66 thoughts on “Ubisoft talks about World of Tanks monetization”

      • Yes, it depends on point of view.
        As Tier9 tank in T9 battle, it’s -2 (as you meet t9,8,7).
        As Tier 7 tank in the same battle, it’s +2… and for Tier8, from the centre point of view it’s +/- 1.

    • Yes, but it’s a Definition Thing:
      When u listen to him describing it is the Same what we call +-2 mm

  2. “No player level” … he remarks that a lot, and he is surprised about that, but what surprise me is that he spent more than 2k€ in the game to reach that conclusion!!

    • He didn’t spend the money to reach the conclusion that there was no player level.

      He spent the money because he’s been playing for over a year and a half and has 15k battles under his belt and enjoys the game.

  3. Pfft, at 19:05 he makes the comment that its not a good revenue source if 1 million players only buys one tank. Which is true, but I know I’m not alone when I say I bought more than one tank, more than once bought premium, and more than once (probably around 8 times) $50.00 gold package. That times up to 400,000 is a good revenue source.

    • But premium tank is for most players a one time only purchase (if the player decides to buy it at all) – you can buy one and that’s it, you’ll get credits/train crews faster. And I think most players settle with only one premium tank and that’s why it’s not a good revenue source, since if you’re doing business you want a steady flow of money. Yeah, there are people who collect tanks, who want to maximize their xp/credit earnings and buy 2, 3 or even more tier 8 premiums, but it’s safe to say that they’re not the majority.

      • Actually, you just need one tier 8 prem tank and buy prem account , the xp and credit bonus is so damn huge, you just can’t say no to this once you try it. I think that owners of prem tanks spend more on prem account than those without them.

  5. At 10.10 he notices that Kisly is watching him…
    Who has more than 15 k games?
    You? Oh yes you. He is from WG so it does not count. But say hello to Victor…

    • He says that because he knows the audience member works at WG (probably because of a t-shirt) and that he would be able to ‘say hello to Victor’.

  7. UbiSoft is not credible for me. It’s just an european version of EA, they make sometimes good games but the company as a whole is terrible and makes lots of mistakes.

    It’s something I’d like to describe ” tell players you respect them while you don’t care about them”

    • Bah, I don’t particularly like Ubisoft, but that’s only because of uPlay. At least they are open to new ideas and I’m really looking forward to Child of Light. Hell, even the uPlay client works as it should these days, so it’s just the matter of extra client needed. And they won’t even force it on something as big as South Park rpg, which could never happen with EA and Origin. Definitely a better publisher than EA, ActiBlizz, Squeenix and possibly even Zenimax.

      • Hmm… you’re actually right, there’s nothing worse than EA in gaming industry. I just miss the times of Rayman, it was a different UbiSoft back then… but then again, the industry changed so much since those times.

    • Agreed. After the disaster that I had with that uSuck client, and the total fail that was HAWX2, I vowed never to buy a Ubisoft game again. They work better as cracked versions anyway :D

  8. Thank you for finding the video. It’s not really interesting for “power users” that visit your site, but incredibly interesting for understanding decisions WG makes.

    Honestly his talk of the MM explains so much and makes perfect sense. And since he is not WG but an outside observer, he puts things in a good perspective.

    Thank you again for finding the video!

  9. Strange – pal whose work is to understand games claims that a game against equally skilled players may be boring.

    http://www.noobmeter.com/player/eu/teut/500857884/ – I would say typical stats for wallet warrior with average skill.
    This may explain his approach to skill – skill factor for him doesn’t exist – if he lands on top, having superior tank with superior ammo can pwn (although number of top guns says it doesn’t happen very often). If he is pwned, he doesn’t have to think why since he always can use gold for credits.
    OTOH – a fact that WG employee asked about skill based mm someone from outside may suggest that even within WG there are much different opinions.

    A lot of mistakes – mentioned matchmaker +1 and scouts matchmaker, time to do 2x battles for 100 tanks as 5 hours.

    He may be right in case of someone who doesn’t really care and pays, but from my point of view – someone who decided to not pay, there aren’t much reasons to change my mind.

    • Actually, he’s above average (>51%) , and while not especially gifted, he probably understands the system quite well. He makes some simplifications for the viewer, but that’s not the point of his presentation. He also have a perspective of a man who values his time and probably earns enough not to bother about such money. All in all i think this is a nice and well executed presentation.

      • I think his stats are above average because he supports his account with a wallet and most probably spams gold.
        His perspective may affect his thinking – I haven’t see in his presentation anything about how to make user to start to pay. Unlikely in Western Europe, this is definitely an issue in East Europe countries and in Russia (in Russia it may be a little less issue since prices on RU server are lower than EU or NA).
        He also misses point of view of a player that doesn’t pay and grinds up – economy above tier VIII makes it very hard (I suspects even he loses on a number of battles on tier IX and X), and all problems with managing and developing account in such situation are alien to him because his wallet drives them out. So he may not have a full picture.
        Of course non-paying player is not a subject of that presentation, but is also important – if there would be only paying players, they wouldn’t have dummies to shot to, and for them game would become a little bit difficult.

        • I think you miss whole idea. First of all he is not WG emploee netiher a guide who do a presenation of a game for marketing purposes. This is about how much, which ways ingame economy works and what Wargaming biggest revenues come from. It’s not a game review lol. Problems with managing and developing non-premium account does matter thats why he thinks 50% more xp and income is a huge advantage influencing WG income via premium accounts purchase. And actually i think that majority of premium accounts income come from dummies not from good players. Spamming gold affect stats in very very minor numbers.

          • I think that someone who doesn’t understand whole game can go to the point at some extent. He obviously doesn’t.
            Of course he is right that premium is better for WG than selling premium tanks, but about in-game effects of premium account he isn’t exactly right since most probably has totally no idea, how is to play without premium, how economy is designed and stuff like that.
            I’m really sad about his approach towards skill based mm, and I believe that that approach comes from his noobness.
            And that noobness is not reflected in his stats because of gold ammo spam, because after all there is quite limited number of things that one can spend gold.

    • The guy is in fact correct about +-1 MM Per match. Though tanks have +- 2MM a match is only +-1 around the middle tier. A tier 8 match is +-1 Tier around tier 7.

    • By looking at his nooobmeter stats it is very apparent he is a sealclubbing tomato. He has some success at low tiers but he is a fail at high tiers, up to having around 47% wr after several hundred games (enough sample size) each on WTF-100, T-62A, Leo, Bat-Chat.

      Skill? He has none.

  10. This is a bit old video no?

    I see he mentioned in presentation that premium account gives +1 to platoon.. also, those tech tree images he used, some of them are from earlier versions with vertical tech tree

  11. That was a really interesting presentation, thanks for posting it. Nice moment when the WG Minsk guy gets up and says ‘this is basically correct’ :)

    Interesting point about premium as a forgotten payment: I know I always disregard premium as ‘paying’ for the game, but I’ve always got it: that really is the driver for 25% conversion rates. Interesting too, that if 25% of (active) players are paying, then at a maximum only 25% of players have premium… I would have assumed more!

    and yeah: Counter Strike for old men – speaking as an old man, that’s totally true! Makes me wonder about WoWS though: that’s going to be so slow it’ll be WoT for old men :)

    • You saying that makes me want to play wows more.

      Strange, since I’m 25 this year.

      25…. 25…. Oh gods, I’m a christmas cake T_T

  12. 14:23 “You pay for this game , you suck.” LEL

    20:00 i spent more than 3000 euros on this game. :-)))) dayummm

    31:05 needs 5 hours to double 100 tanks, riiiight.

    • BTW SS , was there a problem yesterday with site host? Live version was unavailable for several hours or more…

    • 14:23 “You pay for this game , you suck.” LEL < he is actually right may be not now but some time ago I used get called gold noob and wallet warrior a lot because of using premium tanks.

      20:00 i spent more than 3000 euros on this game. :-)))) dayummm < stronk game support XD

      31:05 needs 5 hours to double 100 tanks, riiiight. < 100 tanks all in battle XD.

      • Half the time you get called “gold noob” just for penetrating some dumbass, irrespective what you were shooting with. Bonus points if the whiner is driving a prem tank or one of the seriously armoured critters people carry prem shells *for*…

  13. I’d be really interested in this guy’s opinion on premium ammo when it comes to the whole fairness thing. Besides tat, very well made presentation, although I hink he could keep some of that gameplay info a bit more up to date, even if it does not change the point.

    Btw people really throw that much money on XP conversion? I used to do it when I started to spend cash on WoT, but for me it’s way too epxensive to justify. Nowdays I just convert remaining XP when the tank gets elited. (I’d probably do it more if the conversion rate was at least 40xp/1g)

    • Yes, I know quite a lot of guys, who have good paying jobs and they invest a lot in free XP.
      I am a student, thus I get my gold from tournaments and mostly don’t pay a dime myself.

      Also those who argue about the +/-1 mm, he explained it later that it is +/-2. Also, Steiner011, you didn’t watch the video properly if you didn’t understood the “you suck, you paying customer” jokes.

      Very good summary of WoT monetization, 90% he said was totally true or close to it.

      • I have never spent a single penny on WoT and I never run out of gold and premium account. You can basicly drown in free gold with the amount of tournaments and contests available.

    • I don’t have time to fool around with stock T8-9 tanks so I usually free xp the top guns and tracks if needed. Never free xp-d anything over like 50k xp though.

  14. Fantastic video – really interesting to see this, thanks. FWIW despite the whingers I think Wargaming does an excellent job on keeping the game fair and avoiding P2W

  15. He didn’t mention one more but may be strongest argument for idea that XP conversion is the main source of income fo WG.
    I’m playing this game for three years and there were not a single event or mission bonus that discounted XP conversion rate even a bit. You can get premium tank for free, you can get premium ammo or consumables for free or with discounts but never a single point of free XP.

  17. He shoots only premium ammo – ideal player for WG but a asshole for those who actually play.
    Paying loads of cash(no stock tanks, premium ammo only, premium cammo, retraining) and still not a good player, how terrible.

  20. Thank you for watching my talk :)

    This might sound strange but I didn’t play WoT in the beginning to be “good” or win. I simply played everyone of my tanks once per day to victory to amass experience to unlock new tanks – until I had all German tanks.

    Now I have enough tanks including Russian, US, British Tier X’s so unlocking became boring.

    Now I try to play to win. You might have noticed that on my last stats, but yes, I am not that good.

    Excuse also the mistakes in the talk as some data is old from pre Patch 8.6 as I did that talk one year ago for the first time. It is actually a 45 minute talk and they gave me only 20, so I had to rush through.

    • It was an informative and interesting presentation, but is there a video for the complete 45 minute talk anywhere?
      Do you think that Clan Wars are another way to bind the players to WoT and earn more money that way, although they give their virtual currency away for free?

  21. Well done SS – I really enjoyed that presentation. Why? I’m an ancient corporate and it’s really interesting hearing the game I really enjoy playing being talked about and analysed in business terms.

    @ Mr Weidemann: Great stuff. You handled the WG guy very well, always potentially sticky when your oppo appears in the audience; and well done for gaining confirmation that your analysis more or less hit the mark.

  22. Ubisoft for me is a Big Bad Evil.

    They take great franchises and destroy them

    Heroes of Might & Magic or Panzer General made into MMO’s by Ubisoft are unplayable shits that have nothing in common with originals, maybe except some names and graphics