Ads coming to World of Tanks?

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Hello everyone,

what’s your opinion on ads and ad spam in general? I personally hate it. I understand the importance of having ads for example on small independent sites, but in general… well, you know how it is on the internet. I am equally as annoyed by Wargaming advertising stuff not related to (me playing) World of Tanks by those messages in lower right corner, for example

- advertising e-sports (nope thanks)
- advertising streams (nope)

Well, the Russian server reached kinda “new level” with advertising Sergei Burkatovsky’s (SerB’s) book “Main Date” within World of Tanks.

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It says “The book of the main game-designer of World of Tanks, Sergei Burkatovsky’s “Main Date” is available for online purchase in book stores. More details on the portal!”. Hmmm… I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.

By the way, the book itself sounds interesting (if I recall correctly, it’s about a man falling through time to the time of WW2, warning the Soviets about impending German invasion), but this is not something I would read in original (reading cyrillic is okay for FTR, but it’s tiring for a late-evening sit-down with a book) and I doubt it will ever be translated to English, because from what I heard, SerB’s literature has the “RUSSIA MUCH STRONK” elements, that would… not sit well with western audience. But that’s just hearsay.

73 thoughts on “Ads coming to World of Tanks?”

  1. If it doesn’t interfere with gameplay who cares?
    (and perhaps premium account should remove theese so called “ads”)

    • Maybe this will be the new “feature” for premium accounts, removing ads that doesnt exist yet.

      • Maybe.

        I don’t have a problem with ads in games, if done well. E.g.posters on the sides of buildings / billboards in keeping with the theme of the game.
        Like you get the ad-boards in fifa (like in real life) and the wowp boards that used to be on the port map.

    • I agree. Just think reminding people of e-sports or a stream or whatever should be done ONCE. Not every five minutes or whatever it is they do now. :S

  2. And the point of him warning the Soviets would be…? I mean, I like the movie “The Final Countdown”. But then again, they have no impact on the past.

    • I do not know, maybe same reason for people who want to go back in time to kill Hitler? To stop or prepare maybe? Maybe he wanted to save the Soviet Union the gruesome war?

      I mean, why the fuck are you even asking when you have not even read the book?
      Its like asking, why the fuck Darth Vader dies in Star Wars.

      • There was no less then 43-45 (can’t remember the exact number) attempts/plots to kill Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Plus Russia being Russia in 1936-40 I highly doubt that one man with all the info could convince enough people to believe the info for the info to have an impact on the invasion of Russia.

          • Weeell…if history is to believed, there were some people that tried to convince The Boss, ole uncle Joey of Hitler’s mischiefs but they kinda were…how to say this…less than convincing. Maybe SerB’s protagonist may get a similar treatment?

            • He *is* writing pseudohistorical fiction here. Still, not knowing the actual story I wouldn’t rule out that the MC only gets taken seriously after the Panzers are over the border.

              • A Cassandra Truth, huh? Yeah, I could see that; it’s a common theme in stories involving time travel for the purpose of warning of an impending disaster.

      • The problem with going back in time to kill Hitler is that you run the risk of him being replaced by somebody competent, thus making World War II even worse than it already was.

        • That selfsame competent guy would still need to be sufficiently insane to pursue equally self-destructive agenda, which seems rather oxymoronic. Do recall that the Party itself, to speak nothing of Germans at large, had no shortage of relative moderates who’d have preferred expanding the national sphere of influence *without* starting outright shooting wars.

        • The problem with alternating the past is many, for example you could cause the temporal paradox or even worse grandfather paradox which could cause you to cease to exist.

          Or the timelines splits into an alternative universe where Hitler is dead while the timeline where Hitler is not dead until 1945 continues to flow.

          Time works in many funny ways, for example. Time moves differently in space than on earth or other planets.

          Also people who tried to kill Hitler where mostly Germans themselves and most Germans wanted the war to end.

  3. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NO FUCKING ADS, I play games to escape ads, not to play with them, I swear if they start posting random shit not even related to Wargamming…

    • I would be pissed off at all the annoying Russian patriotism and all the anti-German hate. I am already tired of hearing about the “evil of all evil Hitler who is the worst man in the world” even though there are worse people than him who have killed more with even more disgusting methods.

      • I’m detecting a faint whiff of apologism here…
        Anyways, Russians have perfectly legitimate reasons to feel strongly of the topic. About the same as the Jews and for similar reasons.

        • The problem is that Stalin was at best at least as bad as Hitler was (though if we were to go by kill total, then Mao Zedong trumps them both, but the Chinese don’t give a shit about THAT, although they DO get angry about the Japanese, who killed a fraction of the number of Chinese people that Mao did)

          • The difference comes from the quite explicit agenda of wholesale racial exterminations that the Nazis had going, you know. And the Soviet peeps could certainly have done without getting hit with that *on top of* what they’d already been through with Stalin.

            The NKVD wasn’t exactly shipping Jews into gas chambers either.

            Bloody-handed paranoid tyrants are bad enough, though sadly nothing particularly new as the world goes; ones that seriously try to annihilate several quite large ethnic groups, for no other reason than stark mad racist fantasies, go quite far further beyond the pale.
            Starting a second Great War that makes the first one look like cakewalk with clowns, for the same reasons, doesn’t exactly help matters.

  6. I honestly don’t mind something minor like that. The worst ad I could deal with would be a mtn dew logo on the login screen, size of their ‘awards’ ads. anything more then that would seem very iffy.

  7. Ads within video games make the game seem very cheap, pretty silly, and would further WG’s already stellar reputation as a money-grubbing company who doesn’t give two shits about their players. I don’t have a problem with them making money, but this is pretty low, even for them.

  8. ADs?

    I cut the cord in 2009.

    Installed adblock.

    I had enough of slimy ads to last a millennium.

    After all, the ADs don’t give a shit about you, all they want is your money.

  11. I think I can cope with a teeny message in the screen corner each time SerB writes another book tbh ;-)

  13. A solider warns USSR about Nazi’s plan to invade USSR…

    …And Stalin creates intelligence/counter-intelligence groups like SMERSH and NKVD like “bread and vodka”.

    • I don’t think that would necessarily make any sense though, since Stalin already expected Germany to betray the USSR by 1943 at the latest (and intended to invade as well three weeks after Operation Barbarossa ended up starting). The only bit that caught him off-guard was that it happened much sooner than expected (and during the preparations for the USSR’s own invasion, hence why so much equipment was destroyed in the first couple of weeks of the offensive, since it was all moved to the border to prepare for the attack).

  14. Ads are painful and stupid, I am against all forms of advertisement it serves nothing but spam and 50% of it is lies anyway to get you to buy the product.

    Sure it makes money for people and drive the Kapitalist ekonomisky with blood smeared between the machinery.

    But WG should spam their crap on their website and not in the game as form of News and not shiny blinking advertisement with crappy animations and specially not popup ads in game most annoying crap since popup ads in 1999 with nothing to prevent that garbage from poping up.

  15. WG wants to squeeze in ads with an excuse of “they are related to you interests so you won’t mind”?
    OH give players a break, WG, you want more money just say so, don’t pretend that you actually care about your customers. Typical WG, just terrible.

    And here I say again, stay away from WG’s product, you deserve to be treated as a human being, not WG’s cattle

  16. Small add are ok , if and only IF they are
    1 they are related to the game & related to the period ( 1930-1950)
    2 not huge adds that pop up over and over and over
    3 Wargaming uses the add money for more servers and FASTER servers

  17. I don’t see much issue with WG putting ads for their own or affiliated products in the game. Certainly, I’d expect Chieftain’s book to get advertised in the same manner when it gets released.

    • My thoughts exactly. If they want to have the little popup notification for a WG tank book (or Serb’s book), why not? I can ignore it like I ignore the Tank Company announcements. And if it is for the Chieftain’s book then :)

      As for other “ads” nope. NOPE. If they go for a more subtle “product placement”, like the billboards in Highway or the now defunct Port maps, I am okay with that. Not gonna hurt my gaming experience to have a billboard advertising Coke or whatever, as long as it looks like it belongs (period art design).

      • Replace all the heroic statues in the maps that would be of Lenin or Stalin, in fact all the statues, with one of Serb giving the bird with a tin of the local alcoholics favourite drink in the other hand. That would be good product placement and if the Serb statues were destructible it would make the game much more popular.

  19. I would actually like it if they began advertising historical books or tank related books. It could actually raise awareness of the actual history of tanks and could bring a few more people into history. Anything further than a tank model will be stupid though.
    Lets try thinking of the optimistic outcome that could happen. If WG plays their cards right than not only will they net big cash but they could improve the general public’s (who play WoT) knowledge of tanks and history.

  20. The only time where I would be fine with ads would be if it was product placement that fits the era and can be inserted in a way that fits the time period. For example, if the billboards on Live Oaks and Highway, instead of the generic water ads, advertised, say, Coca-Cola or some other company or product that exists now as well as back then, with an advertisement style that fits the era of the map. Coca-Cola in particular could also lead to a slight change in the name and art for the “Case of Cola” consumable.

    This is, however, a very narrow condition: for example, this sort of deal with Hershey’s wouldn’t permit a change in the look or name of the German chocolate consumable, because Hersheys was supporting the American war effort (M&Ms may or may not work for American vehicles, though). As another example of how narrow this allowance is, even though Wargaming has some form of deal with Microsoft, Microsoft would not be allowed to take place in product placement according to my guidelines here because they were founded in 1975, which makes the company too young to find any product placement on the game’s maps. Only some of the Tier IX or X mediums are that young!

  21. Maybe its kind of good idea. Lets say ads for non premium users, but as reward, they will get (some) premium advantages, sure it will lower amount of premiums bought, but then again, ads are sure not bad income.

  22. I would say that ads are fair game if you’re playing it for free. Once you’ve purchased premium time…no ads…you got my money…don’t annoy me with ads.

    • “Main Date” =/= “My Struggle”

      Might help if you learn a bit of foreign languages before making ignorant comments like that (though I have to admit I found the comparison somewhat amusing, given SerB’s attitude towards WW2 Germany)

  25. Personally I find ads annoying. I would say that, if you spend at least a certain amount on WoT each month, buying Premium, gold, equipment or whatever, you should be “ad free”. Only the free players should see ads…so long as the ad proceeds are in fact utilized to further improve the game.

  26. Ive read it, its amazing! When I tarthink of the Great authors of our time, Hemmingway, Howard Stern, Jenny Mcarthy, and now Serby, a smile comes to my face….

  27. I would say it makes sense to advertise this sort of thing. After all, who wouldn’t in the same position? If they start advertising penis enlargements, I might get a tad annoyed, though. :-)

    And as for books not reaching the European market, no surprise there. It is not that the European audience might not care for Russian bias, there simply is zero interest in Russia altogether.

    • Yeah, that would be annoying (lol for some reason that gave me a mental image of somebody pointing at a Panther with a 75 mm L/100 and saying “nah, I think our barrel’s long enough already, thank you very much.”)

  29. I don’t mind these ads if it’s:
    -Wargaming related stuff (i.e book publishing and little promotion of their stuff)
    -WoT related content such as streams and E-sports.

    I’ll only object if they start putting ads for Coca cola, vodka or some website that we don’t care about that has nothing to do with Tanks/history.

  31. I don’t know this book, but if I’d the chance to go back in time and I were russian, I’d go back to shortly after WW I and would try to kill A.H. before he became the leader of the nazis.

  32. I was at a comedy nightclub the other night where a comedian made a joke about going back in time to pre WWII. He said that rather than killing AH he would go back to when AH was an art student and convince him that he would become the most famous artist in the world and become very rich in later life. All because AH life’s work as an artist was his depiction of scenes from the Torah.

  33. Sure, put in ads, but then premium, convert to free XP and gold tanks should be cheaper, it they would annoy me with that shit, I want something for it.

  34. “Would you like to close the game you just started up and instead of playing it yourself watch someone else play?” ->”Sure! I wonder why i installed this game in the first place!”

    That’s what i think about stream or e-sports ads. This is a free-to-play game, and at this rate i would like to be able to disable ads so long as there is more than 1 gold on my account because technically i’m not doing it for free anymore and should not be subject to ad revenue.

  35. “it’s about a man falling through time to the time of WW2″

    A man going back in time to warn from Hitler… How amazingly creative LOL.

    Not.

    I would rather reccomend reading books about alternative futures. One particular that comes to my mind is one where Hitler and Stalin agreed on peace and Nazi Germany took over Western Europe and Stalin the Eastern one. There was also a movie, but it was shit. It is about an alternative future and is build around a Nazi police detective that investigates misterious murders on resigned old Nazis that were part of the genocide and to cover it by killing them bcoz in this reality the world never found out about the mass killing of jewish ppl in the concentration camps. He joins forces with an American journalist that went to Nazi France to investigate aswell undercover. Total mindfuck this story.

  37. It’s going to be a short book. Man travels through time. Man tries to warn Stallin of German invasion. Stalin, having already been warned and given the date by the British, denounces him as a spy and has him tortured to death. The end.

  38. If you can’t live with those small eSports pop-ups in the right corner there’s something wrong with you :/
    Grow up!
    Ads on buildings/billboards wouldn’t be annoying either.