Step 1 of 5

Step 1 — What these games are, and what they cost

A large online war game is two things bolted together: a game, and a shop that sells things for the game. Almost everything confusing about this category comes from mistaking one for the other, so this step separates them before anything else.

The words you will meet

Six words carry most of the confusion in this category. Each one is defined here and used the same way for the rest of the course.

Client: The program you install on your computer. It is usually several gigabytes, it updates often, and it is the part that does the drawing and the sound. Without a working internet connection it does very little, because the match itself runs on the publisher's servers.
Account: The record the publisher keeps of you: a login, an email address, and whatever you have earned or bought. The account lives on the publisher's servers, not on your computer, which is why you can sign in from a different machine and find your things waiting.
Free-to-play: A business arrangement, not a description of the game. It means there is no price to begin. It says nothing about what happens later.
Premium currency: A token you buy with real money and spend inside the game. It exists so that the price of an item is shown to you in coins or crystals rather than in dollars.
Battle pass: A list of rewards released over a fixed season, usually a couple of months. One track is given to everyone and a second, longer track is sold. Rewards not claimed before the season ends are generally lost.
Loot box: An item, bought or earned, whose contents are randomised. You know the pool of possible contents; you do not know which one you will get. Step 5 covers these at length, because they are the part of this category that most often goes wrong.

You do not have to memorise these. They are repeated where they matter.

What “free-to-play” actually describes

When a game describes itself as free to play, the claim is narrow and specific: you can create an account, install the client and start a match without paying. That claim is usually true, and it is also the end of what it tells you.

What it does not tell you is whether the game sells anything, what it sells, whether the things it sells affect how matches go, or whether there is a point at which continuing without paying becomes slow and repetitive. Those are separate questions, and each game answers them differently. A game can be free to start and generous afterwards; it can be free to start and relentless afterwards. The phrase cannot distinguish the two.

So treat “free to play” as the answer to one question — what does it cost to begin? — and keep asking the others yourself. The rest of this step is a way of asking them.

One warning about the word itself. This course does not state that any particular game, including the one it links to, is free. Prices change, regions differ, and the only reliable source for what a specific game charges is that game's own website at the moment you look.

The four places money enters

Across this category, money reaches the publisher through four doors. Learning to spot all four is the main skill of this step, because a game that has closed one door has usually opened another.

Where spending happens in a game with no purchase price
Door	What it looks like	What to check
Appearance	Uniforms, paint schemes, emblems, sound packs. Changes how something looks, not what it does.	Whether any of it is only sold in bundles with other things.
Time	Boosters that make progress faster, or a paid track that reaches the same reward sooner.	How long the same reward takes without paying. If the game will not say, that is itself an answer.
Access	Vehicles, squads, classes or maps sold separately from the base game.	Whether anything sold this way changes the outcome of a match, rather than only the look of it.
Chance	Crates, cases or packs with randomised contents.	Whether the odds are published, and whether the contents can be bought outright instead.

None of these four is inherently unfair. A game that sells only appearance items is asking for money in the mildest way the category has. A game that sells chance is asking in the way that most often ends in regret, which is why Step 5 returns to it with the Australian context attached.

What matters at this step is simply that you can name the door when you see it. A player who can say “that is a time purchase” has already made the decision consciously, which is most of the battle.

The game, described separately from the shop

Set the shop aside and a large online war game is reasonably simple to describe. Dozens of players share a map. They are divided into two sides with opposing objectives, usually capturing or holding ground. A match runs for a fixed period or until one side wins, then everyone is returned to a menu and sorted into a new match.

Within that frame, the games in this category differ along a few axes worth knowing before you pick one. Match size ranges from a dozen players to over a hundred. Some games are infantry only; others add tanks, aircraft and ships, which changes the pace considerably and raises what the game asks of your computer. Some let a single player control a small squad rather than one soldier. Some are quick to learn and some expect you to read.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a larger and more varied game usually needs more from your hardware, which is Step 2's subject. Second, a game with vehicles and squads has more things it can sell you, which brings us back to the four doors.

A note on skill

You will lose a lot at first, in any game in this category, against people who have played for years. That is normal and it is not a sign that something is wrong with your settings or your computer. Give any game several sessions before judging it.

What a Second World War setting usually means on screen

Many of the largest games in this category are set in the Second World War. The setting is popular because it supplies recognisable equipment, clear sides and large battles.

In Australia, a game sold or distributed here is normally classified, and the classification comes with consumer advice: a short line naming the content that drove the decision, such as violence or online interactivity. That advice is published by the Australian Classification Board, and looking it up is the reliable way to find out what a specific game contains. This course does not state a rating or an age threshold for any title, because those come from the Board's own database and can change.

What is fair to say in general: war games in this setting depict armed combat, and many of them carry live voice and text chat with strangers, which is a separate consideration from the depicted content. Step 2 covers reading the classification, and Step 4 covers the chat.

The example household at this step

Hypothetical example

The invented household from the homepage has a desktop computer in the living room, shared by two adults, and a fourteen-year-old asking to play a war game that friends are playing. At this step they have not installed anything. They sit down and work out which of the four doors the game they are being asked about has — and find they cannot answer from the advertisement alone, only from the game's own site. That is the correct outcome of Step 1.

They also notice something that the rest of the course returns to: the computer is shared, so the account, the chat settings and any saved payment card are shared problems rather than one person's.

What the vendor of Enlisted states

Enlisted is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter set in major battles of the Second World War, with tanks, aircraft and naval vessels among the equipment. Its registration is of the kind Step 3 describes: you create an account, confirm your email address, and then launch the game for the first time. The vendor's material lists desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — rather than consoles or phones.

Beyond that, this course does not state what the game costs, what it sells or how its progression works, because the vendor's material we work from does not state those things. Its own website is where to check them, and checking them with the four doors in mind is a good first exercise.

Visit the Enlisted website — opens in a new tab.

Paid affiliate link: LOKGROUP s.r.o. earns a commission if you register an account through it. Your price is unchanged and the course does not change.

Before you move on

You can now separate the game from the shop attached to it, you know the six words the rest of the course uses, and you can name the four doors money comes through. You have not yet decided whether a particular game suits the people who will play it, or whether it will run on the computer you own. Those are Step 2.

Checklist for Step 1

Work through this before Step 2

Write down the name of the game you are considering, and the address of its own website.
On that website, find out whether an account costs anything to create.
Find the shop or store section and note which of the four doors it uses: appearance, time, access, chance.
Note whether anything sold affects the outcome of a match rather than only its appearance.
Note whether randomised items are sold, and whether the odds are published anywhere.
Check which platforms the game lists — desktop computer, console, phone — and whether yours is among them.
Write one sentence in your own words describing what the game actually asks you to do in a match.
If you could not answer one of these from the game's own site, write down the question and carry it into Step 2 rather than guessing.