Any time you mention DCS WWII multiplayer the next words you’re likely to utter are “Storm of War.” This server, run by the No.54th Squadron with PhilStyle being the most public of figures in the group with his YouTube channel, has been at the centre of DCS WWII activities. In announcement today, it was announced that the server would be shutting down.
The statement
Posted this morning to the Storm of War Discord, PhilStyle, well known for his YouTube channel and a person that I did an podcast with last year, made the following announcement:
As of now, Storm of War DCS server is shut down.
For information, just in case people are concerned, there are no health issues or problems within the admin team.
In mid-2021 we set an internal deadline to review DCS WW2 at the end of 2021 to determine whether or not there is enough draw from the core product to keep us hopeful and interested. This deadline has passed.
Despite January 2022 being the busiest month ever for the server, our opinion as a team is that DCS WW2 is not a product that is compelling enough for us to continue and we don’t have enough confidence in its development.
Thanks to everyone who has supported the project. It has been a success.Donations from January 2022 will all be refunded. If you have a regular payment set up, please cancel it.
The admin team will be making themselves largely non-contactable. We would rather not enter into discussions about why we made this decision.
PhilStyle on the Storm of War Discord
Except for the skeleton required to provide a couple of squad channels, the SoW Discord will be effectively shut down also.
The Discord channel linked above has been effectively been shut down minus the announcement and a couple of squadron channels.
What happened?
There will be many different interpretations of the statement as well as comments directed at a variety of parties involved. DCS WWII has been a challenging area for DCS World and while other areas of the sim seem to have been growing well, WWII has been a bit more hit and miss depending on what features and aircraft that you care about.
Indeed, the Storm of War team had posted their list of bugs with the DCS: FW190A-8 that they felt were negatively impacting gameplay. The DCS: Mosquito had not yet been added as there were bugs with the way multicrew interacted with the stats system. The SoW team seemed poised to tackle these issues as recently as just a few days ago but it seems that the issues have boiled over.
Although the statement does indicate that there are no health issues, I still hope that Phil, Dietrich and other members of their team are doing well. The sense of defeat and frustration does seem to come through in the statement. In these difficult times the stress can definitely takes its toll. I wish all of the Storm of War team well.
What comes next?
As the saying goes, when one door closes another will open. That seems true in life and in DCS multiplayer servers. Other DCS WWII servers have been online before and even before the closure notice there was news in the community that the popular 4YA servers were going to experiment with a DCS WWII server. That seems to have taken on renewed interest this morning as PhilStyle has given the ok to transfer some of the Storm of War scenarios over to that server.
Update: A correction to the above line, Phil has stated that he cannot stop anyone from doing this if they wish.
And I do hope too that we’ll see some renewed emphasis and strategic planning for DCS WWII’s future modules and bug fixes both in the European theatre that they have now as well as the likely plan to venture to the Pacific.
Stormbirds 
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