map (and destroying all the towns in the process). There is also a clan & ranking system with a leaderboard for those ridiculously competitive anal folks such as myself.

Basic Rundown of Can's and Can'ts
Can - Destroy stuff
Can - Play as 4 classes
Can - Play as a team
Can - Continuously Spawn
Can - Hide Infantry in buildings
Can - Call in special attack reinforcements multiple times
Can - Leave and Join any server at any time
Can - Create a Clan/Guild/Squad
Can - Chat & use VOIP
Can - Be impressed by the graphics

Can't - Build
Can't - Gather resources
Can't - Use shortcuts effectively
Can't - Hide Infantry in buildings (enemy is seen at all times on mini-map)
Can't - Have more than 5 units at a time (with exception of airborne infantry)
Can't - Figure out how to level up
Can't - Level up

If you want to sign up for the beta that is taking place through July, go here:
http://www.worldinconflict.com/beta/