The short version
Register with an email address you can open on the same machine. Confirm the address before you try to log in. Start the download well before you intend to play, and leave the computer awake. Finish the tutorial in one sitting. Almost every first-day problem is one of those four things done out of order.
Check the machine before you register
A vehicle combat game asks more of a computer than most software on it. Five minutes spent here saves a download that turns out to have nowhere to go.
- A desktop or laptop computer. Windows, macOS or Linux. There is no phone or tablet version of this, and no way to make one work.
- Free disk space, generously estimated. Large game installations grow with each update. Leaving several times the stated install size free is a reasonable habit, and a drive that fills part-way through a download produces errors that look like corruption rather than like a full disk.
- A graphics chip with current drivers. Not necessarily a powerful one, but one whose driver has been updated this year. This is covered in detail on the launch failures page.
- An email address you can read right now. Not a work address that filters aggressively, and not one you would have to go to another building to check.
- Time. The download is the long part and it is rarely the part people plan for.
If you are setting this up for someone under 18
Look up the title on the Australian Classification Board before installing, and read the classification and consumer advice for yourself rather than relying on a summary. Online games frequently include purchasable content, and where any of it is randomised, treat it as a spending decision that needs supervision. The spending page covers how that works and what your options are if a purchase is made without your agreement.
The sequence, in order
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Create the account
Registration asks for an email address, a password and usually a player name. Type the email address slowly and read it back before submitting. A transposed character here produces a silent failure: the account is created, the confirmation goes to an address nobody owns, and nothing on screen tells you why the login is refused an hour later. Choose a password you have not used elsewhere; the Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes plain guidance on passphrases and multi-factor authentication, and game accounts are worth protecting for the same reasons any other account is.
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Confirm the email address
Account activation includes confirming the address you registered with, and the account will not log in until that is done. The message usually arrives within a few minutes. If it has not, resist the temptation to register a second account — that creates a duplicate problem rather than solving the first one. Work through the verification checks instead.
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Download the client and let it finish updating
You will download a small installer, which then fetches the game itself. That second stage is where the hours go, and it is worth starting deliberately: begin it in the morning, or overnight, rather than at the point you sit down to play. Turn off sleep settings for the duration, because a computer that suspends mid-transfer is the most common cause of a download that appears to have reset itself.
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Launch, and set the graphics down before the first match
A first launch takes longer than later ones, because shaders and caches are being built. If the window stays black for a minute or two, give it that time. Before playing seriously, drop the graphics preset one notch below whatever was detected automatically. It is far easier to raise settings from a stable baseline than to work out which of eleven options is responsible for a stutter.
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Finish the tutorial
The introductory sequence is where the controls are actually taught, and vehicle games have more of them than the interface suggests. Complete it in one sitting if you can. A part-finished tutorial is the usual reason someone comes back the next day unsure whether the introduction was ever recorded as done.
The product this site uses as its example
War Thunder is an online multiplayer military vehicle game developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment. Play involves combined-arms vehicle combat, with aircraft, helicopters, tanks and ships available. It runs on desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — and the sign-up path follows the pattern above: create an account, confirm the email address, install the game, launch the tutorial.
Beyond those points, we would rather send you to the source than paraphrase it. Pricing, system requirements, the current content of the game and anything purchasable inside it are all published by the vendor and all subject to change, and a troubleshooting site repeating them from memory is how people end up acting on stale information. Read them on the vendor's own website before you commit anything.
Registration, the download and the vendor's own documentation are all handled on the vendor's systems.
Paid affiliate link. Ignite Works is paid a commission by the advertiser if you register an account after following it. Your costs are unchanged, and the setup sequence above was written independently of that arrangement.
What to watch out for on the way in
- Search results that are not the vendor. Popular games attract copies of their sign-up pages. Check the address bar before typing a password into anything.
- Third-party installers and download managers. The client comes from the vendor. An intermediary offering a faster or bundled installer is offering you something else as well.
- Accounts for sale. Buying an established account is against the rules of most online games and leaves you with no recourse when it is taken back. It is also a common fraud — see Scamwatch for how these are reported in Australia.
- Anyone asking you to confirm your login. Vendors do not ask for passwords in chat, in email, or through a link from a message.
Questions people ask before starting
Can I play on a phone or tablet?
No. The sign-up path described on this page is for desktop computers only — Windows, macOS and Linux. There is no mobile version of this setup, and a sign-up completed on a phone will leave you with an account and nothing to run it on.
Do I have to confirm my email address before the game will let me in?
Yes. Account activation includes confirming the email address you registered with. Until that confirmation is done, the account exists but is not activated, and the client will refuse the login.
How long does the first download usually take in Australia?
That depends on your connection speed, the time of day and how far the distribution server is from Australia. Plan for a long first download rather than a quick one, start it before you want to play, and leave the machine awake while it runs.
Does the tutorial have to be finished in one sitting?
Treat it as one sitting if you can. Leaving a tutorial part-way through is the most common reason a first session ends without the introductory sequence actually being recorded as completed.
What does it cost to create an account?
We do not publish prices on this site, because pricing changes and we would rather you read it from the source than from us. Check the vendor's own website for current pricing and for anything purchasable inside the game before you commit to it.
If the first attempt has already failed
Nothing above is much use once you are already stuck, so go straight to the symptom. A confirmation email that never arrived is a mail problem, not a game problem. A download that stops repeatedly is usually a disk, power or security software problem. A game that opens and closes again immediately is almost always graphics drivers or an overlay. Each of those has its own page, and each starts from what is on screen rather than from a theory about the cause.