World War II Online: Blitzkrieg is a World War II massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) developed by Playnet, Inc.'s internal game studio, "Cornered Rat Software", and it was originally released on June 6, 2001 for Microsoft Windows, with a Mac OS version being released in 2002.

A player can command or crew a variety of accurately modeled aircraft; armored fighting vehicles, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft artillery, four naval vessels, fight as a foot-soldier with a variety of infantry weapons, or play as a paratrooper and drop from either a C-47 or Ju 52 transport aircraft.

The game is played in real time alongside or against other players as either German, American, British or French forces in a persistent world.

It uses a single, non-instanced, ½ scale map of western Europe with approximately 56,600 km2 (21,853 sq mi) of accurate terrain in which capturable cities, airfields and ports have been placed.

Statistics include elements such as number of kills, damages, deaths, time spent on each mission, and depot captures.

The damage model in WWII Online is realism based, as explained in this developer demonstration video.

For example, for aircraft, damage to flight surfaces will result in increased drag and reduced performance of the vehicle.

The ballistic model is also detailed, taking into account drag coefficient properties, muzzle velocity, and mass of each individual type of ammunition.

Small arms fire will also often leave bullet holes or scuff marks on buildings or vehicles.

HC players have abilities that are not available to the rest of the playerbase, namely in the placing of Attack Objectives (AOs).

Bombers and Naval Destroyers are usually tasked with blowing up bridges, while sapper (engineer) units must repair them.

High Command players are able to move their side's "brigades" along road links between friendly towns.

Naval and Air Force brigades are considered "Self-Deployable" and can move directly from any town to another with the right Docks or Air Field facilities, as long as the destination town is held by friend forces and is not cut off from the main friendly-held area.

The rule though does not apply in the case that the brigade is the only one left in its division and if this occurs it is free to move to any surrounding town.

These messages can also be used to boost the "morale" of the troops by telling them how well they have been fighting and to announce future Operations that are being planned.

Some went to form Hitech Creations, while others went with John "Killer" MacQueen, Jonathon "Hoof" Hoof, Chris "Mo" Sherland[5] to leverage their experience on WarBirds and Raider Wars to develop[6] an online gaming network (G2 Network)[7] with a massively-multiplayer first-person WWII simulation[8] for both PC and Mac[9] as the showpiece.

[10] After a lengthy closed beta stage, WWII Online went live on June 6, 2001 under the campaign title Blitzkrieg.

Updates, or patches to the game code, were released every 6 weeks, on average, but recently have moved to a less frequent but larger content format of 3 or 4 times a year.

As the developers worked feverishly behind the scenes to complete other promised features and fix the software bugs on the gold CD, even more updates became necessary.

Three days prior to release, the colocation network facility had a bad fiber optic cable.

As a temporary workaround, Playnet set up multiple copies of the game-world on different servers, distributing the network load, but at some cost in game play.

This solution lasted for several months while the developers resolved the server-side issues, after which all servers were merged into a single game-world.

This helped to retain many of the players, especially the long-term fans of the project, but it was not long before Playnet had financial problems.

They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late 2001, and cut costs, resulting in a number of lay-offs within the company.

This list shows the "call signs" of all RATS (or game developers) recognized by the team for their contributions.

The list includes: Ahwulf, Airborne, Animal, Arradin, Bable, Badger, Blkhwk8, Bloo, Bmbm, Caligula, Caveman, Chkicker, Codec, Company0, Crawdad, Dekard, Doc, Dragon, Drloon, Edthehead, Elmo, Fogaban, Fohdron, Fredrik1, Frytiger, Gnache, Gophur, Granik, Greatone, Greni, Gryf, Gvonpaul, Hallpass, Hawkmoon, Hicksey, Heavy265, Hoof, Hoss, Jaeger, Jammyman, Joker007, Jokerzwild, Kango, Kfs1, Killer, Kms, Krieger, Kyotee, LadyJ, Latham, Lindir, Maco, Martini, Maypol, Meat, Mediiic, Minnie, Mo, Monty, Motormouth, Mumbles, Newzguy, Rafter, Ramp, Rickb, Rogue, Salad, Scking, Sgtfury, Shef, Sherman, Shilling, Showkillr, Sideout, Snail, Snicker, Soloje, Squirm, Staffel, Stick, Sudz, Tadpole, Tater, Tgunr, TheChosn, Thunder, Tongue, Toto, TopD, Tragic, Trips, Troper, Vandal, Victarus, Vixen, Vozz, Waver25, Wickett, Wildhund, Xl2rippr, Zach and the others that may have been unintentionally missed.

[12] Kevin Rice of NextGen said of the game, "A huge learning curve coupled with low gratification and zero organization make[s] this a title only for those with the patience of a saint.