Gamescom Summary

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Hello everyone,

I was wondering whether to make this post or not as a summary of the Gamescom stream and other things related to it, since it’s kinda all over now, no stream planned for today as far as I know. In any case, after sitting down in the evening and thinking about the entire thing this year, the word that comes to my mind is… “failure”. Well, at least to the 99,99 percent of players, who did actually not go to Gamescom in person, but were wondering, what it was all about. And it’s a pity – from what I heard, the booth was actually very cool.

I am not quite sure what to write that was not already written – so I will just sum it up from the perspective of someone, who did not go there.

What I liked

They finally showed the World of Warships. Well, partially, it’s not like we saw anything much from it, just a few tidbits of information and some hangar footage (unless more was shown in the last stream, I did not watch that). That however means one thing: it’s open season on leaks and as I write this text, I am looking at leaked video from the alpha test. We’ll get rid of the annoying watermarks and post something later, but for now, let me tell you that it looks VERY promising. Me gusta! Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing I liked.

What I did not like

I mean, where do I even start.

Whose brilliant idea was it to instead of showing the booth like last two years sit like four random people in front of camera, stroking each other’s… egos for like half of the stream? I mean, seriously, WHO CARES how some random WoT community nobody started with WoT? Well, at least there was a representative from the player base, Quickybaby, but… well, you know. The hot Turkish chick (Melly or something?), who handled the prizes seemed totally lost and awkward, she had random guy guests and there was some long-haired dude next to her, staring at her boobs on occasion. No idea who that was.

There were guests as well, but why the HELL did we not see more of the WoWs stuff? Why was there practically no new info, when the entire expo was about unveiling new stuff? Why did they talk about WoT for Xbox a lot, when that’s aimed specifically at America and it would be much better to focus on it during E3 or something? And does anyone really seriously care about WoWp still? Stop trying to make it happen, it’s not gonna happen. There was Viktor Kislyi, but it was like 30 minutes of him talking about how he started doing WoT and all that, I mean – if you have a CEO of your company, you do not at least ask him to reveal his plans for the future or something?

And so, instead of seeing what was allegedly a really awesome stage show and performance at WG booth, we saw a bunch of guys talking about nothing important. The entire failure was underlined by the fact that people spammed the chat so much with Type 59 begging (and, later, with the Alienware reference requests) that it had to be disabled during the entire stream. Oh yea, there was also that personal data fishing over Facebook via the Facebook application (“For a chance to win, you gotta pair your game account with your FB account basically while stating your birthday, where you live, your hobbies, sharing your friendslist etc.” – and no, I do not exaggerate).

If you are masochist enough to want to watch all that again, Wargaming did put the past streams online.

Real life event went somewhat better, although not as good as everyone imagined probably – Eikarrramba (three r’s!), a German community contributor, visited the Wargaming party/meeting-the-developers and wrote report about it. He was disappointed – the short version is that there was a huge queue (and WG people photographing it for promo shots, which pissed the players off), no bonus codes, only one 0,2liter drink was included (the rest was quite expensive), generally there was no program and music sucked.

As a “bonus” (perhaps to tease us a bit), Wargaming did put the “Gamescom Q&A” on the portal, that was at best useless (bordering on retarded), at worst it contained mistakes (like the RU251). If you want to do something, do it right.

To sum it up: it sucked, better luck next time. I think the viewer numbers reflected my opinion as well (a LOT lower than the E3 ones). No doubt they will tell us in the days ahead how totally awesome it was (yea, too bad we couldn’t see it) and how much positive feedback did they get regarding the stream… but then, it’s the same people telling us that WoWp is a successful game…

PS: Oh yea, at the end of the last stream, one of the… guys (no idea who) allegedly said that Firefly will either be tier 6 or 7 (not decided) and it will come in 9.5. That date I have to confirm (it’s either 9.5 or 9.6), that part about the tiers is wrong, it’s tier 6 and it is decided. What is not decided is the fate of tier 8,9 and 10 of that branch, it’s possible they will not come (some developers feel that the last thing the game needs is another 183mm derp TD), but I have no exact info on that at this moment.

57 thoughts on “Gamescom Summary”

  1. About WOWP… Depends on players, it has it’s niche of players that REALLY like this game. But yeah, at first game is a little uncomfortable, I started to like it “more” after like 200 battles. And after 1k battles I was pretty good.

    Warships can looks nice so far, but we will see how gameplay works.

      • And I’m that second guy. D:

        WoWp’s fate rests on patch 1.5, which effectively introduces a league-kind split – tomatoes can train on bots, so the learning curve isn’t that steep. This has the potential to solve some of the biggest problems of the game, so all is not lost yet.

        • Well one things for sure they can throw loads of money at it till it pulls the players in.
          Do you think the game engine used for WOWP is up to the job?
          Which game engine is WOWS using and does it have Multi Core Support ect

          • We all know War Thunder’s engine is better, but I still don’t think a mediocre engine is to blame for WoWp’s woes.

            WoWp had a lot more players in closed beta, until devs pulled a couple of dick moves and royally screwed up the gameplay. Many people, me included, left at that time (tho I later returned and now play the game regularly, just a lot less than WoT). And this is the point: WoWp has shown on a number of occasions, that it has great potential, but devs don’t seem to have the idea how to balance the game properly.

            I don’t have the time to go into a deeper explanation here, but it has a lot to do with the balance between hardcore and casual gameplay. In short: WoT nails this balance rather well and they wanted to copy those same principles to WoWp – but because it’s a game of a different nature, they failed miserably. They need to reinvent the principles for WoWp, not just copy them from WoT.

            • For me the controls are still my biggest problem.
              There was a time during cbt where the controls were good, then they changed something and even though they apparently changed them again I just can’t get used to them.

              Whenever I try to use the flaps manually the plane goes into nutjob mode and oversteers completely making aiming impossible.
              Similiar to BF1942′s keyboard+mouse controls, but even worse.

              In itself it’s okay (Mind you my highest plane is tier VI) but compared to WT’s gameplay it’s just no fun to fight my plane’s controls more than the enemy.
              Mind you WT has it’s own problems.

              • What I meant by “screwed the game” above were mainly: controls, huge damage buff and auto-aim, yes.

    • I am still at gamescom and I played WoWS.

      The gameplay works really well, lots of long-range combat (like 11 kilometres away), you can see and shoot really far. If you have cannons on the front and back, you can fire the front ones when looking forward, you can fire the rear ones looking backwards, but if you rotate your ship to face the enemy with the side you can shoot all the cannons.
      You can fire cannons individually or all at once, but I usually fired a leading shot to see if it hits the moving ship kilometres away.
      But of course, the ships are slow to turn and stop (go figure), but they have large ammounts of HP. Like 30k and more, and each shot can do from 700 to 1000 damage (on a battleship). Some ships have torpedoes too, others have the ability to call in air strikes.
      You don’t have a repair module, you do have a repair ability, you activate it and in 15 seconds the ship is repaired. Then it’s ~2 minutes of cooldown before you can use it again.

      • Thanks for your impressions. I really don’t care about WoWP (can die in a plane crash for all I care ;) ) but I’m eager for all info about WoWs which sounds like its shaping up pretty nice.

        • in WoWS,, just wait for someone spam some CV on CW,, and the new tomatoes in CW be like “NERVE ALL CV AND CVL!”
          well,, i’m gonna laugh my ass out if that seriously happen XD

    • I like it more in EU beta when barrel-rolling is more easy than now. Now, im not even touching it unless the noobs are too much and i nowmiss my Buffalo prototype since im in SG. Now T_T

  2. Been waiting for this . I wonder what the hell does WG guys have as a brain ? why would anyone make such a fool out of themselves . all i could watch was 2 mins and thats it . It was all full of bullshit and nonesense . thankfully SS here took the time and watched a bit of it . But it was utterly dissapoiting . And i doubt any prizes were handed ( xbox 360 , alienware pc or whatnot ) .

    Hey ss, could you please gather info on the gamescom presentation of WG’s biggest rival and make comparison ? it would atleast ( if they even read the blog ) encourage them to do better / compenstate for the huge failure .

    • He did. Gaijin’s WT brought a SU-100 and a Me 109. Mail.ru’s whatevr-tank-game has a preety good trailer. SINCE IT’S IN FUCKING. CRYENGINE.

    • Wargaming gamescom shows were pretty amazing. 9 graphic cards got handed out, I only got a shirt and a B2 (and three more codes in the wows bag). They had two women dive-dancing in two water-filled booths with more dancers on-stage. After ever dance show the giveaways started, and usually they would invite people on the stage to play WoT against the devs and of you beat a crew member you got a GTX750.

      WT had giveaways too but no dance shows, and they only gave away stuff like golden eagles.

      I wasn’t at the mailRU stand.

      • Wrong. WT also held “tournament” against audience (6 of them), best player got either GTX750ti,or big-ass monitor from some sponsor. Also some guy won driving on (or in) a tank (dunno which and where). Some other giveaways were – mousepad, posters, t-shirts, week of PA, 1000 gold credits and premium aircraft Hs-129B2 (which is utter shit :), at least it’s really hard to successfully play with it).

  3. the stream was the biggest time waste ever

    if it wasn’t for the type 59s and code handouts no one would be watching

    and the facebook twitter crap was disgusting

    • Any give away will bring viewers. Gold is always good to have. But to get something that is not obtainable by only money is nice.depends on your personal preferences if personal data in exchange of digital services is right with you. I got some gold and a type, so I’m quite happy on the 9 hours spent on the stream. :-)
      But it was really boring.

  4. The “WoT for Xbox” project also seems to be no great success, since the Xbox360 console is an end-of-range model in US/EU and consoles are immaterial in Eastern Europe and Russia.

  5. I would stare at her boobs too , ss , WOULD u do it ? probably… so dont judge the guy :D

  6. Tbh i thought the whole thing was a pile of shite i remember the first stream twitch chat going crazy with all the beggers n scroungers spamming for gold codes and typing grid position to win T34 or karl when that chick had already told everyone to use FB, There certainly wasn’t enough about WoWS didn’t care for anything else as i can get of here. So in a nutshell total failure as always from WG there getting surprisingly good a failing lately

      • Both are equal…

        Jingles makes me smile more. But his at times STUPID as fuck problems with fact checking or BS videos (IS-3 once its armor got redone) do annoy me greatly.

    • QBs E-50m is weak was a joke .. he even said that ….
      its just fuel for some haters who put that out of context …..sorry ….

      i mean, i found specifically that stream and watched it …

      people have bad opinion on him, but from what i see, this opinion is based on uncomplete facts
      and often “friend of my momma said, that his friend said” …

      • I watched the stream because I saw people on forums quoting it …
        And E 50 M is weak is one of the LAST things I will believe anyone ever said in WoT.

        It was not a joke then :P

    • The advantage of Jingles not being a unicum is that he plays better than normal players, but not at unicum levels, which means that below-average players have somebody to aspire to. His videos and tank reviews are good though, the same as QB’s, Foch’s and Circ’s.

  11. It tells you something when one of the hosts at an event is only recognized as “that hot Turkish chick” :D

  12. The stream lacked content. You could see that the people on the couch were quite uncomfortable trying to find something relevant to say. No drinks on the table either for the guests. Bad form. Overall it appeared to lack planning. If they are going to have a presenter who is going to try and talk in English, find one that can speak the language without stumbling about trying to find the words. Why have the American couch presenter? Who was he? Do they not think that a European person would connect better with their audience?

    Companies set up booths at exhibitions to promote their latest product, inform the press, and sell product. In comparison they encouraged the “something for nothing” brigade to turn up in droves, either in person or on line and seemed surprised as it got out of hand. (stream comments shut down LOL)

    Dancing girls, swimmers, singers? These things are for parties. Entertainment. They were there to distract from the lack of real content.

    The amount of content regarding the product they should have been promoting, WoWs was swamped by hot air from the couch, and contests for goods that no one appeared to win. If you are going to do time limited sweepstakes, puzzles or otherwise. At least announce the winners on Facebook, or in the stream.

    I was “working” Friday and Saturday, watched the stream, entered the contests and saw no results.

    The whole presentation lacked professionalism.

  13. SS it was Obirian who said that the Firefly comes in 9.5 and that it is not decided if it will be Tier 6 or 7.
    The part with him was probably the most intersting part of the last stream.

  14. “What is not decided is the fate of tier 8,9 and 10 of that branch, it’s possible they will not come (some developers feel that the last thing the game needs is another 183mm derp TD), but I have no exact info on that at this moment.”

    What is wrong with the tier 8 and 9? I fully understand the issues with the tier 10, but I have no idea why the others would be objectionable.

    • Simple. Suggest a somewhat-relevant tank without the 183mm gun that would trigger another mass EURU whine that the devs hate so much

  15. It is clear that the new-shit cycle is slowing down which is not surprising as the more maps and tanks added to the game have to be debugged and fixed every time an incremental change comes to graphics, physics etc. It’s like a ever expanding game of whack-a-mole in multiple dimensions. Another problem is that WoT is a game without a world and an narrative. There are not any gods, kings, heroes, villains, quests, culture, mythology to engage an audience and help to make it accessible and workable in the Gamescom setting where so many games have expanding and unfolding narratives. The sort of stuff that can be used to engage an audience in any setting never mind the extended Gamescom one.

    Put the lack of any real development news and the hollow, stunted narrative possibilities of the game and suddenly you have very little to talk about.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

  16. WoT won’t have aany Gamescom Award this year (if it relies a bit on their presentation there.)
    No GrossTraktor for us because of their incompetence ^^

  17. These EU staffs were simply downright pathetic and stupid.Not to mention there’s alot of them who barely speak english properly. Was anyone able to translate what the turkish milf tried to say in engrish? NA staff streams are alot more professional and better organized.

    EU staff fking reeks! blow me WG EU!

  18. No Offence SS..

    But you have, of late had nothing but hate for WG and what they are doing.
    Even your positive comments are tainted with sarcasm and hate.
    WG have done a lot for the tank community and for the gaming entertainment in general over the last few years.

    How about turning the hate post’s down abit, I dont mind you pointing out why YOU think they have done something wrong and or what you think should have been better, But please stop with the all out negativity..

    • I think SS hates incompetent idiots not WG itself. And theres ALOT of them at EU office. I can only imagine on what criterias they were hired.

      • All I am saying is, I would feel pretty confident in betting on NOT finding more then 3 positive comments made by SS about WG or any of their activities within the last 10 post’s.

        • Oh please enlighten us, O Revered Sensei, on anything positive that arent taintable by the so-calld corrupting power that is “Justified Sarcasm”.

          Hippie.

  19. Frankly I did not expect much from Gamescom, so cannot say I am disappointed. I did have the stream on the background while playing WOT, or doing something else and it seldom sounded sufficiently interesting to actually watch.

    I think competitions were a bit better than last time, I mean you were not really forced to watch silly things for 150 gold. If you wanted a big prize, yes watch it all, tweet, count Karls, etc. I wonder if they had enough people doing that, I’m not sure. Frankly I’ve seen no Karl and no patrol duty. But Sweepstakes were fine. Got 500 gold the first night, 300 gold the second and 150 gold the third. Good enough for me.

    On WOWP, I can say it is sufficiently fun, you just may need more battles than with tanks to “get it” at a basic level. I know that probably you can’t convince a lot of people to play 1000 battles to figure out the basics, but if they manage to, than it’s a decent game.

    BTW SS, try to be a little less negative regarding WG, sometimes it seems like you have an agenda against them, I don’t think it’s helpful for readers.

    • Most likely because of the watermarks on the screenshots. There were mail addresses, etc. all you need to identify the leaker.

      Not that removing it makes much sense (I’ve saved them all to my hd before he removed them again ;) ).

  21. “The hot Turkish chick (Melly or something?)”
    So she was hot but you could not be arsed to remember her name? Friend SilentStroker (or something?) is so smooth that he probably haven’t been with a woman (a real one, not a paid pro) for a loooooooooooooong time…
    In conclusion, I really enjoy reading this little blog. It is like watching the monkeys at zoo – cheap, innocent fun. You have to take a bath after but it is still very amusing.