How do you set up a desktop war game, and how long does it take?

What you need before you begin

Very little, and none of it costs anything to check.

• A desktop or laptop computer running Windows, macOS or Linux. The titles in this category, including the one this site covers, are desktop software — there is no phone or tablet version to fall back on.
• An email address you will still have in three years. This is the single most important item on the list, and the reason is in the account safety section below.
• Enough free storage. Modern vehicle games are large, and a drive that is nearly full will cause a failed install or a painfully slow one.
• A connection you can leave running. The initial download is usually the largest single file transfer your household will do that month.
• Mouse and keyboard. A joystick or gamepad is optional in almost every case, and the default control scheme assumes you do not have one.

How registration usually works

The pattern is consistent across the category, which makes it easy to spot when something is off.

1. You reach a sign-up page belonging to the publisher. Check the address bar. If the page asking for your details is not on the publisher's own domain, stop and navigate there yourself.
2. You choose a nickname, an email address and a password. The nickname is usually public and often hard to change later, so pick one you are willing to have shouted at you in chat.
3. The game sends a confirmation message. It arrives within a minute or two. If it has not, check the spam folder before requesting another, because repeated requests sometimes invalidate the earlier link.
4. You click the link in that message. This is the step that connects the account to an address you control, and it is what makes recovery possible if you ever lose the password.
5. You download the launcher or client from the same site — never from a third-party mirror, a file-sharing host, or a link posted in a chat.

Some accounts will let you into a limited amount of the game before confirmation and then stop you at the point where progress starts being saved. That is not a bug; it is the publisher declining to store progress against an address nobody has proved they own.

The download is the long part

Expect tens of gigabytes. The exact figure changes with every major update and is published on the game's own system requirements page, which is the only source worth trusting for it. Two things routinely surprise people. The first is that the launcher often downloads a base client and then immediately downloads a patch, so the progress bar reaching one hundred per cent is not the end. The second is that the installer may unpack files after downloading them, which needs temporary space on top of the final install size — a drive with exactly enough room for the finished game can still fail partway through.

If your household shares a connection, start the download when nobody is working or streaming. On a fixed wireless or satellite service, check your plan before you begin; a large client download can consume a meaningful part of a monthly allowance, and peak-hour speeds on some services will stretch the job across two nights.

What the tutorial is actually for

Players who arrive from other shooters tend to treat the tutorial as a formality. In this category it is not. A tank has a hull that turns independently of its turret, an aircraft has a throttle and trim and flaps, and a ship takes a long time to change its mind about anything. The tutorial is where the game hands you those controls one at a time, and it is also where it explains its own systems — how ammunition types differ, what the aiming indicator is telling you, how repairs and crews work.

There is a second reason to run it. Your first matches are against other people, and in this category those people may have thousands of hours. The tutorial is the only part of the experience built to be survivable while you learn which key does what. Treat it as the first level rather than a chore, and the first evening is far less discouraging.

A sensible order for the first hour

1. Run the tutorial to the end, even the sections you think you can guess.
2. Open the settings and look at three things: graphics preset, mouse sensitivity, and the control layout. Turning the graphics down at the start costs you nothing and prevents an hour of blaming your aim for what is actually stutter.
3. Find the audio settings. Engine and gun audio carries positional information in these games, and default volumes are often set for a cinema rather than a share house.
4. Play the lowest-tier vehicles first. They are slower, more forgiving and matched against equally slow opposition. Rushing up a tech tree is the fastest route to a bad evening.
5. Leave the store closed. Nothing purchasable will help before you know what you like, and the costs page explains what is usually on sale and why.

If you share the computer

A gaming account on a shared machine deserves the same treatment as an email account. Use separate operating system user accounts if more than one person plays, so saved logins do not overlap. Do not tick remember my password on a computer in a common room. If a younger member of the household is going to play, the classification page covers what the rating does and does not tell you, and how to look one up properly.

Four short questions

Doing this for the title we cover

The steps above are the general pattern. For War Thunder specifically, the publisher's flow is the familiar one: register an account, confirm the email address, install the client on a Windows, macOS or Linux computer, and launch the tutorial. There is no mobile route, and we would rather say so plainly than have you discover it after signing up on a phone.

Visit the War Thunder sign-up page

This is a paid link. Vanguard Digital is paid a fee by the advertising network when a reader registers an account after following it. The sign-up itself is unchanged, and you can reach the same publisher directly at warthunder.com if you would rather we were not paid.