‘Cause I’m leaving on a World of Warplanes… release date announced

Today, Wargaming announced the release date of their free-to-play air combat MMO World of Warplanes. The game will release in North America and Europe on September 26 for PC, and a day earlier in CIS countries. ***Check out the World of Warplanes GamesCom 2013 trailer below***

If you're expecting some shallow air combat experience, you don't know who you're messing with. World of Tanks is an immensely popular game; place it in the skies and you've got something special, especially when you launch with more than 100 different aircrafts from the U.S., Germany, Japan, Britain and Russia.

World of Warplanes has been in open beta testing since early July, and has been in closed beta since May 2012.

"In the two months since the launch of open beta, we've made a huge amount of progress," said Oleg Gotynyan, development director of World of Warplanes. "We are extremely thankful for the feedback and data our testers provided to us through both closed and open beta. They contributed a great deal to the process of helping scale the game, and we expect it to offer a deep and polished experience to both MMO fans and flight combat enthusiasts alike."

If you're attending GamesCom 2013, you'll be able to get hands-on time with the game at the Wargaming booth.

Next up… World of Warboats?

You can follow Senior Editor Lance Liebl on Twitter @Lance_GZ. He likes talking sports, video games, movies, and the stupidity of celebrities. Email at LLiebl@GameZone.com