Connecting the Real World and World of Tanks

Hello everyone,

this post is sort of a continuation of the missions post I made yesterday. You don’t have to read that one first as I’ll be writing about something a bit different, but they are connected a bit. I hope that I don’t have to add that this is my personal perception of things only, if you aren’t interested in that, simply don’t read it :)

Let me start by writing that especially lately, the real world and the virtual one (internet, social networks and such) are connected more and more – examples are obvious: when applying for the job, the company HR will try to find you on Facebook and look into your comments (there have been numerous cases of job losses due to inappropriate FB comments) – or vice versa, when you interact with something in real life, it can have a “response” online (such as the discount FB check-in system). These elements are well known in the west – here, though, they are still uncommon (outside of the capital anyway). The interaction within the virtual world is there as well of course (“want to comment on site X? Use site Y login!”).

Regardless of what we might think of this (and I am NOT a friend of this, I prefer privacy in general), it is a clear trend of things. So, I was wondering, why not use this trend in World of Tanks as well? How? It’s really simple and it can be done on several tiers.

Tier I – activities tied to your forum account and portal. This kinda concerns only about (my guess) 5 percent of all the players, who actually visit forums and such. A limited amount of interaction is already there (behavior on forum CAN lead to deletion of your ingame account in extreme cases, such as death threats), but it could be even deeper. Being a popular poster? Got over 2000 forum reputation? Cool, here’s reward X (something small, let’s say 10 gold aid kids or something). Are you a troll and did you get a read-only ban? Too bad, now you will earn 50 percent less XP for the duration of the ban. That should discourage the “LOL I HAEV 43 WINRATE I BLAEM POLISH” types of posts. On the other hand, something like this could draw more people to forums (not sure that’s a good thing, but you get the point).

Tier II – activities tied to the World of Tanks portal and affiliated sites. This one already exists in limited amounts as well (you won a portal competition? you get an ingame prize), but it could be made deeper. An example: We all know that the ingame tutorial is insufficient and it doesn’t prepare you for the role you need to play in battle in order to be successful. Reading up in full on designated tutorial articles on the portal could earn you an XP/credit gain temporary bonus. Answering a quiz on portal could get you a small ingame “bonus” – or you could even play an extra game: if you answer correctly, you get a bonus. If you answer incorrectly, something negative happens. Possibilities are endless.

Tier III – activities tied to the web outside of Wargaming domain. Connecting your account to Facebook for example (that one is already there as well partially): you have birthday? Cool, 50 percent XP gain bonus for you for one day! Stuff like that.

Tier IV – activities tied to real life. Buying food at Wargaming affiliate place? Cool, here’s a bonus code. This one actually exists as well – in Russia, Burger King was giving out invite codes with its meals. Attending meetings and getting bonus codes there is a form of this as well in a way, but I am talking about system interaction in general, such as typing your ingame username and getting a discount code in return.

As you can see, each “tier” has its elements already implemented, so Wargaming is clearly aware of the trend. So the real question is:

SHOULD outside elements be integrated more into the game?

I am not sure. Maybe I am oldschool, but I think that the less such integration is, the better. When I go and play a computer game, I do it because I want to relax from the real world, not because I want to make the game a part of it (although I am pretty sure that’s exactly what the developers want). I consider for example Facebook updates on any “game” events (“Look I just scored THIS much in the game XY”) highly annoying as well. Having real world catching up to you in the game is probably not the best idea.

What do you think?

34 thoughts on “Connecting the Real World and World of Tanks

  1. Some really nice ideas I like Tier 2, 3 and 4 the best. Tier 1 is a bit I don’t know I wouldn’t go out of my way to comment on WG forums. Very little have I noticed anything interesting on there. The only WG forum post I read regularly is the terrible E100 meme post

  2. and thus the reason I never accepted the friend request of my boss! I can say and post what ever I want >:) and not get FIRED :)) yaaaaaaaaay!

  3. When is the Sevastopol map coming out and what about the Ukrainian branch?

  4. No, No, NO!!!!!!!
    VR forcing is the worst possible idea. I have quit quite a few games because the were unplayable without the bullshit “social” side(though non of these were made in post comunism countres and this could be interesting, but WoT does not deserve to be smashed into the mud by “real life elements”).
    All in all I hope Wo/t will remainn usable, as more and more updates into the game are making it’s garage side worse.
    1st, there are the reminders. Frustrating at least.
    2nd, mission which keep flashing as unread even if you just did so and relogged.
    And now you want to blow up the wreckage which remains?
    HANDS OFF WoT, you “social” crap!

  5. These proposals contradict your previous opinion about missions: that where missions start, grind begins and fun ends.
    if you ask me, I would prefer to see improvements closely related to the core gameplay, not to the meta game nor at boundaries of the game
    Besides, all of these ideas fall under the category of gamification. I know people who deal with it and myself have some experience, because I design games since four years. To me, gamification has business sense only when it is itself an attractive game. This happens very, very rarely. Bidding – ok, chasing other players around the city to rob their prize by a nearby check-in – cool; free hamburger for WoT gold – boring (and costly)

  6. Forum – great idea: a clan, up to 100 or so members, iirc 3 rep points per day, pumping each other.
    Same thing with neg rep for clans we don’t like (wasn’t rep points turned off in some Asian forum just because such things?).
    50% less XP for ban? Great, I have perma ban and a number of other things to do instead of playing WoT. 50% less XP would be a really great reason to do those other things.
    Moderator dislikes a player – bang, have a nice play.

    Forum is being read a single handed percent of players, why idea that portal is being read significantly often?

    OTOH – on various events WG gives around codes for gift tanks or planes. There are also WG branded clothes.

  7. it doesn’t work that way, one can insult, and the other can reply with an insult, and first one to rewrite his comment, and the second one get’s banned and first one just lols and plays it nice guy / victim!

    and getting ban in game cause of a fight you had in forum with some idiot ain’t really fair!

    • Stop being stupid.
      Seriously.
      I got my ass permabanned from the forums for, well, you can probably guess if you’ve ever read my posts here. Never managed to earn any game-relevant penalties from any of that.

  8. i know this is off topic and not allowed ..and i am sorry for postin here
    Do you know something about the bonus codes for the WGL final ?

    Sorry again for posting here

  9. Considering what a bunch of wankers WG forum mods are, I am actually surprised you suggested tier 1. I like tier 4 though.

    • In fact, I actually have a permanent ban on wot forum, after sending a rude message to one of the forum mods, I was already pretty disgusted for my 1st warning, which was when someone made a post about a kid who plays this game and only uses HE ammo in his tanks.

      There were a lot of complaints at the time about WG supposedly letting children play the game, I posted one of his better games in the thread and simply said they should not judge him so hard. So I got a warning point for that.

      After that I got a few more warning points I did not agree with so I started arguing with forum mods vie PM, I was done with the forum at the point and wanted a ban, as I have no interest in being a part of that community.

      Strange thing though, I have actually made some very serious threats to the forum mods, and they did not ban my in game account. Maybe next time I go down to tank fest, if WG are there I will let them know my displeasure at their forum mods conduct.. people are so much more understanding and helpful in person.

      • “[...]people are so much more understanding and helpful in person.”
        Because you can do something that is impossible behind the computor. Smack their faces. :D

          • The old saying “You wouldn’t say this to my face” didn’t come from nowhere

            • Duh, it came from a general willingness to stab the other guy inna face over trivial issues which civilised societies have gone to considerable pains to discourage for the past few centuries.

              Not actually relevant however.

              • Even in this day and age, I am extremely sceptical that any societies are in any way civilised.

                A lot of people abuse the fact that it is against the law to beat the crap out of mouthy little pricks, it just makes them worse.

                • People used to be terribly unreserved about causing grievous bodily harm and/or death to fellow citizens who they felt had offended them somehow.
                  You get three guesses if that did Jack Shit to improve their manners.

                  Newsflash: the threat of maiming and/or death as the routine legal punishement didn’t exactly keep people from committing crimes either.

  10. I like the system as it is. Your improvements are nice, but there are many downsides on them:
    Tier I – Imagine Pewdiepie (from now on i will call it “Cancer”) says “let’s go to tanking hueuheuhe.” Cancer joins, so does approx. 20000 people who follow him as dogs. They roflscout and try to be the burden of the team every time AND they post shitposts on forums (you know… like “I HAET ‘JEREMYTANK18′ COS HE KSED ME! BAN HIM NAO!”) and they will circlelike each others post, thus they will have advantage WHILE they do noting good to the community. And because Cancer streams this, is happy about the thing and want to continue the trolling with the rewards, he will lure other trolls to this game also.

    Tier II – Remember the “Guess the tank”? I do. I wanted to win it several times, sometimes i gave the good answer YET i didn’t win it because “i just guessed”. Even if i knew the reason i couldn’t describe it (language barrier and lack of english). And nowdays they hold competitions like “Cheerleading Madness Contest”… (I miss the half-monthly “hunt us down”)

    Tier III – … Privacy… as you said :D

    Tier IV – Remeber Big Blizzard Bear/Tyrael pet in WoW? Or Pax/Riot skins in LoL? Those promo things were the wallet-warriors’ holy grails. My buddy who put up 10 or so codes (which he got for 500$) to ebay got insane profit out of them (afaik around 2000$). Do we really need this in WoT/WoWp/WoWs?

    Yeah i know… those are minor problems which only affect just a bunch of people… but in the long way they can be vital to anyone (even more potatoes with tier10s… kamikazescouts… more ” this tank is underpowered because i never win with it” whines and so on).
    Just sayin’.

  11. I have never been on the site called Facebook, why would anyone want to share that much info is beyond me.

  12. If you dont like real world elements SS, why do one have to sign in here to wrote thru social media sites like facebook, etc?

  13. ‘LOL I HAEV 43 WINRATE I BLAEM POLISH’

    That’s a pretty reasonable comment, considering it probably comes from a Polish player. :trollface:

    Yours sincerely,
    Non-European Player

  14. These ideas look good, but, there should be no punishment for a bad answer in the quiz! But I’d rather say that there could be personalized daily quizzes, and if you answer correctly you could get like an extra X2, or +10% credits for the next 5 battles or something, and more you answer correctly the bigger the reward will be, but it shouldn’t be big (not bigger than +10%, otherwise you would only get frustrated) and you could choose when to do it, you could skip it if you wanted to.