Of World of Tanks Economy

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Hello everyone,

you might have already heard of the Extra Credits Youtube show. It’s actually a really great show I like a lot, even though I sometimes disagree with some of their ideas. I think it was Vallter, who actually introduced me to this show and I am grateful for that. Anyway, here’s one part that you should find interesting. Go ahead, watch it. I’ll continue after you do.

 

 

So, now, you know the reason why there are no player-to-player ingame transactions in World of Tanks of any sort. By not introducing them, the developers essentially bypassed a whole lot of trouble, one of the biggest being raging inflation. Bethesda with Elder Scrolls Online went the same direction by the way, allowing auction houses to work only within guilds, removing the worst predatory practices, that appeared in World of Warcraft over the years by the “peer pressure” (players are much less likely to attempt to cheat their percieved guildmates).

In World of Tanks, the economy is completely closed, which means that the developers have complete control over its flow. Various elements of the economy, requiring both credits and gold, are introduced to keep the inflation in check. And yes, there is an inflation.

The system World of Tanks uses is actually pretty smart, because some things are simply not disclosed and it’s practically impossible to even protest about them, because you are not sure. Imagine for example that the credit inflation was too high – in World of Warcraft, there was no special primary premium currency, so it all boils down to “gold”. Normally, if the game uses the mechanisms mentioned in the video as sinks, it’s pretty obvious that something changed. For example, if you buy the same potion for 100 gold for last year and suddenly it costs 105 gold, the obvious question on each player’s lips will be: “why”. On the other hand – if Wargaming made your tank’s repair costs – say – 5 percent more expensive, would you notice that? The answer is “no”. The very same mechanism goes for credit-making ability of course. There is no serious way of proving that tank XY makes less credits than it did a year ago, unless the change is insanely drastic – but even small changes to both undisclosed parameters (costs and ability to make credits) can change the economy a lot even by small tweaks. And so, in effect, Wargaming as a whole is in total control. The absence of player-to-player transactions has another MAJOR advantage: the absence of insane amounts of bots, “Chinese grinders” and other negative effects tied to pay to win.

About the bots: the fact World of Tanks has a botting problem is obvious, but for all the sheer annoyance of such “players” (it’s MUCH more visible in a 30 man battle than on a multi-thousand-player cluster), their number has not reached limits where the game became unplayable, unlike in World of Warcraft at some point (mid-to-late Burning Crusade, first expansion). Let me tell you how it was: just like in World of Tanks, the process of acquiring resources needed to play further (in WoT XP or creds for repairs on high tiers, in WoW it was always gold for the endgame). Pretty much all the “usual” ways to gather resources (mining ore, herbalism) were however infested by bots and Chinese players, who sold them using the auction house (which in turn drove the inflation to insane heights, because the economy system was not set to deal with players, who did nothing but grind grind grind 24 hours a day, literally). In the end, the situation was completely unbearable – you were for example chasing reagents for some potion, and every spot where it grew was occupied by several “Chinese” players (they mostly had nonsense names such as “dskdhkdfgh”) and the plant was harvested literally seconds after it spawned. Blizzard then took extreme measures and banned most of these fuckers, but at one point, it was really, really nasty. The grinders collected the gold and sold it via their websited. Much to my shame, I must admit that at one point I bought a package of gold as well, so I can confirm it worked.

Mercifully, World of Tanks was spared this plague, but the system Wargaming implemented has some serious weaknesses as well.

For one, there is no “free market” autoregulation. Imagine introducing a certain amount of currency into the system, let’s say by accident (some employee fucked up and made an event too good). In a relatively open economy such as the one of WoW, this will somewhat “regulate” itself by increased auction house prices (inflation). This in turn will harm certain players (newbies looking to buy newbie resources), but it will have no direct or extreme impact on the gameplay (the large player market “absorbs” the surplus easily). In World of Tanks however, the only option to spend vast amount of credits (or, in worst case, gold) is by buying new premium/regular tanks, free XP or gold ammo. Other spending options likely have low sink value (you can buy gold camo only once per tank for example, respectively three times).

What that effectively means is that even relatively small increases in credit/gold gains will not only lower Wargaming profits, but also change the gameplay.

Lowering Wargaming profits part is obvious – any free gold you get (and stuff you get for it, such as free XP, premium tanks etc.) is gold you don’t buy. Certainly, this is not so in each case, but overall, the effect is noticeable.

Changing the gamplay is of course the case where players with too many credits and/or gold to throw away will start buying massive amounts of gold ammunition. Why that is a bad thing I don’t have to explain.

So, what it means together is that such a closed system, for all its apparent advantages, has to be closely monitored and indeed, Wargaming has an entire department (at least one person anyway), who keeps an eye on the ingame economy in order to balance various events and the profit Wargaming makes. Must be quite a complicated matter.

Second inherent flaw of such a system is connected to the first one – when you have a working regulator, well, that’s fine, but what if one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing? You know what I mean: various local branches fucking up and introducing too much rewards into the system. You might remember that about a year ago, the amount of rewards for missions was outrageous. Extra credits, extra gold, extra everything. Since then, it had to be toned down a bit. In several sections of the EU forums (notably the Czech one, that’s where I noticed it first), players complained that the “events are not what they used to be” – well, of course not. Or would you prefer everyone to have such a full purse as to fire gold ammo all the time? I certainly wouldn’t.

In any case, Wargaming ingame economy is working well, we don’t have any price inflations and/or crashes of anything, that’s a good thing (this was another annoying element of World of Warcraft economy – imagine a new “recipe” introduced in some patch, that requires indegrient X – the same indegrient that is very common for example and used in many lowtier recipes. Next day, the demand will drive its price in the auction house through the roof). Let’s hope it stays that way :)

61 thoughts on “Of World of Tanks Economy”

      • Actually, you can buy the boxed thing off a Russian gaming website (brought one from there) with the code for either the BT-SV or Pz II J for $110 (includes shipping), and that package comes with 10k gold, 3 months premium and a book SIGNED BY SERB HIMSELF.
        Those codes on ebay are scams/rip-offs meant to lure in the foolish/naive. They aren’t hard to get.

  2. Well SS I have to thank you for linking me to EC a while ago and I found these guys produce some amazing content. BTW, their History stuff are pretty cool as well, go and check it out.

  3. “In World of Tanks…the developers have complete control over its flow.”

    Did anyone else read that and have something about “communist regime” pop up in their mind for even the briefest moments? >_>

    Although, if it works well (and it usually does), there’s really no reason to complain.

    • Yes, Communists go with central planning instead of free market. That was exactly what I thought.

  4. I hope you realize that even if trading were available in the game there would be no inflation whatsoever, since all the items can be bought for the unaffected prices directly from Wargaming rather than other players. Only items that are not available for a fixed price at NPCs are affected by inflations. To tackle that problem in WOT you could simply exclude those tanks from the trade feature.

    In fact, stuff would become a whole lot cheaper, not more expensive, because people would sell their things somewhere between the regular buy price (100%) and the sell price (50%), which would then result in increased gold ammo usage, because it’s cheaper (duh).

    • Indeed.

      The correct thing to say would be that WG has complete control over the players’ purchasing power. They can control their income of both gold and silver (from battles/missions/events/transactions etc) and their expenses (ammo/consumables/tanks etc) and thus to some degree predict their purchasing behaviors.

      A marketplace between players would increase their purchasing power as they would now be able to sell unwanted items for more and buy wanted items for less. So it would probably result in either a price hike on certain items or an income drop from WG if implemented (if we assume status quo to be desirable)

  6. Um..there is no such thing as inflation in a closed economy. Because wg controls the conversion rate of gold to silver (and it is unchanged), an wg also controls the price of goods (consumabkes and gold ammo) which are also unchanged. 1 gold today “buys” you the same xp..or fire ext..or prem round as it did yesterday..or last year..or several years ago for that fact. There is no inflation.

    Also since there us no limit on supply, there can be no situation of too much gold chasing too few goods, this prices are not bid up.

  7. SS. How can I contact you?

    OT: I think the economy in WoT is realy good as it is. There is some kind of inflation atm but that swaps from time to time.

  8. I am not sure I would even consider what WG has as a “Economy” that exist in virtually every other game out there…
    It’s a one-way closed loop purchase system.. Inflation can’t really happen within the game, so external gold and gift items are the only real items we should see change price to counter real currency inflation.
    Granted, I don’t really think of WoT as a MMORGP, I was playing Doom games launched from chatrooms in the late 90′s. What WoT has is virtually the same.
    A FPS with a Chat Client bolted on.
    Granted, the map with “Clan Warfare” and “Strongholds” do push it to a MMORPG status.

    Compare WoT to Eve, WoW, or a huge amount of other games out there and you can probably see how it doesn’t have a “Economy” and you can see how it isn’t “Massive Multiplayer”…

    • It has an economy. There is a buyer (player) and seller (wg, currency real and vurtual, and an exchange rate). It is a closed and shallow economy,but an economy.

  9. WG can easily create cash-sinks and they do. I guess that those 250k-300k credit-events created huge inflation within WoT (I got them everyday those days). However, WG simply puts equipment on 50% sale (dont tell me that thousands of players wont buy a rammer for 250k when it’s 500k normally), discounts tier IX and X tanks (favourable prices on players’ side, effective cash-sink on WG side). In case of gold, they simply discount either garage slots or premium account, the easiest ways to drain gold from players’s accounts.

    These are the reasons for:
    1) XP will never be transferable for credits
    2) garage slots will never be for credits (garage slots inflation, possible cash-sink in worst case scenario – imagine what would happen if XP tranfer or garage slots were for credits – literally everyone would spend most of his credits on this)
    3) no premium tanks over tier VIII (one of the reasons, not the main one, i guess the main reason is to avoid pay-to-win)
    4) 25% RNG (again, side effect, but all those ‘dings’ effectively lowers your battle credit income)
    5) time-limited cammo paints
    6) maybe even the skilled MM – now, the game somehow pushes you to get better and better tanks (you dont have to, but 99% players do want next tier tank). And the higher in tiers you get, the less income the tank usually generate, preventing inflation. This, in turn, forces players to play also lower tiers, creating sufficient player pool on every tier, even the lowest ones (when I take my Tetrarch, the match is full of T18 clan members). Skilled MM would put less pressure to advance to higher tiers. Similar for tier spread.

    Just few thoughts, have all nice afternoon.

    • 4) 25% RNG (again, side effect, but all those ‘dings’ effectively lowers your battle credit income)

      This has NO effect. For every ding you also have a pen. RNG is not an issue. It is for gameplay and HP balance.

    • It doesn’t matter how many events they have to give away Silver.
      The value doesn’t “Inflate”.. The market price is fixed at all times.

      Silver events will harm gold sales, but that’s a whole different strategic kettle of fish.

      And as for when they give out discounts, I would bet that they use profit models in the background to offer discounts when silver in the game is typically running lower than normal – Or rather, if it was me running the sales team then I would offer the discounts when silver stacks are lower.

      Tank slots, Barracks, XP Conversion, and all of the other things you “buy” with gold never needs to move price either because the only official gold seller is WG and they can modify their gold price to counter real life inflation.
      Inflation = Value of X moves in relation to value of Y..
      In WoT prices are fixed.

    • You as misusing the term inflation. Did the price of the virtual goods increase due to an increase in the money supply? Are your credits or gold worth less than they were last year? Answer to both is no..no inflation.

    • Inflation in WoT is reflected in Gold ammo. The amount of gold ammo used is proportional to the amount of money that is in the economy. People tend to purchase gold ammo, either in gold or credits, if they have the extra money after saving for the next upgrade.

  10. A market would be nice to buy and sell tanks but i’m fine whit the current system.

    What we need is even higher gold ammo price and higher tier 9 & 10 repair costs so low dmg noobs can be kept at lower tiers.

    • Strongly disagree as team that avoids taking damage at all cost is usually defeated in horrible way. I mean when no one wants to leave the cap first or team forms lemming train that is not willing to push and tanks do not keep enemies at distance from arty or TDs.

      It doesnt matter if two teams are full of noobs or blue players, amount of credits given and amount of credits spend on repairs is the same. At least half of 30 tanks is always destroyed (not counting victories by base capture). Noobs that should be kept on low tiers are actually main source of your income.

  11. >> Lowering Wargaming profits part is obvious – any free gold you get (and stuff you get for it, such as free XP, premium tanks etc.) is gold you don’t buy.

    Yea, like every mp3/app/vid you copy is a “stolen” intellectual property and deprives author of earnings… RLY? Like everyone would have bought everything…

    • If someone would want to buy them for real money, but could buy them for free stuff, they would do it. So in the end there are far more people buying gold items, but less using real world money.

      So yes, it’s a lack of profit for WG

    • Regarding your mp3/app/vid example and leaving aside the “stolen” controversy. the answer is yes. Any free copy of the item is one less sale for the owner, who may or not be the same person as the author, and thus less income for the author.

      The “stolen” controversy is about if the person who gets the free copy would have purchased it if it wasn’t available for free. The owners of the IP say yes, the people who download them say no. I think it is somewhere down the middle.

  13. WoT economy is hand-driven, so price increase is very unlikely. So something inflation-like can happen only because of huge amount currency in game.
    In such case just premium sinks would be used, and as a result there would be more gold ammo flying and more premium consumables used. And MAYBE more high tier tanks rolling. Or premium tanks, in case of free gold influx.
    That’s all. Prices are constant, WG learns.

  14. OT

    is there some planning for discount for T8 tanks ? want to buy t34 and if there is like next week 15% discount it would be stupid to not w8

  16. Good article.

    Just one question though. What happens when large amounts of players finish the lines they are interested in?

    In my case, I don’t play skycancer, Chinese or Japs and nothing is going to change that. I will probably not play the euro tree, if it comes. I am not that far off finishing the lines that I am playing (3-6 months at most). Thereafter, I will have nothing to spend credits on, other than gold ammo and consumables.

      • I can easily say that WoT has much higher attrition rates than other games, because, after a certain point of time spent in game, the game expects you to know the advanced tips&tricks of the game. There’s also the fact that Steam has made a booming industry for indie games, not to mention the major ones like PD2 or ARMA3.

      • Player attrition is another large credit sink not mentioned earlier. Unless someone illegaly buys the account on eBay, all of the accumulated silver, tanks, equipment, XP etc. is removed from the game.

    • Why do you have to spend them on anything?
      Why do you have to quit?

      I have trouble understanding the idea of “endgame content” in games like WoT – you play just because you like.

    • “Chinese or Japs and nothing is going to change that. ”

      Why??? Why not play Japs and Chineses… or EU?
      So.. I dont know… strange. Its not normal IMO.

      Anyways, train your crew.

      • I think you are probably wrong. Most players don’t set out, or end up, playing every line. They start on a few and maybe start more as they progress, but the vast majority do not play, or intend to play, all the tanks.

        I don’t play Japs and Chinese because, for me, they do not offer anything in terms of gameplay, that is different enough from tanks I have already played to warrent the effort of grinding them.

        • The Chinese are completely different gameplay wise. Especially their mediums…
          And I play all nations. They make look similar to USSR, but they play nothing alike.
          Same for Japanese!

      • I think you are probably wrong. Most players don’t set out, or end up, playing every line. They start on a few and maybe start more as they progress, but the vast majority do not play, or intend to play, all the tanks.

        I don’t play Japs and Chinese because, for me, they do not offer anything in terms of gameplay, that is different enough from tanks I have already played to warrant the effort of grinding them.

    • Just play tanks you like and those millions of silver will wait till you decide to buy something.

      • You are missing the point. With nothing left in the game that I want to buy, I (and eventually most players) will accumulate massive amounts of credits.

        Thinking about it, what WG probably intends is that credits accumulated in WOT, will be spent in other WG titles (WoWP, WoBS etc).

        • With nothing to spend the money on, the amount of silver you have is irrelevent. It is not being used to influence the game by purchasing anything. In effect your excess silver is a giant credit sink. WG have been very crafty by making cirtain items like garage slots and premium tanks available only for gold.

  17. TL;DR: WG has created the utopia of communist economists by producing a highly centralized working economy.

  18. “…Wargaming has an entire department (at least one person anyway)…”

    Well, that descalated quickly

  20. Why would WG give credit missions when they can sell those credit/gold combo packages to those who like to spam prem ammo 24/7 in giftshop and make mad profit.

  21. Lineage II had a pretty smart solution against inflation. When there was to much money in the game and prices were going sky high NCSoft was selling in game one special item that could for example increase the damage value of your sword or increase your armor efficiency. There was a catch though: you had a chance to either increase your weapon power or to destroy your weapon. If you were lucky you could use those special items 5-6 times in a row and get a stronger item. Then you used another item and destroy your weapon. Basically money was draining from the economy at a verry fast pace: the buying price of the item was dissapearing, the weapons were dissapearing. For players it was still worth it since you could get an unique weapon, it even had a special glow :)
    I lived though some pretty nasty inflation periods then in a matter of one week everyone was poor again :)

  22. Well, I am very much not satisfied by the way the WoT economy works. Its too slow to progress. I am stuck with my tanks for way way too long time, which in turn sucked the will for me to play this game. Right now I can’t play more than 3-4 matches without getting bored, since i pay the same tanks.
    So:
    Jagdtiger, E50 M, ISU 152, amx 50 100. And that’s it. I have that E-100 unlocked, but I cant move from 100k credits. I am in this position for more than a year.

    And honestly I don’t even have the time it takes to grind an entire tier 10. And no I will not buy premium account for a game I don’t play. IF there was an option for premium account per played games, I would have tought about it.

  23. Sorry but all ingame transfers does is make the smart players better ingame and the dumb ones poorer.

    Look at Eve online, its the best economy BAR NONE and is totally hands off.

    IMO clan wars should have the whole Timber, Steel, Grain type system and make certain provinces produce parts that are needed to make certain tanks.

    Like Detroit makes engines and thus the clan who owns it controls X Tanks Engine upgrades. Vary that enough and clans now own T10 tanks and the flow of them and OP tanks like the ConQ GC costs x2 as much as the 261 and makes them even harder for baddies to get, making them grind even more and making WG rich.

    But seriously short of that, its ridiculous that I cannot sell my Type 59 for whatever I want to. Or my 2j etc. Wg should just charge 50gold per transaction and let us sell EVERYTHING…..If a player quits his game and wants to liqidate why not make a ton of gold sales off of it. Instead players who leave game are just trading there accounts anyways for money or other games.

  24. I pay for the game if i have fun playing it, kinda as a reward to developers. So no, these economy principles explained do not work for everyone.

  25. As a few above have put it, WG are practicing basically a communist-like economy in their games, but for the main purpose of PROFIT.

    Am I the only one finding this extremely ironic?

  26. Did you play on US server? There were no bots at all like this on the German high pop servers I played on during BC