Many of the multiplayer maps involve the two sides fighting over territory in a limited number of time, and their status is represented by a bar at the top of the screen, further expressing the tug of war gameplay of this game. Players are also rewarded tactical aid points that allow them to call in different kinds of aids in increasing magnitudes of destruction, eventually all the way up to a tactical nuke. This type of rock-paper-scissors mechanic requires players to work with each other as a team and use the strengths and reduce the weaknesses of their respective branches. Armor can slice through infantry squads quite easily, but cannot defend itself against Air strikes. This offers some interesting gameplay differences, as Air forces are extremely powerful, but are unable to actually hold and capture territory. Each match places a player on two opposing teams, where he must choose one of several roles to play in his side's military forces.

While the campaign is great and unprecedented in terms of the RTS genre, its Multiplayer where the game really shines. Achieving these objectives awards the player with medals that offer the campaign some kind of replayability. Scattered throughout the missions are secondary objectives, which involve such varied missions as repairing a commander's main command tank to taking out a flanking wave of Soviet helicopters. The campaign is mostly easy, with some challenging points later on in the campaign, but even the least dedicated RTS players will have no trouble getting through it on the Hard difficulty setting. However, there are some clever segue ways, such as using repair vehicles and resupply crews to help reorganize a scattered army in the wake of a large Soviet attack. The majority of the campaign's missions involve attacking fortified areas, capturing them, and then holding them for a predetermined amount of time until either reinforcements arrive or the enemy retreats.

If a unit is lost, those points are quickly added back to the pool, meaning the player can get right back into the fight. The game's campaign is nicely complemented by its innovative gameplay, which basically gives the player a bunch of 'command points' that he can use to buy units of differing categories and strengths. There are tales of bravery, cowardice, and even self-sacrifice cleverly interwoven with the story. Again, we have character development, which is completely unheard of in the RTS genre, and is done better here than most games in ANY other genre. There are three or four main characters which the story mostly follows, and it actually deals with their feelings and emotions regarding the war and develops bonds in between them as the story progresses. The game's story, written by a crack team of script-writers, offers an overly cinematic view of a war that could have devastated the world only a decade and a half ago. World in Conflict is a grand exception to this de facto rule. Now, usually, campaigns in RTSs are looked down upon and skipped because they either don't offer interesting stories and/or are presented very artificially. The Soviets decide to go out with a bang in the face of economic collapse, and so starts World in Conflict's campaign.

The set up for this conflict is the start of a Third World War between Nato/USA and the Soviet Union right at the end of the Cold War.

Gos crack 9.7